Hello, Evanston! Time for my annual “return and report” to the people of the 49th legislative district. I got home late Friday night, March 16, from Cheyenne. I had the darndest time getting out of the capitol city.

After the governor’s closing remarks Thursday evening, I tried to leave Cheyenne and the freeway between Cheyenne and Laramie was closed due to weather and an accident. Tried it again Friday morning and it was closed again for similar reasons for 8-10 hours.

Tried going down Fort Collins, Colorado, way and coming up Highway 287 to Laramie and it was closed, also due to snow and high winds. Headed back to Cheyenne to wait it out. Went over to the Office of Wyoming Tourism at the junction of I-80 and I-25 to regroup and visit with Wyoming’s Director of Travel and Tourism Diane Shorber. We had a pleasant and informative visit.

About an hour or so later, the lady at the front desk told me Highway 287 to Laramie was opened. I hurried back down there (about a 40 minute drive). The two-lane road, covered in slush, was indeed open and it was still windy — big time windy — with snow blowing all over the place and accumulating in some areas, too. White knuckler.

The drive to Evanston from Laramie was dry but windy, so windy the 18-wheeler trucks we’re so accustomed to seeing were nowhere to be seen in both directions all the way to Rawlins. The gates with the red and white wooden legs were down telling all high-profile vehicles to stay off. That part of the trip was awesome! Took about nine hours to get home.

We’re still legislating from Wyoming’s makeshift capital at the Jonah Building on East Pershing Avenue across from East High School. I’m still at my front row desk in the corner next to the HP house printer. It’s nice to be close to the printer so I can print up all the correspondence I receive from myriad constituents.

Your emails make my day. I love the insights and advice you provide regarding the various pieces of proposed legislation I send you. Nice to have another pair of eyes reading bills. I still put all your emails in binders so I can reread them before the gavel sounds at 10:00 a.m. Thanks, again, for all your emails! 

This session was a little frustrating for me. Our state has some pretty big financial problems. It was the elephant in the room, but most of our time was spent in the legislative “sandbox” doing what legislators do — legislate. Three hundred and thirty bills were numbered in both houses for the 20-day session.

We spent only four days on the budget HB0001. Talk about distractions! We should have spent more time discussing the weightier matters of the law — our finances — and less time debating a state song, Estelle Reel Day, commemoration of treaties, commemorative license plates, etc. Sheesh.

Before leaving Cheyenne, I visited with the Legislative Service Office (LSO) and have them working already on a proposal which would require [the budget bill to be] the first bill that should be introduced in the budget session (it’s traditionally done during the second week). This bill would also change some joint rules to allow more time to discuss the budget, and that’s what we needed this session.

Many other legislators were also frustrated with the way things unfolded. Most of the $900,000,000 structured deficit was covered from rainy-day savings ($350,000,000) and the rest from other accounts. Education took about $28,000,000 in hits the next two years. 

Following are some high interest bills that passed and were signed by the Governor.

• Enrolled Act 49 (HB0014) relating to municipalities; restricting extraterritorial jurisdiction asserted by a municipality; specifying applicability; providing for coordination between a county and municipality.

• Enrolled Act 48 (HB0036) relating to the regulation of traffic on highways; amending requirements for passing parked emergency vehicles; creating requirements for passing parked or slow-moving municipal, construction, public utility and maintenance vehicles.

• Enrolled Act 27 (HB0070) relating to securities; providing that a person who develops, sells or facilitates the exchange of an open blockchain token is not subject to specified securities and money transmission laws.

• Enrolled Act 58 (HB0086) relating to welfare; requiring the department of family services to recover birth costs paid by medical assistance from specified persons; providing procedures for the calculation and collection of birth costs.

• Enrolled Act 65 (HB0109) relating to public employees; increasing employee and employer contributions in the public employee retirement plan; requiring the increased employee contributions to be paid through a reduction in cash salary of the employee as specified.

• Enrolled Act 34 (HB0131) relating to weapons; repealing the restriction on persons authorized to carry a concealed weapon from carrying a concealed weapon into any place where persons are assembled for public worship.

• Enrolled Act 63 (HB0168) — Stand Your Ground — relating to crimes and civil liability; establishing and modifying when defensive force can be used; establishing when no duty to retreat exists; providing immunity from civil liability for reasonable use of defensive force; providing for an award of costs if a civil lawsuit is filed as specified; providing that the use of reasonable defensive force does not subject a person to criminal prosecution as specified. Gov. Mead did not sign, but allowed to become law.

• Enrolled Act 51 (HB0192) relating to the legislature; providing that communications audible on an official recording or broadcast of an interim committee meeting or other meeting are not confidential and privileged as specified.

• Enrolled Act 48S (SF0029) relating to education; adding computer science and computational thinking to the state educational program; eliminating keyboarding from the state educational program; providing that computer science courses may satisfy certain high school graduation requirements and certain Hathaway scholarship requirements.

• Enrolled Act 40 (SF0040) relating to aeronautics; establishing the Wyoming Commercial Air Service Improvement Act; providing legislative findings; creating the Wyoming commercial air service improvement council; prescribing duties; providing for a commercial air service improvement plan.

• Enrolled Act 58 (SF0038) relating to hunting and fishing licenses; amending provisions related to license and conservation stamp expirations. (Fishing licenses good from one year after purchased date).

• Enrolled Act 67 (SF0093) relating to education; authorizing a school district to provide instruction to students and to take other specified actions relating to child sexual abuse education prevention and response. 

More legislative information on these bills and others can be found at wyoleg.gov. Click on BILLS. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to serve you.