Equality State Policy Center's Projects
Government Accountability and Civic Participation
The Equality State Policy Center’s first projects focused on making Wyoming state and local governments more accountable to the people they serve, and this area continues to be the ESPC’s top priority.
The Wyoming LAP* Book (*Legislative Accountability Project) provides Wyoming people with easily accessible information on Wyoming legislators’ voting records and the campaign contributions they received. The Wyoming LAP* Book has been published every two years since 1994, first in print and now online.
The ESPC also has provided analyses of campaign contributions in gubernatorial and other statewide races. We successfully worked for pre-election campaign contribution reporting, and continue to advocate for a comprehensive lobbyist reporting law.
The ESPC conducts an annual Citizen Lobbyist Training at the beginning of each legislative session, and a biennial Wyoming Campaign School, which teaches grassroots campaigning techniques for candidates and issue campaigns.
In election years, the ESPC also conducts voter education and mobilization drives to bring un- and under-represented constituencies into Wyoming politics.
Tax and Fiscal Policy
The ESPC represents the public interest on mineral taxation issues. One day, Wyoming’s finite energy/mineral resources will be gone or no longer economically recoverable; we advocate for responsible stewardship in the form of severance tax rates that capture the value of these resources for the future. We worked to get the regressive sales tax off groceries and support targeted property tax relief. We also work to improve Wyoming’s complicated revenue distribution system and budgeting process.
Wyoming Working Families
The State of Working Wyoming is the ESPC’s latest project in its Wyoming Working Families program. The ESPC was the lead advocate for legislative authorization of a study on gender wage gap, A Study of the Disparity in Wages and Benefits Between Men and Women in Wyoming.The ESPC also participated in development of The Self-Sufficiency Standard for Wyoming, which shows the wages needed to cover basic expenses for families of various configurations (e.g., one parent with a preschooler and a school-age child).
We have advocated for increasing the minimum wage for tipped employees (currently $2.30/hour in Wyoming) and repeal of the law that allows employers to retain mandatory gratuities (tips) for large groups instead of passing them along to the servers. We worked with the Wyoming Children’s Action Alliance for passage of the Quality Child Care program and with several groups for expansion of the KidCare CHIP program (that provides subsidized health insurance coverage for children in working families) to include parents.
The VOTE Project
The ESPC is a partner in the VOTE Project, a regional effort under the auspices of Western States Center, to educate and mobilize voters and potential voters. VOTE stands for Voter Organizing, Training and Empowerment Project.
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