For an ESPC perspective on the Wyoming policy scene, click here

ESPC executive director Dan Neal offers insights, analysis and comment.

Read or listen to the latest stories from Public News Service-WY here.

The State of Working Wyoming

Wyoming relies heavily on revenues from taxes on minerals. They’ve paid for many of the state services provided Wyoming residents. This June 2010 report offers a 5-point plan for assuring the ability of the state to provide those services well into the future. … click here to read more.

The Wyoming LAP* Book (*Legislative Accountability Project)

Information on the 2010 session’s key bills, votes, and legislators’ campaign contributions...click here to read more.

2012 Citizen Lobbyist Training

It's that time of year once again! The Equality State Policy Center's 2012 Citizen Lobbyist Training is just around the corner.

The ESPC's Citizen Lobbyist Training is widely recognized as the best short-course available to understand the workings of the Wyoming Legislature. The workshop educates citizens about the legislative process and how they can effectively influence public policymaking.

This year's Citizen Lobbyist Training will be conducted Feb. 15 starting at 8 a.m. at the Plains Hotel in Cheyenne.

Read more here. Register for the 2012 Citizen Lobbyist Training here.

Sweeping changes needed to protect Wyo workers

State can speak softly, but must start swinging the stick

Photo from WyoFile story about worker safety.

Wyoming’s appalling job fatality rate requires forceful action by the state, not simply more data gathering and courtesy inspections as recommended by the state’s epidemiologist, Dr. Tim Ryan.

State leaders need to summon the will to exercise both their moral and legal authority to change the workplace culture that has killed more than 600 Wyoming workers since 1992 and maimed and injured many more.

Dr. Ryan issued his memorandum to the governor on Dec. 19, and then quit to work in the private sector. The subsequent response from the governor and industry has indicated little will be done except to continue gathering and monitoring data and asking industry to submit to “courtesy inspections” that allow OSHA inspectors to point out safety violations without risk of citation. This essentially means an extension of the status quo, which will mean more Wyoming families will see people injured and killed.

But few companies have availed themselves of the courtesy inspections offered by the s read more...

Posted Jan 08, 2012 11:56 AM

Corporate election spending threatens integrity of elections

Few U.S. Supreme Court decisions of the past 20 years have opened the door for sweeping change in the basics of our democracy as the Citizens United decision of last winter.

In Citizens United, the Court cleared the way for corporations to engage in independent spending to support or oppose candidates in elections at all levels – from the town council to the U.S. Presidency.

In their decision on Citizens United, eight of the nine Supreme Court Justices supported the idea that states and Congress can require disclosure in these campaigns. After all, voters cannot make informed judgments about what they see in campaign advertisements and literature without knowing who paid for them.

The Wyoming Legislature passed Senate File 3--Campaign finance-organizations this year. The new law amends state statutes to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision. In testimony to the Senate’s Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee in January, the ESPC provided a brief analysis of the decision and its implications for state elections. The ESPC also suggested a series of amendments to the bill to require expansive disclosure of independent expenditures by corporations, unions, and other professional organizations. Ultimately, the Legislature adopted an amendment that will require corporations and others mounting independent expenditure campaigns to register with the Wyoming Secretary of State and report their contributions and spending on campaign advertising.

Nevertheless, the disclosure that will be required by Wyoming law does not mitigate the potential for the biggest corporations, with their deep treasuries, to dominate the voices heard in state campaigns in Wyoming and elsewhere around the country. Many of these financial dreadnaughts operate in the state. Some extract coal and other energy and mineral resources. The railroads have invested billions to haul coal from Wyoming mines to distant markets and carry millions of tons of other freight through the state on its way to market.

Some argue the Citizens United decision will prove beneficial to national and state politics.. These proponents aver that it serves free speech and the First Amendment by telling government it cannot constitutionally regulate corporate speech in elections.

The ESPC and others contend the decision opens the floodgates for the world’s biggest corporations to pour money into elections, swamping the campaigns of candidates they oppose while lifting the candidates who pronounce their support for corporate interests. Restrictions against foreign influence in U.S. elections have been swept away by the Court in a narrow 5-4 vote that gives entities that exist only on paper the same rights as citizens who breathe and bleed. Democracy will suffer.

The Court’s reasoning relied mainly on an argument that a corporation is an “association of citizens” and therefore entitled to the free speech rights that would attach to a human. (See the U.S. Supreme Court arguments on the case here.)

The Equality State Policy Center (ESPC) respectfully disagrees with this reasoning because:

(1) shareholders can be foreign nationals;

(2) shareholders may also be other corporations, pension funds, and other investment vehicles as opposed to individuals;

(3) a corporation separates and distances itself from the association of persons through a number of protections granted by government for the convenience of doing business, mainly the limitation on personal liability.

Under Citizens United, corporations get to have their cake and eat it too. When it comes to free speech, corporations are just associations of humans; but when it comes to liability, the individuals are nowhere to be seen.

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