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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.
Workers see decline in employer-provided health insurance... click here to read more.
The State of Working Wyoming
Who benefits from the boom? This February 2008 report provides statistics and other information on the economic facts of life for Wyoming’s working families … click here to read more.
The Wyoming LAP* Book
(*Legislative Accountability Project)
Information on the 2009 session’s key bills, votes, and legislators’ campaign contributions...click here to read more.
ESPC pushes civic participation, government accountability
The Equality State Policy Center, a broad-based coalition of Wyoming interests, works through research, public education and advocacy to hold state and local governments accountable to the people they represent, and to help Wyomingites participate effectively in public policymaking.
The ESPC’s programs fall into three areas: government accountability (open government, campaign finance reform, lobbyist reporting); tax and fiscal policy (mineral severance taxes, property taxes, tax breaks or incentives, economic diversification); and Wyoming working families (access to health care, minimum wage, gender wage gap, worker safety, quality child care).
Across all these program areas, the ESPC provides trainings for citizen advocates and lobbyists to boost public participation and civic engagement in policymaking. Its election-year voter education and mobilization campaigns make historically un- and under-represented voices heard where policy decisions are being made.
Census forms arrive in Wyoming
Time to be counted
PRESS RELEASE - Department of Administration and Information - Economic Analysis Division
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Census 2010 Forms Arrive in Wyoming
The 2010 Census questionnaire is starting to arrive at the door of Wyoming residents. Every ten years, the U.S. Census Bureau undertakes the massive operation of counting every person living in the United States as mandated by the U.S. Constitution. The decennial (every ten years) census has taken place in Wyoming since 1870. Currently, staff from the Local Census Offices are hand delivering questionnaires to housing units in rural areas of the State, which will continue through the beginning of April.
Wyomingites living in larger municipalities will receive their Census 2010 forms in the mail in mid-March.
People living on the Wind River Reservation will be counted via interviews with census workers.
Response to the census questionnaire is required by law. The questionnaire is only 10 questions, which makes it one of the shortest census forms in history.
The U.S. Census Bureau will work to count people living in housing units and group quarters, such as prisons, dormitories, nursing homes, group homes, and military barracks. The U.S. Census Bureau will also send staff to shelters, soup kitchen read more...
Posted Mar 10, 2010 11:37 AM
ESPC backs effort to keep public records open
Asks court to consider public interests in dispute between Governor and Cheyenne newspaper
In the midst of a court fight with the Cheyenne newspaper over when and if the public gets to see budget-cutting advice he gets from his agency directors, Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal has requested that the Wyoming Supreme Court create a new legal doctrine that will undermine the public’s ability to access public records.
The governor wants the court to recognize “deliberative privilege,” a legal doctrine that would allow him to keep that advice secret. The public would not see the thinking of department directors unless the governor chose to release their advisory memos once he had made a final decision in critical public matters.
The ESPC believes the deliberative process privilege flies in the face of strong public policy in favor of disclosure and openness. It also is contrary to legal principles of discovery and undercuts the search for the truth both in court and in public policy forums.
The threat to Wyoming’s Public Records Act, which for decades has enabled Wyoming citizens to see such records, prompted the Equality State Policy Center to join the Wyoming Education Association and the Wyoming Trial Lawyers Association in filing a “friend of the court” brief in the case.
Read our joint news release here. The motion asking the court to allow the ESPC, WEA and WTLA to file the brief and the brief itself can be found here.
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