An independent voice for Wyoming people
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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.
Middle-income workers squeezed by health insurance crisis
New report from Robert Woods Johnson Foundation
America’s
Middle-Income Workers Shouldering Brunt of Health Insurance Crisis
According to a new report released today from the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation (RWJF), the two recessions that Americans have weathered in the
first decade of the 21st century have taken a tremendous toll on people’s
ability to afford health insurance and employers’ capacity to offer it. The
report also shows America’s middle class has been hardest hit.
Researchers at the State Health Access Data Assistance Center (SHADAC)
used the latest government data to assess the situation for middle-income
families. Among the findings:
Posted Mar 17, 2010 11:01 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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