Wyoming LAP Book - Accountability

ACCOUNTABILITY OF THE LEGISLATURE TO WYOMING CITIZENS

      No one in Wyoming cares about every bill that gets filed in the Wyoming Legislature, or how a state legislator votes on each one. Nor will everyone listen to hours and hours of recorded legislative debate.
      But there is someone who cares about each vote and each debate - and there are numerous votes and debates each session that attract a great deal of interest and attention.
      Yet year after year, bills on buying electronic voting equipment for the Legislature, setting standards for conflicts of interest, disclosing lobbyists' expenses, applying open meetings laws to the Legislature - all of which would help ordinary citizens understand the workings of the Legislature - have consistently failed.
      The Wyoming LAP* Book, now in its third edition, is the first attempt in Wyoming's political history to provide the general public with easily accessible information on legislative campaign contributions and important votes.
      However, this book is significant not only for the information it provides, but also to call attention to the information it could not provide - the many important but unrecorded votes in committee and on the floor, comments from legislators during discussions of bills, or expenditures made by lobbyists in their efforts to educate and influence legislators.
      The areas where improvements in accountability are most needed are listed below.

Recording Votes
      The Wyoming Constitution requires a recorded roll call vote on Third Reading (final passage) of a bill. But until that point, votes on amendments are rarely recorded by roll call.
      While many amendments are relatively insignificant, others are highly significant and of great public interest - for example, a salary package for UW/community college employees, a change in education funding, or changes in hunting license fees.
      The original intent of a bill can be wholly changed and entire programs begun or ended without any recorded roll call vote.       Legislators who request roll calls at the few junctures where recording is optional run the risk of punitive voting from their colleagues who will deliberately vote against the wishes of the legislator asking for the vote to deter future requests.
      Legislators opposed to recording more votes claim that enough votes are recorded now, and more recording will only bog down the legislative process when they are already hard pressed to get the necessary business done in the short sessions.
      Legislators have also expressed concern about recorded votes being taken "out of context" and used against them in reelection campaigns.
      Legislators also argue that recording more votes would reduce access to the public because it would take more time. However, when they want to, legislators have figured out how to speed things up.
      For example, they have established a practice of putting bills without amendments together on a "consent list" for Third Reading to vote on all at once, and sometimes vote to suspend the rules to move bills through faster.

Electronic Voting
      Wyoming is one of only a handful of states without an electronic voting system for the House of Representatives. Installation of such a system, which would allow legislators to vote simultaneously, would save significant amounts of time over the current manual roll call system.
      Proposals received by the Legislative Service Office indicate the one-time expense of installing an electronic voting system in the House would total $100,000-$120,000. A similar installation in the Senate would add approximately $60,000.
      Along with equipment for tape recording debate, greater accountability would amount to a one-time cost of less than a quarter of a percent of general fund expenditures for the 1997-98 biennium.
      It doesn't seem as if $200,000 would be too much to ask in order to find out how our legislators chose to allocate over $987 million!

Recording Legislative Debate
      Although legislative debate was recorded at the turn of the century by hand, legislators argued against it for years because of cost (estimated at $10,000 for tape recording a general session) or because "no one would ever listen to it."
      On the contrary, there are many potentially interested listeners: reporters, judges or regulators trying to establish legislative intent, historians, constituents - and, yes, potential political opponents.
      Much-needed improvements have finally occurred in this area. During the 1995-96 biennium, a limited amount of legislative debate was tape recorded in the Senate only. This was expanded during the 1997-98 biennium to include recording of all House proceedings and Third Reading debate in the Senate.

Access to Legislative Decisionmaking
      In recent years, committee chairs have improved their efforts to notify the public of committee meetings and the bills to be considered, but these efforts are still only a matter of practice - not rule - and are entirely discretionary.
      Notice can range from a few hours to a few days. With Wyoming's short sessions, matters tend to move quickly, and even full-time lobbyists can have a hard time keeping up.
      The current system puts ordinary citizens at a serious disadvantage when trying to participate in legislative decisionmaking. Often critical changes are made to a bill in committee - or would be if the committee had input from affected or interested citizens. But if they cannot get enough notice of a meeting to take a day off or travel to Cheyenne, that input will never be given.
      Wyoming's Legislature is often called a "citizen legislature," because its members are not full-time legislators - most of them hold other jobs. But a citizen legislature should mean that ordinary citizens have as much access to the decisionmaking process as do the big moneyed interests in Wyoming.

Lobbyist Reporting
      In the 1998 session, Wyoming finally shed its notoriety as the only state in the nation without a lobbyist disclosure law requiring lobbyists to file a public report on how much they spend to influence and educate legislators.
      Unfortunately, the law is just a token effort that requires so little reporting that it will not shed much light on lobbyist activities. The law requires reporting of ...each loan, gift, gratuity, special discount or hospitality paid or given... exceeding $50 in value, as well as the cost of special events, such as receptions for legislators or tickets to a basketball game. (Please see the description of SF 49A (1998) in the Lobbyist Reporting subsection of the Accountability section for more details.)
      The Equality State Policy Center has long advocated full lobbyist reporting - reporting all expenses of lobbying, including salaries, fees, telephone, travel, printing, you name it.
      This is because Wyoming's legislators do not have personal staffs and are thus particularly dependent on lobbyists for information. It's the presence of the lobbyists - not the presents of the lobbyists - that influences legislation.
      A major part of lobbying is building relationships. The ability to build relationships is based in large part on money - to travel, to maintain offices, to pay enough to have the same person here year after year, to hold events for legislators. (Spending could be reported in ranges or aggregated totals to protect sensitive information such as salaries.)
      Electing candidates and influencing legislation are essential parts of our democratic system. We value openness in our system - that's why our "citizen legislators" have to report the campaign contributions they receive and how they spend them.
      Why does the reporting decrease substantially once they're elected and are actually making laws that affect Wyoming people? It shouldn t!
      Wyomingites are entitled to full reporting - and want it; the vast majority of Wyomingites polled in late 1997 rated passage of a law requiring corporations and organizations to report their lobbying expenditures as "very important" or "somewhat important': only 17% responded "not very" or "not at all important."
      [The first lobbyist reports under the new law will be submitted in June 1999, covering the calendar year 1998.]

Telephone and Internet Access
      The Legislature has made improvements in two areas that especially benefit Wyoming citizens outside Cheyenne.
      First, two telephone numbers are provided for information and for input into the legislative process.
      Citizens may call a toll-free number, 1- 800-342-9570, to find out the status of a bill (those living in Cheyenne or out-of-state may call 307-777-6185). To express an opinion, citizens may call a toll number, 1-307-777-8683 (777- VOTE), and leave a message asking legislators to vote yes or no. The messages are given to all the legislators from the callers county.
      The Legislative Service Office has also created an internet site to provide information on legislative activities. Citizens may access this site at http://legisweb.state.wy.us. The site contains the text of bills, daily action sheets, legislative digests (which tell what happened to each bill), and other useful information.
      The internet site also provides links to other state agency sites and to state statutes.