Wyoming Liberty Index, 2014 Budget Session, 62nd Legislature

Welcome to the 2014 Wyoming Liberty Index.

The Bills

The 2014 Wyoming Liberty Index rates all bills in the House and Senate from the 2014 Budget Session, 62nd Legislature, on whether they support or inhibit liberty.

Legislators voted on 148 bills in the House and 151 bills in the Senate. Out of this total, the Liberty Index showed that 35 liberty-supporting bills passed and 56 failed. Additionally, 39 liberty-inhibiting bills passed while 75 failed.

The first observation, echoed by many legislators and observers, is that there were far too many bills introduced for a budget session. We compare the last budget session, 2012, with this one.

However, budget sessions are (or should be) abattoirs of bills; this year half died one way or another before crossover (when each house begins consideration of bills that originated in the other house). 131 bills, or 43%, made it into law.

Some good liberty bills that passed include:

• SF 75, Environmental protection agency actions-2. The Senate passed this bill unanimously, and the House followed with a 54 to 4 vote. All of our raters gave it a 3. It authorizes the state Attorney General, under the direction of the governor, to go after federal agencies that exceed their statutory authority. The EPA is the poster boy for this bill. And the bill was passed just in time to help out Andy Johnson.

The most liberty supporting bills that failed include:

• HB 76, Property forfeitures and seizures. This would have tighened up the law on asset forfeiture.
• HB 94, Restoring constitutional governance act. The name may overreach, but the intent is necessary: to interpose the state of Wyoming between its citizens and a power hungry federal government.

The most liberty inhibiting bills that passed include:

• HB 1, SF 1, the budget bills.

  Lawmakers did through the budget what they couldn't do through a bill in the short session. …
  Casper Star Tribune education reporter Leah Todd, paraphrasing Mary Kay Hill, education policy adviser to Gov. Matt Mead.

  • The legislature appears to think that federal funds (e.g. PILT, AML), capital gains, and mineral taxes will flow in ever greater amounts forever.
  • Bills that failed either in interim committee (the Juvenile Justice tracking system) or as bills during the session (HB 26, Education-early childhood programs) show up as budget items (2015-2016 Cheat Sheet, February 13, 2014, page 21, footnote 2; Section 335, page 117). The Constitution requires a 2/3^rds vote to introduce a bill during the budget session (Art. 3, § 6, Compensation of members; duration of sessions.), and only a majority to amend the budget. It takes less than a majority to add something in the Appropriations Committee. For the story of the Next Generation Science Standards, see Sen. Cale Case, Wyoming budget process needs fixed [sic]. Is the legislature using budget amendments to bypass a constitutional requirement?
  • The process is broken when the budget takes money out of pension funds and uses it to pay current salaries.

  The good news is that total budget spending did not greatly increase, which runs against the trend of the last decade or so.

  This Rube Goldberg process cannot continue.

• HB 25, Funeral Service Practitioners Act, which creates yet another occupational license. These are bad for consumers, new entrants and innovators, and good for incumbents in a feld.
• SF 97, Large project economic development loans. As introduced, this was a clear pork barrel scrape for the benefit of one company. Subsequent amendments only put perfume on the stench. See Corporate Welfare in Wyoming.

The most liberty inhibiting bills that failed include:

• HB 81, Education-early childhood programs-2, and SF 119, Education-mandatory kindergarten.. These would let the on-going train wreck call the government school system get its claws into our children at even earlier ages.
• HB 130, Cigarette taxes. An increase in the cigarette tax to fund more social engineering and Medicaid.
• SF 106, State education administration, which would have created a special committee to examine the Department of Education and recommend structural changes to it.
• HB 80, HB 84, HB 161, SF 88, and SF 118, all Medicaid expansion bills. In all there were nine attempts to expand Medicaid in 2014. What part of "no" do these people not understand?

There is detailed information on, and the final status of, each bill. The detailed information includes comments from the raters on why they rated the bills as they did.

The Legislators

In addition, the voting pattern of each legislator was automatically calculated and given a liberty score. The higher the score, the better the legislator's agreement with the raters. A high score simply reflects a high level of aye votes on liberty-supporting bills and nay votes on liberty-inhibiting bills. Scores are only indicators of ordering, and arithmetic manipulations are meaningless. The percentage is simply out of the range from highest score (100%) to lowest (0%). Because the two houses vote on different bills, scores in the two houses are not comparable.

The Top Dozen liberty-supporting members in the House were (in order) Representatives Kendell Kroeker, David Miller, Marti Halverson, Tom Reeder, Bunky Loucks, Allen Jaggi, Mark Baker, Gerald Gay, Stephen Watt, Lynn Hutchings, and Lloyd Larsen and Nathan Winters tied for 11th. Following on his success last year, Rep. Kroeker wins the title of "Most Liberty-Friendly Member of the House for 2014", and by a wide margin.

The House Needs Improvement Club consists of those members who most consistently voted to limit freedom. They are (in order from least bad to worst) Representatives John Eklund and John Patton (tied for 50th), Glenn Moniz, Eric Barlow, Bob Nicholas, Ken Esquibel, Donald Burkhart, Jr, Elaine Harvey, W. Patrick Goggles, James Byrd, Steve Harshman, and, to our surprise, "Dr. No". Since "Dr. No" is a construct, Rep. Harshman has earned the title of "Most Liberty-Hostile Member of the House for 2014".

The top performing House Democrat is Mary Throne, ranked 16^th. Last year, Rep. Throne earned the title of "Most Liberty-Hostile Member of the House for 2013". The top performing Republican is once again Kendell Kroeker.

The Top Half-Dozen liberty-supporting members in the Senate were (in order) Senators Cale Case, Curt Meier, Larry Hicks, Leland Christensen, Stan Cooper, and Bruce Burns. Once again, and for as long as we have been rating the Senate, Senator Cale Case has come out on top; he earns the title of the "Most Liberty-Friendly Member of the Senate for 2014" by a substantial margin. Kudos yet again to Senator Case!

The Senate Needs Improvement Club are those members who most consistently voted to limit freedom. They are (in order from least bad to worst)) Senators Fred Emerich, R. Ray Peterson, Chris Rothfuss, and "Dr. No" (all tied for 23^rd) Michael Von Flatern, John Hastert and Charles Scott (tied for 28^th, Jim L. Anderson (SD28), and Bernadine Craft. Bernadine Craft has earned the title of "Most Liberty-Hostile Member of the Senate for 2014".

Among Senate Democrats, Floyd Esquibel did best, ranking at 21. Cale Case, as usual, is the top Republican performer.

There is detailed information on each legislator.

The 2014 Wyoming House Leadership

The 2014 Wyoming House Index

This table shows the weighted liberty score and weighted liberty percentage for each representative.

The 2014 Wyoming Senate Leadership

The 2014 Wyoming Senate Index

This table shows the weighted liberty score and weighted liberty percentage for each senator.

Excused, Absent and Conflicts

Since 2013, we have provided Excused, Absent and Conflict totals for each member on the Results tab of the spreadsheet. These are totals of third reading votes (not days) for which the member was excused, absent or had a conflict.

The House, with 199 excused votes, far outstrips the Senate, with 12, even factoring in the larger size of the House. Leading the House are Thomas Lockhart, with 37 excused absences, and Steve Harshman, with 34.

Being a leader in this field is not necessarily a bad thing. Since a failure to vote is often equivalent to a no vote, these absences may have improved these legislators' scores.

More Information

The 2014 Index background information is available:

• Spreadsheet in Office97 Excel file format. Do you need an Excel viewer? OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice (a fork of OpenOffice.org) and Gnumeric all open this spreadsheet.
• Spreadsheet in Open Document Format (287K), suitable for many spreadsheet programs.
• Methodology used this year, and other background information.
• sha1sums and md5sums. (What do I do with these?)
• Bill Information Sheets
• Legislator Information Sheets