The Wyoming State Legislature is hard at work this week.

Several bills have completely passed through one legislative house and have been referred to the opposite house for their consideration. Among these is HB0090, the judiciary bill that will allow the Department of Environmental Quality to regulate carbon capture and sequestration efforts.

Several amendments were added to this bill in committee. It has been introduced into the Senate and referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Another bill that has garnered some national attention is HB0057, which was approved last week on first reading and has been given a favorable recommendation by the House Judiciary Committee. HB0057 would prevent the confiscation of a firearm by peace officers, even in an emergency, unless the person bearing the firearm is unlawfully carrying it.

Among the bills that have been defeated was one that would have given the state engineer more rulemaking authority when it comes to ground water issues. Another defeated bill would have offered a status similar to tenure for educational support personnel.

This week, both houses will begin to debate the proposed budget. HB0001 and SF0001 will be debated simultaneously in the House and the Senate and will likely take up much of the week.

Gov. Dave Freudenthal’s budget proposal went before the Joint Interim Appropriations Committee before this session commenced. The committee submitted their 118-page version of the budget to the Legislature, which now has the chance to add, remove or adjust appropriations on everything from the healthcare and education departments to highway improvements and local funding distribution. Both bills start out with identical language, but may end up with completely different amendments made to them.

Rep. Ed Buchanan, agreeing with the governor in his State of the State speech last week, advocated fiscal discipline when making new amendments.

“We are, of course, required to have a balanced budget, but we have to be very careful about passing appropriations that will become part of an agency’s standard budget from here on out,” Buchanan said.

Some amendments make continuing appropriations that are added to the budget and become the baseline for how that particular agency or program will be funded in the future. If more appropriations are added to the budget than there is money to pay for them, new taxes or other means of revenue would have to be added as well.

Appropriations are listed in sections by department, agency or subject and each section is debated and voted on individually. For instance, section 321 details the distribution of the Abandoned Mine Act funding. Some of the appropriations in this section include about $30 million to be spent on abandoned coal mine reclamation, about $90,000 for the operation of a subsidence insurance program and about $1.2 million for evaluation of potential carbon capture sites and other clean energy efforts.

The budget as a whole passed both the House and Senate on first reading.



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