JANUARY 14, 2025|
Photo – State capitol building in Cheyenne – Bigfoot99 file photo
The 2025 General Session of the Wyoming Legislature is set to convene in a two-month General Session at noon today, January 14th.
The session is slated for 37 business days. Three more days are available to lawmakers if needed.
This year’s legislature promises to be anything but boring. A new slate of conservative lawmakers flying the flag of the “Freedom Caucus” is set to convene to the session. Reading the political tea leaves, Governor Mark Gordon described the session last week as promising to be “interesting.”
Among the notable bills that will function as a litmus test of national social issues in the Wyoming House are HB 32—What is a Woman Act, HB 131–Ballot Drop Boxes Prohibition, HB 96—Prohibiting mask, vaccine, and testing discrimination and HB 134—Taxpayer funded, sexually explicit events prohibited.
Liberal representative Karlee Provenza, an Albany County Democrat, began the week blaring alarms headed into the session.
Provenza said, in an editorial this week, the conservative-leaning caucus wants to silence free speech at the University of Wyoming, make it harder to vote, and cutting the state budget to the point where “hundreds of Wyomingites jobs and public services will be lost.”
Provenza’s concerns were published in a newspaper funded largely by Jackson Hole liberals, The Cowboy State Daily.
Of particular interest to voters around Wyoming will be residential property taxes. Lawmakers have been hearing for several years from homeowners who say their taxes have risen too high, too quickly since the onset of the Coronavirus era, which produced a rush of new residents to Wyoming from other states hit by lockdowns and loss of freedoms.
Senate File 69—Homeowner Property Tax Exemption is up for consideration during the session that begins today. The legislation offers a 25 percent exemption off the first $2-million-dollar fair market value of a single-family residential structure.
The senate bill includes a $125-million-dollar appropriation from the general fund to the department of revenue to reimburse government entities, including school districts, for losses in revenue resulting from the homeowner tax exemption provided in this act.
Let the political fireworks begin. Politicians will entertain no less than 158 House Bills and 108 senate bills during the session.
The opening-day of the session convenes at noon. Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon will deliver his annual State of the State address to a joint session of the Wyoming Senate and House of Representatives at 10 am.
