Lucas Robertson
lrober22@uwyo.edu
The Wyoming State Legislature is beginning its 2016 session this week, and with that comes new bills aspiring to become law.
With anticipation and anxiety thriving throughout both the House of Representatives and the Senate, legislators are preparing for a session of high stakes and compromise.
The main issues that will be addressed are budgeting, the oil industry and education.
“The budget session and the budget should have 100 percent of everyone’s attention, there are two or three bills that I’m putting forward that involve the budget process, the budget forms and how the bills proceed through the session,” Senator Phil Nicholas, R-Albany, president of the Senate, said. “The last two months has been entirely about the budget.”
Appropriation of funds is a hot topic issue among the elected officials in the Wyoming State Capitol. The dichotomy between responsible spending and stabilization of the state economy with assurance to both employed peoples and those who rely on state funded entities for priority services can often times become a double sided blade, Nicholas said.
“We’re talking about; what’re the available revenues? What’re the forecasts for revenues? What’re our expenditures for the regular budget?,” Nicholas said. “What is our structural budget? What is our structural deficit? How much can we spend out of the legislature stabilization reserve account?”
The University of Wyoming receives a great deal of funding from state petroleum companies and with the cost of a barrel of oil now being roughly $29, the University will most likely be subject to further budget cuts Representative Mary Throne, D-Laramie, said.
There are also some issues of privacy and accountability within the university that have made their way into the chamber of Congress.
“We do have some bills relevant to the university in particular,” Throne said. “We have the bill that ASUW students helped us with regarding student emails and clarifying that it is not of student records.”
With a shrinking job market, the state government is looking for new ways to ease the burdens of professional licensing for those entering the job market. One of the ways includes a measure to allow for up and coming nurses to be more quickly expedited through state medical licensing procedures.
“We’ve got two nursing bills, one of them is nursing licensure compact and the other is very similar – it’s advance licensure nursing compact,” Representative Elaine Harvey, R-Big Horn, chairman of labor, health and social services committee, said. “A nurse could work on a temporary license until her background check has come through Wyoming.”
The state is also working with measures for more stable funding and regulation of mental rehabilitation and assisted living facilities.
“We’ve got an on-going task force that is studying five facilities that are under the prevue of the Department of Health,” Harvey said.
With most committees and leadership already reconvened, bills appropriated for the common wealth will soon make their way to the floor.
