• Several projects are currently being worked on.

Wyoming State Senator Fred Baldwin (R-SD18) joined SVI Media to give a legislative update from the committee work he has been doing.

He serves in the Labor, Health, and Social Services Committee and right now a big focus of his is work on Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and Fire recruitment. He says there is a struggle across the state and nation on this. He says one bill being considered is to add EMS as an essential service in the state.

“Which, surprisingly, it’s not, in the state of Wyoming” Baldwin said. “And it probably needs to be.”

He says another bill he’s been working on is consideration for volunteer firefighters for the state insurance program.

“As an incentive, trying to get more people to volunteer for volunteer fire departments,” Baldwin said. “Don’t hold me to these numbers, but I believe across the state of Wyoming we’re about 300 volunteer firefighters short. We’re quite short and services are really struggling.”

He says this includes both north and south Lincoln County. He says there is also a deficit with EMS as well.

He says another thing that committee is working on is addressing medical costs such as pharmaceuticals. He says they want to make prior authorization less of a “speed bump” and make it easier to get through. He says if you don’t know what it is, you need to go talk to your healthcare provider and they can give you quite a bit more information on it. He highlights to get any kind of prescription or treatment it sometimes requires this prior authorization and can take a bit of effort. He also says it is something that will be difficult to get passed though.

“I know there’s already people lobbying against it at the state level,” Baldwin said.

He says he is also doing work in the Mental Health & Vulnerable Adult Task Force Committee. He says there have been several areas to focus on. One is the mental health diversion for misdemeanor criminal offenses.

“There are a lot of young kids, particularly adolescents, getting caught up in a criminal system,” Baldwin said. “When the  underlying problem was really a mental health offense.”

He says another area is the need for vulnerable adults. He says sometimes this is overlooked because Wyoming has a lower population.

“The numbers don’t seem very big about how many people we have at risk,” Baldwin said. “When you compared it to a total number of people and the number that are at risk, it’s actually quite large.”

He says the other areas were adolescents with high behavioral needs. He says this is a need in the Cowboy state because there is not a place to put these young people. He says the schools would all say there is a lot of time spent putting out what he called “burning fires”.

“They’re not really allowed time to help the kids,” Baldwin said. “And we wanted to get some changes there. At least make suggestions to make that a more effective system.”

He says he hopes to make the educational system more about mental well-being when it comes to mental health.

He says these issues are the forefront of his mind, but also understands property taxes must be addressed too. He says with it being an election and a budget year, there will be a lot of competing interests for addressing issues.