By Hannah Shields
Wyoming Tribune Eagle
Via- Wyoming News Exchange

CHEYENNE — To the dismay of some lawmakers, the Wyoming Legislature’s Labor, Health and Social Services Committee adjourned two hours after it began on the second day of its two-day meeting in Cheyenne on Friday.

“It wasn’t worth our time to spend taxpayer money to go through and rehash the same conversations,” said committee co-Chairman Rep. Dan Zwonitzer, R-Cheyenne, in a phone call with the Wyoming Tribune Eagle after the meeting.

The first item of discussion was a draft bill that would establish a health care commission in the governor’s office. The purpose of the commission is to work year round and collect data and research on Wyoming health care. The commission would present these findings to the Legislature, which could be used to draft new legislation on health care policy.

Essentially, it would be another tool for lawmakers to create laws that best address the Cowboy State’s health care needs.

However, there were “several social media postings and some campaign materials” that claimed lawmakers were allowing the governor to expand bureaucracy through the creation of the commission, Zwonitzer told the WTE.

Based on discussion from previous committee meetings and speaking with lawmakers that morning, there was “no belief it was going to ever make it to the finish line,” he said.

Before lawmakers got to work on the draft bill, Zwonitzer asked members Friday morning if they wanted to spend 90 minutes on a bill that is “unlikely” to get through the next legislative session. 

“I do know there are some people here in the audience who wish to testify on the bill. However, I also know it has become a politically contentious issue and, due to certain social media threads, has a very unlikely chance of passing the session, from what I understand,” Zwonitzer said.

With a majority straw vote, members of the committee decided to skip over it. 

However, the floor was still open for public testimony, since state employees set aside time in their schedules to testify.

Senior Policy Advisor for Health and Human Services in the Governor’s Office Jen Davis was first to take the mic. Davis said she respected the decision of the committee not to move forward with the bill but added it was nevertheless an “important” topic.

“To be successful, (we need) to have good health care,” Davis said. “We have a lot of challenges in Wyoming with our health care infrastructure, and so the purpose of establishing a commission is really to put health care in the forefront.”

Rep. Ben Hornok, R-Cheyenne, said the bill seemed to tread upon the separation of powers, since it established a health care commission in the executive branch. He pointed to the governor’s veto message of a bill that provided funds for the Legislature to participate in litigation, a power that’s already held in the executive branch.

Gov. Mark Gordon said that bill was a “clear attempt to cross, blur and trample the line of separation between our equal, but separate, branches of government.”

“How is this not the governor blurring the lines of the executive branch to kind of overstep a little bit into the legislative purview?” Hornok said.

Wyoming Medical Society Executive Director Sheila Bush said this is a group of individuals seeking legislative approval to perform research on health care in Wyoming year-round. The commission would report its findings back to the Legislature as a resource for creating health policy, she said.

“That’s strictly the sole purpose of it; it’s nothing more. It doesn’t have authority,” Bush said.

The committee spent the next hour and a half discussing bill draft 132, “Music therapy-use of title,” which it successfully forwarded as a committee- sponsored bill for the 2025 general session on a vote of 9-4.

Upon returning from their 10-minute break, Rep. Mike Yin, D-Jackson, made a “nontraditional” suggestion.

“I might be a little selfish here, but many of us have a long way to go home,” Yin said. “Because the number of people that won’t be coming back in this committee is high, I would like to dispense with the other two topics and move to adjourn so we can still have daylight by the time we get home.”

After the primary election, only four of the committee’s original members will be returning in the new Legislature next year. Zwonitzer, co-Chairman Sen. Fred Baldwin, R-Kemmerer, and several others, will not be coming back in 2025.

Zwonitzer took a roll call vote on the motion to adjourn early. Seven members, including both chairmen, raised their hand in support of it. Those who voted in favor include Reps. Forrest Chadwick, R-Evansville; Ken Clouston, R-Gillette; Kevin O’Hearn, R-Mills; Sen. Eric Barlow, R-Gillette; and Yin.

But not everyone was pleased. 

“That’s just wrong,” said Sen. Lynn Hutchings, R-Cheyenne.

Rep. Jeanette Ward, R-Casper, said she was looking forward to the 1:30 agenda item, which was bill draft 33.6, “Taxpayer funds-sexually explicit events prohibited.” The bill defined “sexually explicit” and prohibited certain entities from “contributing to or sponsoring sexually explicit events.”

“I think that’s an important topic to talk about, and I’m very disheartened that we’re not going to talk about it,” Ward said. “I am having a hard time understanding why we would do this.”

Rep. Sarah Penn, R-Lander, made a motion to create this bill draft following a sold-out drag show in Laramie that fundraised money for Wyoming AIDS Assistance, a nonprofit that supports men, women and children living with AIDS or HIV. The Wyoming Department of Health’s Communicable Disease Unit distributed nearly $3,000 in federal grant money for the event. She told the WTE via text message that she was “shocked and very disappointed” by the meeting’s early adjournment.

“The bill is highly desired by my constituents, and many others across the state,” Penn wrote. “The PEOPLE wanted this, and this morning they were given the middle finger by some members of the Joint Labor, Health (and Social Services) Committee.”

Both Ward and Zwonitzer lost their reelection bids in the Aug. 20 primary.