The House and Senate concurred on the Budget bill today and in that concurrence are two items dealing with education. The first was mentioned in last night’s update. Mary Throne ran an amendment that instructed the Wyoming Department of Education to study the use of a growth model to assess students and to come back in the fall and report their findings to the Joint Education Committee. This will take place. The second is that the Legislature gave the community college campuses permission to use local funds to build dormitories.

WEA has been watching property tax bills closely, as these mills are directly responsible for school funding. Over a dozen different proposals have come forward and four are left. Each of them is targeted to a specific portion of the population and will not greatly affect the funding of education. WEA is not opposed to targeted tax relief, but had grave concerns about proposed constitutional amendments which would have restructured the tax system and across the board tax cuts, breaks, or caps.

The House Education Committee met today and passed SF – 70 School finance amendments this afternoon. One amendment was added which funds a distance education incentive through a grant administered by the Wyoming Department of Education.

Bills WEA will be working this year

Daily Bill Status Report

Please watch for positions that change throughout the session. Most of these changes are due to amendments to bills.

Number Link to Introduced version	Bill Title	Link to Amendments	Explanation of the Bill	WEA' Position	Bill Status
HB0003	Campaign finance reporting-electronic filing.	Yes	Changes campaign finance reports to an electronic form that would be posted online and would be searchable. Allows for only electronic filing	Support	S Passed CoW
HB0009	Campaign finance reporting.	Yes	Limits Political Action Committee contributions to $3,500 per individual for legislative races and $7000 for statewide candidates per election. A very blatant abuse of the current law lead to this change	OPPOSE	S Appointed JCC01 Members
HB0017	Community college commission-duties.	Yes	Implements some of the recommendations from the Governor's Blue Ribbon Panel on Community Colleges. Our only concern is that it allows the Community College Commission the ability to cancel programs at community colleges due to low enrollment.	Support	S Passed 2nd Reading
HB0025	School building plan review exception.		It just cleans up the language and allows districts to contract for building plan reviews. In practice, I believe that districts already do this, so I do not think it changes practice.	Watch	Assigned Number HEA0004
HB0054	Natural gas valuation.		Provides a fairer tax system for sour gas of which funding goes to the school foundation account.	Support	S President Signed HEA No. 0019
HB0077	Tuition-dependents of disabled firefighters and EMTs-2.		Allows children of disabled firefighters to go to college tuition free	Support	S President Signed HEA No. 0021
HB0081	Community colleges-capital construction.		loosens regulations on legislative approval of construction projects from everything over $50,000, to everything over $100,000	Watch	Assigned number HEA 0014
HB0113	School finance-minimum teacher resources.		Clarifies funding for extremely small schools granting them additional funding for the last two years and then clarifying the language so that it does not continue in the future.	Watch	S Placed on General File
HB0134	School district immunity and liability insurance.		Clarifies language for school funding of extremely small schools.	Watch	S Passed 2nd Reading
SF0009	State retirement-board immunity.	Yes	This bill protects the members of the retirement board from legal action.	Support	S Appointed JCC01 Members We expect another conference committee to meet early next week and we expect the Senate to concur after that meeting.
SF0017	School facilities-infrastructure costs.	Yes	I see red flags that would require the SFC to choose cheapest option available in every situation. The recent Supreme Court Decision speaks to this specifically	Oppose	Assigned Number SEA0004
SF0021	Hathaway scholarship program.	Yes	Provides student who lose their scholarship due to low GPW with an opportunity to earn it back if they bring up their GPA while they pay their own tuition.	Support	S Appointed JCC01 Members
SF0022	School facilities-amendments.	Yes	Basically it is clean up language. It does stipulate that a school building cannot be demolished without a public meeting.	Support	H Passed 2nd Reading
SF0029	Public library endowment challenge program.	Yes	Provides public libraries an opportunity to raise funds through a matching endowment program. This bill would allow donations of $10,000 to be matched by another $10,000 from the state.	Support	H Rereferred to H02
SF0053	Common school reserve account funding.	Yes	This is a great bill - After Hathaway is full, this bill take the funding that was previously going to Hathaway and puts it in the common school trust land account.	Support	H Placed on General File
SF0058	State trust land management account.	Yes	One percent of the School Trust funding can be used by the state lands office to better state lands	Support	H Introduced and Referred to H05
SF0070	School finance-amendments.	Yes	The WEA supports all portions of this omnibus bill	Support	H Rereferred to H02
SF0071	Hathaway scholarship program-success curriculum.		Expands the foreign language of the Success Curriculum to include Sign Language	Support	H Passed CoW
SF0083	Retirement-rehired retirees.		Provides clarifying language to the current rehired retiree law.	Support	H Placed on General File