Neiman reflects on first session

Representative Chip Neiman isn’t sure he can explain how the 66th Wyoming Legislature differed to a normal year – one without unusual arrangements caused by a pandemic.

“Everybody kept telling us, this is not how it’s supposed to be, I hope you don’t think this is normal,” he laughs. “Like I told several legislators, I wouldn’t know what normal was – I’d never been here before.”

What stood out to Neiman about his first session representing House District #1 was its effectiveness. While he didn’t have a full session to compare it to, he did have the experience of eight days of legislating via Zoom earlier this year.

“It was far better, without question, being there in person…when you are there in person, you’ve got other legislators immediately close, you can ask questions,” he says. “You can walk over to a person and ask for clarification before you do any decision-making, and you can’t do that on Zoom.”

You can better tell what people are thinking and how they are reacting in person, Neiman says, and that made the in-person session much more collaborative.

“It’s a much more efficient and effective way of doing legislation in person,” he says.

What struck Neiman most was, in fact, this collaboration among a group of people who each represent 9000 Wyomingites.

“It’s really amazing to hear all the different perspectives and all the wisdom and the knowledge that comes from so many different people on an issue,” he says. Each legislator brings something different and relevant to the table, he continues, and, “That really makes you grow and makes you aware of what’s going on around your state.”

“I appreciated the legislators that really kept in mind their constituents. They were there to represent the folks that elected them and I really appreciated that,” he says. “They brought perspectives from their people in their regions that were all very different – there’s a lot of different mindsets out there.”

Listening to opinions ranging from the progressive to the conservative raised thoughts that not everyone had considered, he says, which is what refines each piece of legislation. Before this session, he had not realized quite how many points at which a bill can change along its path – some that pass, he says, barely resemble the wording that was submitted at the beginning.

First Success

The Livestock Identification Choice Act was signed into law by Governor Mark Gordon earlier this month – the first new law sponsored by Neiman. It protects the choice that livestock producers currently have under federal law in choosing ID types for their animals, which he says is important because the USDA has already tried twice to mandate that RFID be the only option.

“It was very well accepted,” he says, crediting the many stakeholders he worked with for its success, including the Wyoming Stock Growers, Wyoming Livestock Board, Farm Bureau, Powder River Resource Council, Sheep Breeders Association and Wyoming Wool Growers.

“When I read that piece of legislation in committee, it had a unanimous vote out of committee,” he says.

The bill also left the House, Senate Ag Committee and the Senate itself with unanimous support.

“It’s good legislation, I think, and it provides the protections livestock producers in this nation need.”

Neiman has been contacted by a South Dakota legislator who would like to run a copycat bill in his own state, and believes this may also happen in Kansas and Iowa.

“I’ve been told that it’s even further-reaching than I realized in terms of the impact of that piece of legislation nationally for our livestock industry,” he says. “I’m very thankful, very honored and appreciate all the help.”

Watching his first bill be signed into law was quite the occasion, he says. It was, for Neiman, all about seeing proof of the impact of his actions, which in this case helped to protect an American industry from federal overreach. “I was really honored to be a part of that,” he says.

Bills of Note

Neiman had the opportunity to co-sponsor a number of bills he feels strongly positive about; for example, on the bill that now requires voters to present identification at the polling station.

“I think that’s a good framework we’re starting and people wanted that around the state,” he says.

However, a bill to introduce run-off elections was not passed this year, which Neiman says he was saddened to see. A run-off election prevents a candidate who received less than half the votes in a primary from moving on automatically to the general.

It does so by putting the top two candidates from one party against one another; the person who moves on to the general thus receives support from more than 50% of voters. The bill had significant support, says Neiman, but disappeared somewhere along its legislative journey. He hopes to see it return.

Neiman also co-sponsored a bill that amends homicide law in Wyoming, making it a crime to take the life of an unborn child in the case that someone was to harm the child’s mother.

“A major step forward, I believe, in protecting human life and recognizing human life,” he says.

A push to decriminalize marijuana also failed this year, which Neiman describes as a “hair-raising deal.” There’s a major push for such legislation, he says, but he’s found in conversations with sheriffs, county attorneys and Wyoming Highway Patrol that they are not in support.

“When you look at the numbers coming out of Colorado, $4.50 it’s costing them for every $1 of tax revenue they’re getting out of marijuana,” he says. “It’s unbelievable the number of problems they are facing down there.”

There was even a move to shape it into potential education funding, Neiman says, which was as baffling as it was amusing. At one point, he says, it was being described as “pot for tots.”

On the other hand, Neiman was pleased to see that legislation introducing the idea of hate crimes never made it out of judiciary. He points out that the Constitution says “all men are created equal with certain inalienable rights,” which means all human beings have the same rights and the punishment should be equally severe for any instance in which one person hurts another. Everyone, he says, deserves justice.

“When you start passing discrimination laws, you start discriminating, immediately, against someone else,” he says. “It’s not our group that gives us power, or it shouldn’t be. It’s that we’re human beings.”

Second Amendment bills were another hot topic this year and saw several bills put forward. Law-abiding citizens from anywhere in the U.S. may now carry a concealed weapon in Wyoming, for example, which Neiman describes as a “well-appreciated piece of legislation.” Despite the hubbub surrounding gun rights, he feels no doubt that Wyoming is a solid Second Amendment state.

Neiman notes that many of the failures and successes this year reflect Crook County’s values because this county has an outsized voice. He commends members of the Crook County Republican Party for increasing the impact of conservatives by supporting such candidates in other state districts.

It was, in some cases, the only reason legislation was passed, he says, as those conservative voices were able to break near-ties.

“It was amazing how much impact the people of Crook County, of District #1, have in this state,” he says. “Crook County was a huge factor in those people getting elected because they supported their campaigns, they spent their dollars not only supporting this district.”

School Funding

Perhaps the biggest disappointment for Neiman this year was the failure to make progress on Wyoming’s education budget, which is facing a dire and ever-increasing shortfall. What happened, he says, is something that’s hard to even explain.

“You had a House of Representatives where the majority were willing to not cut education as much and to vote a tax increase into that education bill, but then it went on into a Senate that had no interest in raising taxes and had a much larger hawkish attitude towards cutting,” Neiman says.

The bill left the House with a half-cent sales tax to go towards education, diversions from other state funds to shore up the budget and a limited number of cuts. Neiman did not support this version of the bill, he notes, on the basis that, “We’ve got room to be more efficient in how we spend, and that needs to be the first thing we tackle before we start adding taxes to people.”

The first thing the Senate did was strip out the tax and diversions, he says, then the cuts were increased and several other changes were made to, for example, increase tracking on spending. This soon fell apart as the bill began its progress through the Senate and consensus could not be reached.

“They finally threw up their hands and everything stayed the way it was,” he says. “That’s a sad statement. I hope I’m wrong, I really do, but when I look at the numbers, all that did was just speed [things] up.”

The state needs to begin making structural changes right now to soften the blow later, he says.

“But we just went right back to where we were. They’re fully funded as they were before, all the positions are still there,” he says, noting that there may even be additional federal pandemic funding.

“I marvel at that, I think it’s the biggest problem we walked away from down there that really never got addressed because they just could not find a place they could agree,” he says. “That’s a shame, I think ultimately that’s going to hurt the state.”

Future Budgets

The problem with the failure to reconcile the education budget, Neiman says, is that Wyoming seems to be trying to continue the spending patterns from ten years ago, before 68% of coal revenues disappeared. It’s simply not possible to support things like education on the same level as before, even with the introduction of new revenue, he says.

“We’ve got to change our minds on how we spend – we’ve got to,” he says.

In the end, it all comes down to one thing for Neiman: all the money the state spends is going to have to come from somewhere – and that somewhere will be tax dollars.

“Education is not generating revenue, so why would we not be looking at ways to be more efficient and to be better managers of our dollars?” he asks.

Neiman believes his constituents are against the idea of taxes. He also believes there are very few taxes that don’t fall on the backs of individual citizens.

“A one percent sales tax in the State of Wyoming is $164 million, and they don’t think twice about that because it’s ‘only going to be charged to the people who are buying stuff.’ Well, who’s not buying things?” he says. “They were saying we need a corporate tax…but surely they realize corporations don’t pay taxes? They simply pass those responsibilities on to the goods and services and you and I pay it – you’re just making them a tax collector.”

If people are not willing to make these hard decisions and the structural changes that Wyoming can afford, Neiman says, the reality is that the future will being forced cuts that will be devastating. This is not a problem that will go away on its own, he says.

“When it goes over the cliff, it’s going to be a wreck like nobody’s seen before,” he says.

Next Steps

Wyoming is expecting to received a sizeable chunk of funding through the American Rescue Plan, the next round of relief from the federal government. A week-long session has been planned for July to figure out how to begin distributing this money.

“We have no idea what strings are attached, exactly how much, where it’s got to go or doesn’t go, what are the limitations,” he says of the situation right now.

Meanwhile, the governor is putting together a task force to investigate education funding and Neiman hopes something productive comes of it for the Legislature to consider next year. Neiman himself will be looking into developing legislation for charter schools that could, he says, increase parent choice, and has been appointed to the Select Water Committee.

Neiman says he believes strongly in the people of this district and knows they can and will make good decisions and give good input if they are given the facts to work with. He pledges to continue sharing those facts and listening to his constituents.

“I want them to have the facts so I’m a better legislator,” he says. It’s a powerful thing to stand up on the House floor and be able to state what the people of a district want, he continues. “It’s easy to do what’s right if you do what they’re asking you to do.”