Bill to ban use of taxpayer dollars to fund government lobbying fails

POWELL —  A Powell lawmaker’s attempt to prohibit counties, cities, school districts, special districts and the state government from using taxpayer funds on legislative lobbying fell short last week.

Rep. Paul Hoeft, R-Powell, was the lead sponsor of House Bill 88, which sought to bar governmental entities from using state funds to try to influence legislation, hire a lobbyist or pay dues to organizations that lobby the Legislature.

“Tax dollars should be spent providing services, not paying lobbyists, funding lobbying associations or promoting institutional agendas,” Hoeft said in introducing the bill on Feb. 10. The measure — which needed a two-thirds majority vote to be introduced — drew support from nearly all of Park County’s lawmakers, but failed overall by a 27-34 margin.

Two similar efforts led by Rep. Marlene Brady, R-Green River, failed by similar margins on Wednesday and Monday.

Taxpayer-funded associations like the Wyoming County Commissioners Association and the Wyoming Association of Municipalities organize continuing education and networking events for elected officials around the state and help them track and navigate key issues.

But they’ve come under greater scrutiny in recent years for their lobbying efforts.

Taxpayer pushback

During the House’s floor debate on Monday, Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, R-Cody, said she’s “watched individual rights being violated during Covid, where lobbyists were pushing against the rights of the people using our taxpayers dollars, where property tax relief and other bills were … opposed by lobbyists using our taxpayer dollars.”

Hoeft said Monday that a ban on taxpayer-funded lobbying is “overwhelmingly supported” by Powell area residents. He said last week that they’re looking for “continued relief.”

“They’re asking because many times the things that they [taxpayers] want, they’re lobbied against by their own people that they put into place,” Hoeft said.

The WCCA and WAM are only a couple of numerous associations that would have been impacted by HB88, alongside those like the Wyoming School Boards Association, Wyoming County Clerks Association and the Wyoming Association of Sheriffs and Chiefs of Police, which frequently shares law enforcement’s perspective with lawmakers.

Seeing value

In opposing Hoeft’s bill last week, House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Art Washut, R-Casper, praised the value of the testimony and insight offered by a governmental association.

“I think it’s essential that this body have folks like this available to us to inform our decision-making,” Washut said, “because otherwise we can make decisions about all sorts of areas of government that we don’t fully appreciate and understand — and then we have to come back the next year to fix it because we messed something up.”

Hoeft countered in his remarks that the bill wouldn’t limit lobbying, just who paid for it.

But bill opponent Rep. Lloyd Larsen, R-Lander, said constituents expect their elected officials like county clerks and commissioners to represent their positions at the Legislature.

“They need to be down here and … we shouldn’t expect them to do it on their own funds; we don’t,” Larsen told his fellow lawmakers. “We’re down here lobbying, we’re lobbying all afternoon for things that we think are important and we’re getting paid for it with public funds.”

Local opposition

During a meeting with Hoeft and other Big Horn Basin lawmakers last month, commissioners from Park, Big Horn, Hot Springs and Washakie counties made the case for the value provided by the WCCA, but that didn’t win over Park County’s delegation.

At the January meeting, Rodriguez-Williams and Sen. Dan Laursen, R-Powell, both told commissioners they supported a ban on lobbying with taxpayer dollars.

Just hours after the meeting, Rodriguez-Williams shared a post on X (formerly Twitter) that criticized “taxpayer-subsidized lobbying.”

“My take: Pay for your own damn lobbyist with your own money,” she wrote.

Last week, Rodriguez-Williams joined with Hoeft and Reps. Nina Webber, R-Cody, and John Winter, R-Thermopolis, in supporting HB88.

Rep. Dalton Banks, R-Cowley, was among the majority who voted to kill it.

After the bill’s failure, Park County Commissioner Kelly Simone said on Facebook that she was “disappointed” to see local lawmakers sponsor the measure.

“Outsourcing the resources provided by WCCA would be much more costly to the taxpayer,” Simone wrote.

She also called it ironic that the Wyoming Legislature uses roughly $282,000 of taxpayer money each year to maintain memberships with The Council of State Governments and the National Conference of State Legislatures, which both do lobbying on the federal level.

“It’s hard to reconcile restricting local governments from belonging to professional associations while the Legislature maintains and funds its own memberships,” Simone wrote. Rodriguez-Williams, however, told the Tribune that she has been informed that those organizations don’t use public funds for lobbying.

Two more bites at the apple

A similar, slightly broader measure targeting government associations, House Bill 131 from Brady, also failed introduction on a 27-34 vote on Wednesday.

Park County’s delegation voted much the same way as it did on HB 88, with Hoeft, Rodriguez-Williams and Webber in support of the legislation, and Winter joining Banks in voting no.

Commissioner Simone said HB 131’s failure “sends a clear message that the majority of legislators appreciate and value the input of their locally elected government officials.”

Brady attempted to resurrect her bill on Monday by seeking to incorporate its text into House Bill 107 — an otherwise unrelated measure that dedicates a portion of state sales taxes to cities, towns and counties.

Brady’s amendment would have barred those local governments from using any of those sales tax dollars from being spent on lobbying associations, but it, too, failed on a 25-36 vote.

Multiple lawmakers noted that, even if the amendment had passed, cities, towns and counties could use other, nonsales tax dollars to keep paying for associations and lobbying.

For that reason, Rep. Mike Yin, D-Jackson, argued that “all this does is create more paperwork.” He, Banks and Winter were among the nays, with Hoeft, Rodriguez-Williams and Webber voting aye.