by Wyoming Liberty Group Staff As I have noted on a couple of occasions now, 2019 is shaping up to be a great year to start reforming government spending here in Wyoming. Two sessions in a row, the legislature has rejected massive tax hikes and even refused to appoint a commission to overhaul our tax system. Time is ripe to talk about spending refo...

by Wyoming Liberty Group Staff This year is a great time to discuss the future of Wyoming, especially in terms of what role government should play in our state's economy. On February 22 I proposed a list of topics for this conversation, ranging from comprehensive transparency and efficiency reforms to school choice and free-market reforms in health...

by Philip Baron According to a Wyoming Taxpayers Association report, that was distributed to the legislators in the 2019 session, a three-person household pays in $3,070 in taxes and receives $27,600 in public services. This analysis only considers taxes as a source of revenue and does not look at all of the funding through fees and other sources o...

Natrona County School District faced scrutiny after the non-profit group OpenTheBooks published records of nearly $10 million in credit card purchases – highlighting voids in financial transparency breeding excessive spending culture throughout Wyoming. More than a year's worth of credit card records for Natrona County published demonstrated a shoc...

by Wyoming Liberty Group Staff The Bureau of Labor Statistics is slightly behind in releasing state and county level employment data. We will have state-level numbers for January on March 11 and the February numbers on March 22. We can also look forward to the county-level numbers for the third and fourth quarters of 2018. In the meantime, here is ...

by Wyoming Liberty Group Staff Setting the Scene: America's Opioid Epidemic According to the Wyoming Department of Health, 67% of drug-related deaths in Wyoming occurred because of prescription drug overdoses. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that in 2017, 49,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses, with overall overd...

Six full years of Wyoming state spending records are now available with the click of a button thanks to Wyoming's new State Auditor Racines. She produced all records for less than $180 and refunded the previous payments for requests made totalling $7,820. Next up? Saving Wyoming taxpayers millions of dollars in avoided wasteful spending. It is time...

March 4, 2019 In a sweeping 600-plus-page bill, the federal government proposes to seize millions of acres and hundreds of miles of rivers from almost every state. This land grab expands the federal estate yet again. The US Senate's bill, S. 47, the Natural Resources Management Act, passed 92-8, and passed the House with only 62 NO votes. Senator B...

by Wyoming Liberty Group Staff The Wyoming legislature killed every major proposal for higher taxes, from a sales tax on services and higher property taxes to new special districts with taxation powers and a corporate income tax. This is good news for two reasons, the first being that we may now see a shift in the public conversation about ways to ...

by Wyoming Liberty Group Staff The Supreme Court recently delivered a landmark decision regarding the constitutionality of civil asset forfeiture as it applies to the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Civil Asset Forfeiture is a mechanism law enforcement agencies use to seize property which they determine as associated with...

by Wyoming Liberty Group Staff Some progressive outlets are targeting Wyoming as a state that could be flipped to support Democratic causes such as expanding Medicaid coverage to able-bodied adults. Do you want to support their efforts, or do you want to keep Wyoming healthcare privately controlled? The Wyoming legislature is considering Senate Fil...

In the 2018 Budget Session, the Wyoming Legislature passed a bill that clarified the enforcement process of state campaign finance laws. In local elections, citizens may now file complaints with their county clerk, who may refer the complaint to the district attorney for investigation and prosecution. A recent episode in Rock Springs shows the dark...

by Wyoming Liberty Group Staff This Weekly Economic Review reports data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis on the composition of personal income in Wyoming. Main Point: Personal income in Wyoming is skewed toward equity-based and entitlement-based earnings. This should be taken into account when the legislature considers future changes to our sta...

As this article discusses, "Even cannabis advocates, like Rob Kampia, the co-founder of the Marijuana Policy Project, acknowledge that they have always viewed medical marijuana laws primarily as a way to protect recreational users." Read more from Alex Berenson as he discusses the intriguing evidence of a link between rising cannabis use and increa...

Despite the assertions of some of our representatives, Wyoming is not the only state without a corporate income tax.1 Moreover, states are trending away from the corporate income tax. Forbes magazine recently discussed this trend in an article entitled, "2019 Became The Year That Republicans in Wyoming Started Acting Like Democrats In Washington".2...

by Wyoming Liberty Group Staff The legislature is now past the deadline for moving bills out of their chamber of origin, and we can take inventory of the bills that proposed tax increases. The long story short is that our elected officials appear to have been listening to the opposition to tax hikes. The following bills that were written to raise y...

The state legislature has refused to rise to the bait to address the so-called gender wage gap in Wyoming. Of the three bills brought to address this dubious issue, only one remains and it is a small bill that actually deserves to pass. House Bill 71, sponsored by the Joint Labor, Health and Social Services Committee, will increase the fine for a c...

Did you know that some people question the point of transparency? Some think that Wyoming is not a "corrupt" state. While everyone in government surely is not corrupt, there is noted fraud, waste and abuse in Wyoming. We need to know where our tax dollars are going and why, before spending cuts can be made fairly. Yet, a city of Casper employee, pl...

By Karin McQuillan When President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the top constitutional lawyers in the country shared one predominant hope and expectation. Before the hearings, I spoke with five of the men who fought and won hard Supreme Court battles for religious freedom, property rights, and freedom of speech. All of them ...

by Wyoming Liberty Group Staff Why should you care about Obamacare's constitutionality? Simply put, if the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) were to be ruled unconstitutional, then Medicaid expansion would not be an option for the State of Wyoming, and our healthcare market could open up to more than one insurance provider for ...