LEGISLATIVE HISTORY OF WYOMING LAWS

The question is often raised regarding the available sources of legislative history in Wyoming. While there is no transcription of the floor debates on a given bill in the House and Senate, there are sources of legislative history which may be helpful:

All bills (and resolutions) introduced in the Wyoming Legislature are drafted by the Legislative Service Office (LSO) at the request of a legislator or a legislative committee. When the LSO receives a bill request, a drafting file is opened. Research materials which are used in the drafting of the bill are placed in the drafting file. Bill drafting files are maintained by the LSO and may contain useful information such as the request for the bill, drafts, and model legislation used by the drafter. The bill drafting file may also contain confidential correspondence which may not be available for public inspection. The LSO (or state archives) has bill drafting files from 1977 to present. Assuming a bill was introduced, the drafting file related to it is available for public review at the LSO office, subject to the removal of confidential correspondence (which can be waived by the legislator).

If the bill was sponsored by a legislative committee, in addition to the drafting file, additional records are generally available. Often a committee will research a topic in depth before sponsoring a bill. LSO maintains committee records from 1971 to present. The records generally consist of meeting minutes, material submitted in support of, or opposition to, the bill, memoranda, correspondence and staff reports. While committee reports have become less frequent over the years, LSO does maintain all committee reports in the LSO Library, indexed by year.[1]

Once a bill is approved by its sponsor, it is assigned a bill number and, if approved in a timely fashion, may be prefiled before the Legislature convenes. Copies of all prefiled bills are sent to all legislators, district judges, county clerks and county libraries. The Supreme Court Law Library has all prefiled bills in bound volumes listed numerically by year. The LSO also has copies of all prefiled bills from 1971 to present, indexed by subject, sponsor, bill number and various other ways.

The official record of action taken on legislation by the House and Senate can be found in the House and Senate Journals. While the Journals are not a verbatim record of the proceedings, they do contain:

6. On rare occasion, a legislator's statement regarding the intent or explanation of the bill, as understood by the legislator, read to the House or Senate;

At the close of the legislative session, digests of the Journals are published in bound volumes entitled "Journal of the Senate" (or House) and are available at the state and county libraries. The official journals are retained by the Secretary of State.

The Wyoming House and Senate have tape recorded their floor proceedings for a number of years (Senate beginning in 1996, House in 1997). A single tape generally contains the proceedings of one house's legislative day. A set of tapes is transferred to the Secretary of State after the session and retained as public record. The tapes are not transcribed. They are filed by the legislative date and are not further indexed in any other manner. Using the House or Senate Journal as a reference, one may access the necessary tape recording to hear the floor debate on a given bill. The proceedings of both houses are also broadcast over the internet. Both House and Senate rules specify that neither the recorded proceedings nor the internet broadcast shall be construed to supersede the journal.

Once a bill is enacted into law by the Legislature, the original bill and all amendments thereto, including failed amendments, are retained in a bill jacket by the Secretary of State for five years and are then sent to State Archives.

The final version of each bill enacted into law by the Legislature is published annually after each session in the "Session Laws of Wyoming, 20__". Session Laws contain the entire enrolled act other than the signatures and certification. This includes the text of the law enacted, showing changes to existing law in strike and underline format. In many cases, a number of "noncodified" sections are found in the Session Laws but not in the "annotated statutes". "Noncodified" sections generally include time limited information such as money appropriated and other directions necessary to carry out the law and the date which the new law will take effect. These are still part of the law but are not printed in the annotated statutes.

The official compilation of Wyoming's laws is a multi-volume set entitled "Wyoming Statutes Annotated" published by Lexis Publishing under the supervision of the (LSO). This publication is made after each session and incorporates that session's enactments into existing laws. The entire set is replaced in odd numbered years and a supplement issued in even numbered years. With this compilation, each enrolled act may be "split up" and inserted into numerous places in the statutes.[2] The annotated statutes do not contain the entirety of each enrolled act; e.g., many time limited provisions as discussed under session laws above may not be included.

Since the statutes are annotated there is a list, at the end of each section, of all the Session Laws by which each section was initially enacted and amended. Using that information, one can "work back" to the initial introduced bill and the original LSO draft folder number. There are also citations to interpretive judicial decisions and, in some cases, other relevant material such as law review articles and A.L.R. citations.

It should be noted that in case of a conflict the annotated statutes are not controlling – each enrolled act is controlling.[3]

Governor's messages to the Legislature often reflect relevant historical information. The Governor's address to the Legislature at the beginning and end of each session may be found verbatim in the House and Senate Journals. The Governor's action in approving or vetoing a bill constitutes part of the legislative process and may be a valuable source of legislative history. Governors' messages approving or vetoing bills are kept with the bill and may be retrieved from the Secretary of State's Office. The LSO also has veto messages from 1975 to present.

Attorney General Opinions often provide an interpretation of a specific statute and, in doing so, may review legislative history. Likewise, in-depth analysis and legislative history of specific laws are often explored in law review articles published by the University of Wyoming College of Law and the Wyoming State Bar. Decisions rendered by a court of law interpreting a statute may review legislative history as well.

Newspaper accounts of a bill's progress may contain records of legislative floor debates and standing committee debates and testimony. Any lobby group involved with the bill may have compiled information on the bill or a particular issue.

It may also be helpful to directly contact the legislator who sponsored the bill. The legislator may provide helpful insight into his intent and may have retained information on the bill.[4] Contacting the administrative agency charged with implementing and enforcing a law may be helpful as well since agency personnel may have testified before a legislative committee and the agency may have interpretive policies, procedures and rules.

[1] These committee records are limited to interim studies of bills sponsored by committees and do not include action taken by standing committees on bills during the session.

[2] Bills contain section headnotes and numbering inserted by the LSO. The LSO is authorized to change these headnotes and section numbering and neither are not part of the law. See, W.S. 8-1-105. Courts have looked to them as indication of legislative intent; see, Hoffmeister v. McIntosh, 361 P.2d 678 (Wyo. 1961) (Context, position of sections, and insertion of subheads in original act were indicia of legislative intention.); compare, France v. Connor, 27 P. 569, 3 Wyo. 445 (1891) (The division of the law at issue, into sections was purely arbitrary and not part of the legislation.)

[3]Should a discrepancy occur between the journals and the enrolled act, the journals may be relied upon by the courts to void a provision if the enrolled act does not accurately reflect that passed by both houses. See, City of Cheyenne v. Swan, 7 Wyo. 166, 51 P. 209 (1897).

[4]While insight and further leads may be garnered in talking with legislators it should be noted that affidavits by legislators and legislative staff regarding the enactment of a statute are not a proper source of legislative history. Independent Producers Marketing Corp. v. Cobb, 721 P.2d 1106 (Wyo. 1986).