Tis the season for interim legislative committee meetings with several of the committees having already met.

My time since the end of the last legislative session has largely been consumed with an assignment from our House Appropriation Chairman, Representative Bob Nicholas to start working on the our committee’s interim priority to update the statutes that govern procurement of professional services such as architects and engineers and the statutes for contracting with state and other public entities for construction projects.

The bidding and negotiation process for state agencies like the Department of Construction, WYDOT, the University of Wyoming, Community Colleges, school districts as well as counties and towns are governed in various statutes where definitions and bidding requirement conflict. This creates difficulties for contractors and professionals as the try to navigate the process, which in turn is important to the state as we try to insure preference to Wyoming professional services and contractors.

I have been meeting weekly for the last couple of months with representatives from state agencies, the community colleges, county commissioners, the Wyoming Association of Municipalities, the Wyoming Contractor’s Assoc., the Wyoming Contractor’s Coalition, AIA Wyoming, engineers, and the Legislative Service Office to review and a make recommendations for statutory changes. It has consumed a significant amount of time by all involved, but we have three draft bills ready to present to the Joint Appropriations Committee at their first interim meeting on July 9th. The meeting will be the first to be held in the newly renovated state capitol building.

We are approaching the first Tribal Relations Committee meeting with a full schedule for both days. We will be looking at legislation to address missing indigenous women and girls as one of the top priorities. Another priority is to conform state statutes and the Tribal Law and Order Code to reflect a consistent effort on and off the reservation on issues of chronic absenteeism and truancy.

The Select Natural Resource Funding Committee is in the process or reviewing the conservation applications submitted to the Wyoming Wildlife and Natural Resource Trust board for approval.

We have some very good applications this year and we are also able to fund additional projects this year because of additional funds we appropriated during this year’s legislative session.

I will be in Biloxi Mississippi next week for my assignment on the Energy Council, and in Washington D.C. a couple of weeks later to attend a conference on state budgets.

Closer to home I have been able to work with the Department of Health and the Department of Family Services to provide much needed help to a couple of Wyoming children who for no fault of their own have some very difficult physical challenges in this life. I am very appreciative to the response we received from these agencies and as well from our local school districts to insure their educational needs are met.

We are ready to move back into the State Capitol Building with festivities planned for July 9th and 10th. I would encourage everyone to consider attending this grand event and to tour the capitol and see how impressive the renovation is. You can find details of the events on the legislative web site, and on the Capitol Website.