The bill to remove certain considerations from County's and vest them with the School Facilities Commission has passed the legislature and is on its way to Governor Gordon's desk. It'll be interesting to see what he does with it.
The bill, as we've noted here before, came about as a plan by a Freiss backed private school in Teton County ran afoul of Teton County's building limitation size. This bill would take such considerations away from counties and vest them with the School Facilities commissions, but it would also stand on its head the local control principal that generally the GOP likes. If this consideration can be taken away from counties, others can be as well, and there's no guaranty that future administrations will necessarily be friendly to generally conservative interests. I wonder if Gordon might veto the bill. If he does, it doesn't appear to have enough support for a veto override.
We'll know soon.
And a bill legalizing hemp farming on the state level, which does nothing to legalize it at the Federal level, has passed. If Gordon signs it, prospective hemp farmers will still require a license from the Federal government, which is at least theoretically fairly restrictive.
At the same time, the proposed lodging tax died.
Lodging taxes have generally been well received by Wyomingites as, the argument goes, we don't pay them.
Well, we do a bit, but the way it works does give rise to that logic. Various counties impose the tax, and as people rarely stay in hotels in their own counties, you're taxing visitors, which we are usually okay with.
Not this year, apparently. The proposal to raise the limit on the lodging tax, just like the big box retailer income tax, bit the dust. We've read a lot about government in Wyoming hurting for money in recent years, but the legislature is clearly unwilling, this year, to take it on in the form of alternatives to the severance tax.
No comments:
Post a Comment