The March 16 WTE carried a guest column from a representative of an Indiana-based outfit demonizing Wyoming's Speaker of the House of Representatives for his decision regarding SF 143, the Wyoming Freedom Scholarship Act.
I won't repeat the tripe offered in the column by Marc LeBlond of Indianapolis, Indiana's EdChoice organization regarding Speaker Albert Sommers of Sublette County, but will remind your readers of the reason the speaker did not forward the Senate file to a House Education Committee. Simply put, the Senate file largely mirrored a House bill which had already been defeated in the House Education Committee.
Sommers, in a column widely disseminated through Wyoming news organizations, clearly explained his view that it would be a waste of the Legislature's time to hear a defeated bill a second time.
Both bills had large numbers of co-sponsors, and the subject – state funding for parents who enroll their children in private schools or who homeschool their kids – will certainly be the subject of legislative consideration during the interim.
Mr. LeBlond's rhetorical flourishes notwithstanding, Rep. Sommers' view that he's focused on Wyoming solutions, rather than out-of-state influencers bears remembering. So does his practical view of managing the 500 bills proposed during a 40-day legislative session. Once an idea has been defeated, there's no need to forward a second bill which proposed virtually the same ideas.
I am no fan of the overall work product of the 2023 legislative session, but I also don't see much value in the WTE running a righteous guest column from every distant Tom, Dick and Marc who didn't get their way this year.
