Rachel Rodriguez-Williams

Last week, my colleague Rep. Barry Crago (R-Buffalo) penned a column entitled “The inconvenient truth and the path forward.” The piece was published across the State of Wyoming. In it, Rep. Crago claims that the Wyoming Freedom Caucus (WYFC) killed property tax reform efforts during the 67th Legislative Session. 

It’s convenient that Rep. Crago borrowed the name of his column from Al Gore’s infamously inaccurate climate alarmism film. The column, like the film, is laced with fallacies. 

Fallacy 1: The Wyoming Freedom Caucus has enough members to kill legislation. 

This fallacy is easy to debunk. The Wyoming House of Representatives has 62 members.  Roughly 26 of those representatives are either members of or affiliated with the WYFC.  Twenty-six votes cannot control a body of 62. 

The mathematical truth is that the WYFC could not kill or forward any bill even if it wanted to  desperately. Just check out the Legislature’s website to see just how many liberty-preserving and fiscally conservative bills were defeated on a 26-36 vote margin. Keep in mind that only five of the members of the Wyoming House of Representatives are Democrats, meaning that the majority of Republicans in the House actually vote with the Democrats an awful lot. 

Fallacy 2: The Wyoming Freedom Caucus killed all real property tax relief efforts. 

I scratched my head as I thought about this claim. Just a few days after the close of the 67th  Legislative Session, House leadership released a column bragging about the groundbreaking property tax relief achieved by the body. It cannot be true that the WYFC killed all real property tax relief and at the same time be true that the Legislature achieved sweeping, groundbreaking relief efforts. 

The truth is, the Uniparty has realized that their efforts to dress up pitiful property tax relief efforts have failed and the people of Wyoming see through their sloganeering. Wyomingites know that the Uniparty killed every effort to cap property tax rates during the 67th Session. HJ004 was never heard in the House Revenue Committee and the third reading amendment to HJ002 to include the concept of a cap for the voters to decide failed 29-33 with Rep. Crago being a no vote. These  efforts would have provided real reform to property owners in Wyoming, and were spearheaded by the WYFC. Uniparty House Revenue Chairman Steve Harshman (R-Casper) killed several property tax bills when he withheld them from being heard by the House Revenue Committee, including tax exemptions for veterans and the elderly. 

All of the bills relating to property tax reform can be read by visiting wyoleg.gov. Track the status of those bills and see just how and where they perished, keeping in mind that no WYFC member chairs any legislative committee and that the caucus does not possess a majority on any committee. 

Fallacy 3: The Wyoming Freedom Caucus doesn’t actually care about property tax relief.

As the saying goes, the only two certainties in life are death and taxes. Taxes are collected by our government to raise revenue in order to pay the government’s bills. The more the government spends, the more revenue it needs. The WYFC and affiliated members are the only House members who seek to reduce spending, therefore alleviate the need for more and more tax revenue. 

The truth is that almost every action taken by the Uniparty this session resulted in the need for more tax revenue, leaving the Uniparty majority no real incentive for property tax reform. The Uniparty added $35 million to the supplemental budget in just two hours of debate — not without pushback from the roughly 26 fiscally conservative members. If your legislator is serious about property tax relief, they will be equally serious about reducing spending. If your legislator brags about expanding government, they’ll want more revenue from you and your family. 

The people of Wyoming are not blind. They see their property taxes rising without a commensurate increase in the quality or quantity of government services. Now that it’s becoming clear which legislators are to blame, the Uniparty has resorted to half-truths and fallacies. Just like Al Gore’s fear mongering claim that Manhattan would soon be underwater because of your F-150, Rep. Crago’s claims are disconnected from reality. 

(Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams (R-Cody) serves House District 50 in Park County. She serves as vice chairman of House Judiciary Committee. She is a member of the House Republican Caucus, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus and the National Pro-Life Women’s Caucus.)