Wyoming Business: Eco-devo measures highlight Wyo. session

Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer got both economic-development measures he sought from the 1996 Legislature, but he says equally important are a number of measures designed to maintain or enhance Wyoming’s quality of life.

The Legislature adjourned March 15, five days after Geringer approved a $2.8 billion biennial budget that included funds for two cornerstones of his economic-development program — the Science, Technology and Energy Authority at the University of Wyoming and the Wyoming Partnership Challenge Loan Program.

In closing the session, the Republican governor particularly lauded the Legislature for promoting Wyoming’s quality of life.

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“A number of bills passed this session that help reinforce quality of life, which I think leads directly to economic development,” he told reporters. “Again, the role of government is to help create opportunity and remove barriers so that people can help other people do business.”

Geringer specifically touted Wyoming’s affiliation with a University of Washington medical-education consortium called WAMI (Washington, Alaska, Montana and Idaho) that emphasizes rural medicine.

“WAMI will focus on primary care, help develop rural health-delivery systems and allow our medical students to spend a third of their professional training in Wyoming,” he said, adding that WAMI is expected to more than double the number of primary-care doctors currently trained under an agreement with Creighton University in Nebraska.

The governor also cited bills dealing with public safety, drug law enforcement and cooperative ventures with local communities and praised the Legislature’s commitment to education by approving an additional $5 million to help schools this coming year while the Legislature tackles the thorny issue of school finance reform.

Among measures of interest to business were:

” Science, Technology and Energy Authority. The biennial budget includes $1 million in one-time funding for STEA, the state’s technology development arm, for targeted applied research, development and commercialization of technology and projects for Wyoming businesses, particularly small businesses.

” Wyoming Partnership Challenge Loan Program. The budget includes $4 million in one-time funding to establish the state’s latest venture into economic-development loans. It authorizes the state to loan up to $250,000 to a local community development organization on a one-to-one match for investment in private businesses.

” Good-Faith Employer Disclosures. The Legislature granted employers immunity from civil liability for good-faith disclosure of information about former employees to prospective employers or former employers. Employers would be presumed to be acting in good faith unless it were shown they had knowingly and maliciously disclosed false or deliberately misleading information.

” Wellness legislation. A measure that would have mandated that health-insurance companies cover the cost of mammograms and other health-screening tests as a preventive measure died in the waning hours of the session. Several business groups raised fears that the legislation would drive up insurance rates and make it prohibitively expensive for small businesses to provide health insurance for their employees.

” Lobbyists’ disclosure. Wyoming remains the only state in the nation not requiring lobbyists to disclose how they spend their money and on whom. A group of lobbyists had drafted a proposed disclosure bill prior to the session that was deemed too weak by some legislators and too strong by others. The oft-amended bill passed the House but stalled in the Senate when Republican leaders declined to bring it up.