Casper, born and raised,

69

• Attended Casper schools graduated KWHS • Graduated Casper College and Chadron State College
• Casper Police Department 1980 – 2000 • Masters degree in public administration from UW • Retired as Interim Chief of Police • Faculty Casper College - since 2000 Wyoming Faculty Member of the Year 2018 • Married to Megan since 1981 with six children five of whom live in Wyoming

2018 elected to Wyoming legislature 2019/2020 – Member of the House Judiciary Committee 2021/2022 – Vice chairman of the House Judiciary Committee 2023/2024 – Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Member of the House Rules Committee Co-chairman Wyoming State Shooting Complex Oversight Task Force 2025/2026 – Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Co-chairman Wyoming State Shooting Complex Oversight Task Force Chairman of the House Special Investigative Committee 9 sponsored bills and great many co-sponsored bills are now law!

Challenges involve - workforce housing, good paying jobs and a skilled workforce. Another huge issue is aging. Also the lack of water and the condition of the highways .

Uranium, rare earth minerals, tourism, outdoor recreation, renewed demand for coal and continued demand for oil, natural gas, helium and even gold are opportunities. Our investment portfolio and pension funds are the envy of most states.

We don't control all our challenges. Our workforce can be enhanced by expanded public private partnerships. The legislature must support the community colleges. The Hathaway Scholarships need to be expanded. The Wyoming Community Development Authority and community banks will play a role in easing the housing crunch.

Regardless of these, the greatest challenge we face is the growing national debt.

This is a complex problem that defies a simple answer. Transfering the cost to government, is a possibility but it is expensive. Relying on funding from a national government that will soon be $40 Trillion in debt is not sound sustainable. We have taken preliminary steps to create a Physician Assistant degree program at the University. The legislature has been adjusting the scope of practice for professionals like optometrists, pharmacists and athletic trainers. There is more work to be done. Given the situation, it is my opinion that every healthcare professional ought to be able to perform all of the practices that they are trained and capable of doing. We lose practitioners when we limit their scope of practice despite their skills. Travelling health care might make sense. Alaska has a model that might work here. They rely on paraprofessional health aides, telehealth and air ambulances from hub hospitals. Midwives should also be a bigger part of the health care system.

Selling off the public lands in a wholesale fashion is a horrible idea. There may be, however, a few parcels of public land that, after public discussion and study, might make sense to sell or transfer. We already do something similar from time to time. For example, sometimes we can trade parcels of state land or school trust land so that the affected land owners, the public and the state all benefit. If the trade gives public access to an otherwise inaccessible tract of land, that might be a good trade. If the trade puts several sections of public land side by side and accessible instead of individual parcels scattered and largely inaccessible to sportsmen and recreationists, that could be a smart trade. If we can identify a few parcels of public land to sell and the interested parties agree, having a blanket prohibition on sales or transfers would not make sense. Once again, the answer is somewhere in between the extremes.

We had a proposal in 2025 that had great merit which we voted for and then reversed course. The idea was to base the correction in property taxes to the percentage of tax increases that had actually occurred in each county. Hypothetically, let's say a county had experienced only a 10% increase in property values during the years when property values and consequently property tax payments had exploded, why provide a 25% reduction? We also amended the Constitution to allow residential property to be a separate class. There is more we can do with that

We have over the years created legislative mandates for the Wyoming Business Council. Review all of that and retain what makes sense today and repeal the rest. The free market approach that many long for is simply no longer a reality. If Wyoming becomes the only state without such an operation, we will not compete with other states that are more than happy to provide incentives.

One thing we should not do is set a precedent that whenever major industrial projects want to operate in our state the legislature must give a thumbs up. That would make attracting businesses to our state, very difficult.

The legislature should set up processes within the executive branch and local governments and then get out of the way. Only if such a process is found to need correction, should the legislature get involved and only to the extent to correct the process, not rule on individual projects.

The system is fine. The individuals giving and receiving donations need to look in the mirror and do the right thing. Voters need to ask candidates during a campaign how much PAC money they are accepting and who are the folks making the big donations? The idea that folks are spending $40,000 and up for a legislative race is NUTS!

Voters can reward candidates who spend great sums or they can reject them. If voters don't want dozens of oversized full color glossy postcards in their mailbox throughout a campaign season, let the candidates know! If high dollar attack ads work to win campaigns, we will see more high dollar attack ads. If voters see such ads for the manipulation attempts that they are, we can rein them in. The best candidate may not be the one who can afford a great deal of advertising.

I received a campaign check before the 2026 session and before I had declared my candidacy. I sent the check back. That captures my values.