As Elon Musk heads the federal government’s attack on overregulation and fiscal bloat as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a group of 13 Wyoming legislators is trying to prevent this state from ever becoming a regulatory leviathan.
SF 127 would require the state legislature to approve or reject major agency rule changes if they meet at least one of three criteria. Those three reasons are: 1) the annual impact of the change reaches $100,000 or more; 2) it would negatively impact competition, employment, innovation or particular industries; and 3) it has the potential to considerably impact social and cultural relationships. The rest of the legislature should join them in support.
As Jonathan H. Adler wrote for the Cato Institute concerning similar legislation at the federal level, “Imagine … if the board of a Fortune 500 company required the company’s vice presidents to obtain board approval before implementing the two or three percent of decisions that are most important and potentially costly. This would not surprise, nor produce ‘gridlock.’ Rather, it is what we would expect from a responsible board.”
Sen. Brian Boner, one of the sponsors of the legislation, said “We have a significant problem with overregulation in Wyoming.” He cited the example of how sales tax was applied on a locally owned oil field service company in his district. “The sales tax on my constituent’s labor was arbitrarily enforced depending on where and when his work occurred. The end result is this mom and pop business ended up paying this sales tax in all circumstances, whereas his larger competitors had the ability to distinguish between the situations when they had to pay the tax and when they didn’t.”
The fiscal note on the legislation says it will cost taxpayers $163,000 per year starting in fiscal year 2027 for an extra attorney to review legislation. But Boner said it doesn’t address how much Wyoming taxpayers will save as a result of reducing regulations. “With an economy that produces over $40 billion of goods and services every year, I anticipate the savings to our citizens will be significant,” he added. He wants to permanently prevent Wyoming from becoming like California, where a seemingly endless array of products are stamped, “known to the State of California to cause [cancer] [birth defects or other reproductive harm]” because of state regulations surrounding chemicals.
Wyoming is not alone in trying to streamline government in the region. Idaho’s legislature recently adopted Speaker of the House Mike Moyle’s HB 14: Idaho Code Cleanup Act. That bill now on its way to Gov. Little’s desk would “establish an efficient process for the identification of provisions that are obsolete, outdated or unnecessary so that such provisions may be considered for removal.”
In Montana, Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte earlier this month invited Mr. Musk and former presidential candidate and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy (who recently left DOGE) to Montana to discuss how the state has streamlined regulations through its Red Tape Relief Task Force and to discuss how to “reduce the administrative state, get spending, deficits and the national debt under control, and ultimately unleash American opportunity.”
Legislators in Wyoming and across the region should take advantage of the momentum and attention paid to reforming government by Mr. Musk’s high-profile efforts at the national level. Mountain States Policy Center also just released a new study that the lawmakers can consider identifying additional opportunities for regulatory reform. Structural reforms like SF127 that put legislators in charge of how their laws are implemented are key to keeping government closer to the people instead of in the hands of unelected bureaucrats.
Combined with the massive win in the U.S. Supreme Court last year in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo – which made it more difficult for federal agencies to regulate with impunity, and a Trump administration focused on reversing the regulatory onslaught under the Biden administration, Wyoming businesses have much to look forward to in the next four years. May SF127 be the opening salvo in what turns out to be an energetic and targeted strategy to permanently make government more accountable to the people of Wyoming.