Seems like some politicians are more concerned with ‘civility’ than doing their job of ‘securing rights’ of the people.<\/p>\n
Wyoming Senate takes a stand on civility<\/a><\/p>\n At some point during the Wyoming Legislature\u2019s just-completed budget session, one representative walked up to another and asked why his cohort had to be so mean.<\/p>\n Rep. Bob Wharff (R-Evanston) was on the receiving end of that question, posed by Rep. Cyrus Western (R-Big Horn), and he recollected the exchange to WyoFile. The representative from Evanston stood his ground.<\/p>\n \u201cI told him, \u2018The problem is, we are fighting a battle, we are at war,\u2019\u201d Wharff recalled. \u201cThese people are attacking our Second Amendment rights. If we don\u2019t stand up and push back \u2014 and I honestly believe this \u2014 if we don\u2019t defend our Second Amendment rights, all our other rights go out.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Western relayed his view of the conversation: \u201cI said it in the context of watching other legislators being very uncivil or disrespectful toward other legislators.\u201d<\/p>\n The view that decorum and decency has declined within the Wyoming Legislature in recent years was pervasive among eight senators and representatives that WyoFile talked to for this story. Civility slipping in the statehouse isn\u2019t a uniquely Wyoming problem. Nationally, pundits have bemoaned the decline of political discourse, which has become more confrontational \u2014 a phenomenon most prominently exhibited by former President Donald Trump\u2019s communication style.<\/p>\n That was the backdrop of a Senate vote last week to punish one of its most firebrand members for allegedly using intimidation tactics in violation of Senate rules. In a 19-10 vote, the chamber stripped Sen. Anthony Bouchard (R-Cheyenne) of his committee assignments, a stringent formal punishment that veteran members of the Legislature could not recall occurring during their tenure.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you go out on social media and impugn every member of the Legislature by calling them a swamp, slimeball, liars, that is not conduct becoming of a Wyoming state senator,\u201d Senate Vice President Larry Hicks (R-Baggs) told WyoFile.<\/p>\n Over the line<\/p>\n In the days before the Senate took action, a lobbyist lodged a complaint against Bouchard, who\u2019s gained a reputation for making inflammatory statements.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had numerous instances where people said that I just don\u2019t feel comfortable going to testify, because I know I\u2019m going to get confronted,\u201d Hicks said. \u201cNow we\u2019ve finally had a formal complaint to that effect.\u201d<\/p>\n Hicks said the complaint was \u201ccompletely immaterial\u201d to the Senate relieving Bouchard of his committee assignments. Previously, he was a member of the Labor, Health and Social Services Committee; the Agriculture, State and Public Lands and Water Resources Committee; and the Management Audit Committee.<\/p>\n \u201cThe most compelling reason that an action was taken was a long pattern [of behavior],\u201d Hicks said.<\/p>\n On the floor, Senate President Dan Dockstader (R-Afton) described Bouchard\u2019s actions that were in violation of Senate rules. Bouchard, he contended, showed support for \u201cvulgar and threatening\u201d attacks on other Senate members, and he used \u201cintimidating tactics\u201d against other senators and members of the public.<\/p>\n \u201cAll this impugns the integrity of the legislative bodies, which leads to a lack of respect for the Senate and the House,\u201d Dockstader said.<\/p>\n On the floor, Bouchard defended behavior others construed as intimidation before his fellow senators cast their votes. He read the text of a social media post that concerned the complaint: \u201cI told the hospital lobbyist that video is coming on their COVID fear tactics.\u201d<\/p>\n Bouchard explained that his intention was to cut a video from existing footage of the lobbyist testifying \u2014 video that\u2019s already online \u2014 and he was undeterred by the potential for disciplinary action.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m still going to do it,\u201d Bouchard said. \u201cI don\u2019t think we understand free speech in this chamber if this is where we\u2019re at right now.\u201d<\/p>\n After fellow sentators voted to take action against him, Bouchard called the punishment \u201cstupid.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt sets a bad precedent,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ll be able to float around more committees now. And maybe, since I\u2019m not a committee member, I\u2019ll be able to bring my own camera.\u201d<\/p>\n Ripple effect<\/p>\n Some legislators say that discourse within the Legislature has taken a turn for the worse since Bouchard was elected in 2017. That is Rep. Landon Brown\u2019s (R-Cheyenne) perspective, he said, although he didn\u2019t pin the decline of civility on Bouchard alone.<\/p>\n Sen. Ogden Driskill (R-Devils Tower) has been publicly targeted by Bouchard before, but said that he harbors no ill will for his Cheyenne counterpart.<\/p>\n March Mania at the Derby Club! Rep. Bill Fortner (R-Gillette) said that he\u2019s supportive of rules and customs that are geared toward maintaining civility in the Legislature, so long as they\u2019re applied equally to everybody. Those rules \u2014 like not naming fellow legislators on the floor, and always addressing the presiding officer \u2014 were an adjustment for the oil field welder after he was elected in 2020, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I talk to people, I might not use the best choice of words,\u201d Fortner said. \u201cMy slang might just offend somebody \u2026 and if a guy is offended I say, 100%, I need to apologize to him.\u201d<\/p>\n In House Speaker Eric Barlow\u2019s (R-Gillette) view, decorum and respect amongst representatives has not declined significantly in his chamber, made up of a larger pool of lawmakers that hasn\u2019t seen as much turnover as in the Senate.<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s be clear, we always want things to be better,\u201d Barlow told WyoFile. \u201cBut do I think there was a marked degradation [in civility]? I don\u2019t believe there was.\u201d<\/p>\n Rep. Steve Harshman (R-Casper), a 20-year veteran of the Legislature, said there\u2019s been a long-term erosion in civility in the statehouse, but he pinned that dynamic on the effect of social media banter and on societal shifts more generally. If there was any internal factor that has hurt legislator relations, he said, it was the 2010 arson that destroyed the Hitching Post Inn, where almost all of the Legislature\u2019s 90 members once spent their evenings while in Cheyenne.<\/p>\n \u201cYou ate dinner every night with somebody else, and you had to talk to them,\u201d Harshman said. \u201cI just don\u2019t think there\u2019s any opportunities for that anymore. The gavel goes down, and everybody just vanishes.\u201d<\/p>\n Being disrespectful to others comes easier, he said, when you don\u2019t know them.<\/p>\n Harshman added that it\u2019s worthwhile to look farther back into history when judging the current state of incivility. As long ago as 1913, he said, the Wyoming House of Representatives was so at odds that the Democrats and Republicans refused to put their pictures within the same frame. And the print of the Democratic representatives from that year has a tear in the middle.<\/p>\n \u201cThat picture got smashed over a member\u2019s head, they were so pissed on the floor,\u201d Harshman said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Seems like some politicians are more concerned with ‘civility’ than doing their job of ‘securing rights’ of the people. Wyoming Senate takes a stand on civility At some point during the Wyoming Legislature\u2019s just-completed budget session, one representative walked up to another and asked why his cohort had to be so mean. Rep. Bob Wharff … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78855"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78856,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78855\/revisions\/78856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u201cIt\u2019s about the sanctity and decorum of this body,\u201d Driskill said of punishing Bouchard\u2019s conduct. That decorum, he said, is part of the way the Legislature does business and the old guard tolerated \u201cno coloring outside the lines\u201d when he was a freshman legislator: \u201cYou stayed well within the lines, or you could expect to be in the president\u2019s office.\u201d<\/p>\n