Legislative Report: Solons Reflect On Session [AUDIO]

Legislative leaders look back at the accomplishments of the general session of the Wyoming Legislature. Amy Richards has more in Friday's Legislative Report.

This Legislative Report is brought to you by Hilltop National Bank.

A total of 432 bills were introduced in the Legislature this year, and 204 bills were passed. The Senate introduced 160 bills and 101 of those bills passed the Legislature. The House introduced 272 bills with 103 of those bills passing the Legislature. House Majority Floor Leader, Rep. Tom Lubnau says there was a lot of intense debate and no lack of ideas.

Rep. Tom Lubnau:

"Everything that anybody was interested in that brought a bill that made it through the committee process was debated on the floor, and it makes me proud of the House of Representatives that they were judicious in their debate and debated fully and fairly every issue, sometimes to my exasperation."

House Minority Floor Leader, Rep. Patrick Goggles says the minority party was treated very well by the majority party.

Rep. Patrick Goggles:

"I want to thank them for their commitment to Wyoming. I worked hard; I try to work smart along with them. As the majority party, they ran a good show."

Senate President Sen. Jim Anderson says he thinks the people of Wyoming were well served by this Legislature.

Sen. Jim Anderson:

"Continuing to be challenged by the demands of a changing economy, sometimes in ways a very volatile world and think the way that we'll meet that is continue to focus more, concentrate on those things that are of importance and I think that you'll see that that's carried out in our interim studies."

Senate Majority Floor Leader Sen. Tony Ross says he is very proud of the work they did in the area of public safety, in particular the adult protective services bill.

Sen. Tony Ross:

"It protects our vulnerable, adult population, not only from physical abuse, sexual abuse, but from fiduciary responsibilities where a fiduciary mismanages their funds, or uses their funds and they are left out in the street cold."

Lawmakers also passed the supplemental budget bill, which included about 255.9 million in general fund spending. Sen. Phil Nicholas, co-chairman of the Joint Appropriations Committee says the budget addressed local government funding, highways and capital construction..

Sen. Phil Nicholas:

"And we put in about 295 million dollars of new capital construction dollars from a variety of sources. There will be the new stem building in Laramie of about 50 million dollar; for community colleges, there's a new building in Riverton and Sheridan of about 14 million dollars. There will be local dollars to augment those. For school capital construction, we put in an extra 183 million dollars of construction."

Wyoming's 61st Wyoming Legislature will convene again beginning February 13th 2012 for a 20-day budget session.

With your final Legislative Report, I'm Amy Richards for K2 Radio News.