What are my priorities for education in Wyoming?

Education is arguably the most important element of any society -- Wyoming is no exception. In addition to being constitutionally required to adequately fund public education, Wyoming has an imperative to ensure our students have the best education possible. In K-12 and in higher education, Wyoming students, teachers, and communities benefit when we intentionally invest in education.

Instead of attempting to cut education funding, hamstring teachers, limit food assistance, and discriminate against students, the Legislature must empower quality education at all levels. We should always put students first and create effective learning environments where they can truly be successful and access opportunities inside and outside of school.

What should be done?

We need to be:

• Fully funding public education

• Empowering teachers with good pay and fair work expectations

• Incentivizing better staffing of schools

• Only permitting school closures as a last resort

• Empowering parents to have a fair role in their child's education

• Opposing book bans and selective history

• Giving teachers more freedom, not less

• Supplying schools with quality resources

• Ensuring all students are well-fed at school

• Proactively regulating AI’s role in education

• Strengthening early-childhood education

• Raising expectations for students

• Limiting the overuse of technology in every aspect of a student's education so as to improve education outcomes

• Opposing efforts to discriminate against LGBTQ+ students

• Addressing the graduation rate gaps for Native American students

• Empowering civic leaders to emerge among students by prioritizing civic education

• Pushing for more accessible higher education opportunities

• Protecting and empowering support staff, like ESPs

Higher Education & Civics

Perhaps two of the most foundationally important issues facing Wyoming education are higher education access and civic education more broadly. As young people leave Wyoming and turn away from civics, it is increasingly important to address these two issues. 

I believe Wyoming has to seriously consider:

• Dramatically expand four-year degree options at community colleges across the state or; Convert Casper College into a university equipped to confer degrees for undergraduate and graduate students, incentivizing said graduates to stay in Wyoming.

• Expand and place more emphasis on civics curriculum at the K-12 level and require high school students to pass a civics/government class in order to graduate.

Where do I stand on public lands?

Public lands belong in public hands. End of story. The only trustworthy steward of public lands is the public. Selling or exchanging public lands to private entities will limit public accessibility, damage the environment, and erode the land's quality. That is a net-negative for all Wyomingites. The public should be able to use public land for recreation, hunting, fishing, and other outdoor activities. For-profit industries will not treat public land with the same care that the public does. I cannot identify a justifiable reason for selling mass swaths of public lands. 

The Legislature should reject any effort to sell or indiscriminately transfer large swaths of public lands, especially when there is no good or defensible reason for doing so. I plan to support efforts to protect public lands and demand accountability for how those lands are managed. Science, facts, and the people should lead the discussion around public lands, not corporations and profit.

Just like public lands, science, facts, and the people should lead the discussion around wildlife and how to best support productive ranch land and wildlife populations. The answer is not to privatize – it is to let scientific management and protecting public access guide policy decisions. That is why I would oppose efforts to politicize wildlife management, as well as land management, and I would uphold the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. 

Experts should be in control of management of wildlife and lands for the simple reason that they are the most qualified to do so. Beyond that, it is in the public’s interest to allow them to maintain control over management decisions, as they are not driven by the political and ideological motivations politicians are. When in the hands of politicians, as when in the hands of profit-machines, management of wildlife and land is corrupted in the service of financial and political goals rather than in the service of the public, conservation, and environmental protection. The Legislature needs to let the experts lead and let the public keep hold of the land, not private interests. 

What should be done?

We need to be:

• Rejecting efforts to sell off or indiscriminately transfer large swaths of public lands

• Protecting public access to public lands

• Creating legal frameworks to protect public lands from private interests

• Creating legal frameworks to facilitate more community input in private projects/interests that impact public lands

• Supporting hunting and recreational use of public lands

• Supporting science, facts, and expert management of public lands and wildlife

• Supporting grants for wildfire recovery, prevention, reseeding, fence replacements, and weed/pest districts

Where do I stand on public institutions?

Public institutions are the bedrock of a productive, successful, and inclusive society. We pay for them and they do right by us. This means we must protect them. It means we cannot allow forces of division and ideological rancor to attack, dismantle, and corrupt public institutions. Libraries, public schools, higher education institutions, emergency services, courts, law enforcement, clinics, infrastructure management systems, museums, state parks, and more must be actively supported. Allowing lies and culture war politics to negatively impact these institutions hurts all of us. These institutions are there for all of us and must therefore be supporting and inclusive of all of us.

What should be done?

We need to be:

• Supporting efforts to depoliticize certain county offices (Assessor, Treasurer, Clerk, Coroner, etc.) and state offices (Treasurer, Assessor, etc.) by making them non-partisan offices

• Rejecting efforts to ban books

• Rejecting efforts to erase history

• Opposing cuts that negatively impact public services like emergency services, public school funding, libraries, and more

• Opposing efforts to over-politicize election infrastructure, county clerk offices, and other non-partisan election functions

• Increasing funding for public institutions and boards

• Ensuring fairness and safety in all public institutions by protecting all citizens from discrimination

How am I thinking about data centers?

One thing is clear about data centers: they are rapidly popping up everywhere around the country. We have to be proactive about addressing the impacts of data center expansion. 

That means resisting careless data center expansion, protecting communities, and demanding accountability. The Legislature should prioritize safeguarding Wyoming from the risks of data centers.

What should be done?

There are many different ideas floating around regarding how to deal with this. The most common approach I have heard from folks is to either: 

• Ban data centers indefinitely, or

• Institute a moratorium on data center construction in order to implement regulations.

I think both of these approaches have merit and should actively be considered. Fundamentally, we are concerned that data centers will damage our communities, drive up prices, and harm our environment. Something must be done before that happens.

Looking into the future, it seems clear that regulations and guardrails will be eventually be needed, even if a data center ban successfully passes the Legislature. 

Why? There is no guarantee that a ban will last. Corporations may sue and successfully overturn or delay such attempts to ban, buying them time to complete their projects anyway. This is how corporations driven by profits behave. That is why supporting a ban cannot be the end-all-be-all. We need to be proactive about what a future with data centers could look like if we’re forced to live in it. And we, as Wyomingites, need to be on the winning end of that future.

Therefore, we need to be:

• Actively considering an indefinite ban or moratorium on data centers in Wyoming

• Creating frameworks for local communities to decide on whether they want data centers in their area

• Creating regulations that require legal and financial accountability for data center companies if communities are damaged by projects and coordinating state agency regulation 

• Requiring local jobs guarantees for the building and operation of data centers

• Requiring protection of local resources with live monitoring of environmental impacts

• Creating a state large-load energy impact fee over a certain megawatt threshold

• Requiring community benefit agreements between data center companies and communities where they wish to do business, requiring companies to reinvest in the communities they impact

• Requiring any data centers to fully pay utility and other energy/operation related costs instead of passing those costs onto communities

• Taking full advantage of possible property tax revenue while shielding communities from property tax increases due to date centers

• Narrowing and tailoring any data center tax exemptions to require energy, worker, and other community-benefit benchmarks

• Requiring better transparency of any tax subsidies or tax breaks data centers are receiving

• Creating frameworks for more community input on projects, including by improving notification of such opportunities

What are my priorities for healthcare in Wyoming?

Healthcare access can literally mean life or death. It can also mean the difference between paying the rent, feeding our families, or taking care of ourselves and those we love. In Wyoming, these challenges are especially notable. Long distances between communities, a lack of specialized care services, cost, coverage gaps, disparities of care access, and more have real impacts on our lives. Because healthcare is also an issue of economic security, we should not have to worry if a health related problem will bankrupt our families or whether lacking coverage is worth the risk in order to pay other bills. 

Families should not have to choose between maintaining a job or staying home to take care of their children because childcare is increasingly inaccessible. Mothers should not face an ever-restrictive landscape regarding access to maternity care, including the possibility that the government can order them to make a choice about their body that they would not choose for themselves. 

Individuals should not fear that mental health resources will not be available to them or those they love in case of a mental health crisis or long term mental health battle. Young people facing a historically difficult job market should not have to risk going without health insurance.

Yet, Wyoming is facing all of this. Wyoming has just one Trauma II hospital. We suffer from a 30% childcare supply gap, with thousands of people our of the workforce because of a lack of childcare providers. Wyoming continues to lose birthing hospitals -- we have only 16 left in the state. Wyoming is the only state in the entire country not participating in the federally funded Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health, a program whose mission is to support best practices that make birth safer, improve maternal health outcomes and save lives. Nearly 60% of Wyomingites are opposed to the government outlawing access to abortion and reproductive care services. Wyoming suffers from one of the highest suicide rates in the country, more than double the national average, overdoses are stealing our loved ones, and mental health resources remain sparse in rural communities. Wyoming is just one of only 10 states in the country not yet to expand Medicaid (the only one in the Mountain West), leaving thousands of people without coverage. 

Healthcare access is not just about health. It is about economic prosperity, family safety, individual security, and freedom to live a life of dignity.

What should be done?

Like most issues, this one also requires a dedicated and comprehensive strategy to address these challenges. There are some things the state is already doing that we should continue to support, and some things the state is not doing that the Legislature should push for.

We need to be:

• Finally expanding Medicaid

• Pushing the state to join the Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health

• Expanding the existing childcare grant and start up program

• Creating workforce and support strategies to increase childcare providers and affordability

• Raising reimbursement for maternity services, increasing training for maternity care, and supporting access to quality birthing services

• Protecting access to reproductive care and bodily autonomy

• Taking full advantage of the Rural Health Transformation Program and combatting rural hospital closures

• Supporting and expanding telehealth and specialist care

• Sustaining 988 crisis line services

• Expanding crisis response capacity and increasing community treatment access

• Opposing cuts that harm healthcare access, such as ambulance services and rural hospitals

• Supporting end of life care services, caregiver support, and home services

Why is it neccessary to keep youth Wyoming?

I'm the fourth generation of my family to live in Wyoming and the third to be raised here. I am proud of my Wyoming history and desire to stay. But this desire is becoming less common in our state as people leave seeking opportunities elsewhere, never to return. 

60% of young people, our state’s future, choose to leave Wyoming. Young people leave often for one simple reason: they do not see leaders building a vision of Wyoming that includes them. They are driven away by a lack of educational and job opportunities, cost of living, a sense of hopelessness, a lack of progress, and an increasingly divisive political landscape. 

Keeping youth in Wyoming is not just a matter of pride. It is an economic and social imperative. Without young people in Wyoming, our demographic disparities will continue to widen. More and more seniors will go without elder care due to a workforce starved of young people to fill it. The healthcare field will suffocate from a lack of new workers to fill the void of retiring professionals. More and more schools will shut down due to declining enrollment as young people leave to start families in other states. Schools will continue to shed teachers without a sustainable backfill of new blood into the profession. Industries will suffer as jobs either go unfilled or as business slows because there are no booming communities driven by young families. Communities will decline as the economy is dragged down by the brain-drain of young minds leaving for better pastures, fewer tax dollars come in, fewer homes are purchased, and fewer workers are available for necessary public projects.

What should be done?

Like most things, there is no one simple answer to this problem. However, what is clear is this: there must be a cohesive strategy, containing many different solutions, to stop the bleeding of youth desertion of Wyoming and begin retaining youth for the long term. Such a strategy must be statewide and it must be vigorous. I do not have all the answers for such a strategy, though there are some things we know must be done.

We need to be:

• Diversifying the economy to allow for young people to fill many industrial sectors and stay in Wyoming long term

• Protecting and empowering higher education opportunities to train and educate more native Wyomingites and youth from out of state

• Expanding four-year degree options across Wyoming and considering turning Casper College into a university

• Incentivizing youth from out of state to move to Wyoming and make it home through education, jobs, and other incentives

• Supporting mental health services and actively supporting youth development programs

• Constructing more housing and eliminating burdensome regulations on housing construction in order to reduce housing costs and incentivize young people to lay down roots

• Opposing efforts that result in cuts to public education and institutions that support families and students

• Empowering civic engagement at every level of education, including by requiring schools to observe a "Voter Registration Day" giving eligible students the opportunity to register to vote, thereby encouraging investment in Wyoming's future

• Investing in ways to connect Wyoming communities and facilitating better cross-community benefit of youth and job growth, such as through public transit options and community partnerships

• Empowering youth engagement organizations and creating frameworks to revive the existence of "third spaces" for youth across Wyoming

• Creating an expansive statewide public service and jobs program that builds workforce pipelines and provides financial incentives for long term residence

• Developing public/private partnerships to train, hire, and provide living support for students graduating high school and college in order to usher them into the workforce for the long term

• Eliminating barriers to healthcare and mental health access

• Opposing efforts to discriminate against students and minorities and ensuring that our culture reflects inclusivity in order to make all youth feel welcome, increasing their liklihood to want to remain in Wyoming

What are my priorities for seniors?

Seniors deserve to live with as much dignity and independence as anyone else. The people who built Wyoming deserve to remain part of the communities they helped create. Good policy should help people remain independent, not force them out of their homes. This is why it is necessary to ensure seniors can age in their homes, protect funding for EMS and other medical/care services, and protect seniors from predatory scams.

What should be done?

We need to be:

• Regulating crypto kiosks to prevent scammers from taking advantage of seniors

• Regulating AI to prevent scammers from using it as a tool for scams

• Increasing funding for Wyoming Home Services and Community Choices

• Making EMS services more affordable

• Supporting the Rural Health Transformation Program and efforts to regionalize and modernize EMS payments

• Investing in low income housing, housing affordability, and putting emphasis on single-level homes

• Growing the caregiving industry through educational and job incentives and keeping young people in Wyoming

• Opposing cuts that impact rural health care services, ambulance services, and home healthcare

What are my priorities for workers?

Standing up for Wyoming's working people means listening to their concerns and protecting their interests by always putting people over profits. It means ensuring they are always treated fairly and voting against efforts that would place them secondary to profit. It means that problems around workers' issues should have people-centered solutions, and workers should be a part of that solution. It means not allowing corporations and big business to put workers at the bottom of the totem pole and voting against efforts that would give corporations more free reign to put profits over people. 

What should be done?

We need to be:

• Diversifying Wyoming's economy to ensure workers have access to many industries and that they are well supported

• Protecting the Wyoming Business Council and efforts to support business growth in Wyoming

• Putting Wyoming and local workers first when taxpayer money is spent on large projects, including by requiring local jobs guarantees

• Investing in Wyoming workers and paying them fair wages

• Supporting commonsense workplace safety protections

• Opposing efforts to have government override agreements that workers and employers make on their own

• Opposing cuts to unemployment insurance for workers who are laid off through no fault of their own

• Supporting unions and frameworks that protect workers from corporate abuse

• Always putting people over profits

What are my priorities for our communities?

Communities in Wyoming have felt like they have been steamrolled by big corporations, out of state interests, and forced of division. Our communities deserve to have a voice in the decisions that impact their lives. Our legislators must also remain accountable to all of their constituents, not a small minority, and especially not out-of-state interests. Our communities need the proper infrastructure, capital, and room to grow their economies and provide opportunities for families.

What should be done?

We need to be:

• Creating frameworks for better community input on projects like data centers, nuclear projects, and other high-impact projects

• Increasing transparency between government, companies, and communities regarding business and project-approval decisions

• Encouraging civic participation, higher voting rates, and public testimony on important issues

• Creating frameworks for better public participation during legislative sessions

• Investing in communities to build up local economies and increase job opportunities

• Supporting grants to communities for infrastructure and local projects

• Opposing cuts that limit local services

What are my priorities for AI?

Artificial Intelligence has already changed our world. It will continue to reshape our lives at an exponential pace. The AI Revolution has only two comparisons in history -- the Industrial Revolution and the birth of the Internet. In both of these cases, there were three major consequences:

1. Industries replaced workers with new technologies, leaving millions unemployed and not equipped for the new world.

2. Unforeseen consequences manifested over decades and were exacerbated by an unwillingness by the government to be pro-active about the consequences of change.

3. Companies capitalized on fascination/market success of new products/services, driven by new technology, and found ways to integrate their products/services in every part of our lives -- all while avoiding accountability and reaping massive profits while leaving everyone else behind.

This is what history tells us. The AI Revolution, though, is not just faster in its development than these previous examples, it also has the capacity to be many times more revolutionary in scope, scale, and impact. It has the capacity to improve many parts of our lives, such as in healthcare. However, if unregulated, it also has the capacity to completely reshape our social order -- replacing human connection, productivity, and presence with that of AI machines far more effectively than the Internet ever did. 

If unregulated, AI has the potential to render millions of workers unemplyed. If unregulated, it can be used for untold abuses -- abuse in elections or by the government. It can be used for surveillance, blackmail, or tracking. Its reach and development can be manipulated to further the divide between people via deepfakes and AI-generated images. It can hamper education and students' ability to learn. It can be leveraged to scam innocent people out of money or to compromise their privacy. It can be used to avoid legal accountability by deffering responsibility. Without legal frameworks to combat these challenges, we cannot protect ourselves. In every possible case -- AI has the capacity to become a huge problem before we realize it (even more so than it already has). 

The challenge we face with AI vast. That is why it is an imperative that we be proactive and tackle the challenges we can foresee, mitigating their potential impacts or, hopefully, avoiding them entirely. 

What should be done?

Much of this issue must be tackled on the national level. This does not mean that states can't play a role. In fact, on many issues of importance, states have always led the way for the nation. Wyoming can and should join the chorus of states doing what they can to regulate AI and its impacts.

We need to be:

• Creating strategies designed to protect workers from AI and mitigate job losses 

• Clarifying in law that AI is not nor will it ever be legally considered a person with the same legal rights and protections as people

• Mandating:

  • • Transparency of AI use in government decision-making that impacts real people

    • Transparency requirements when AI chatbots are used for customer services or for other business purposes

• Banning:

  • • Use of AI deepfakes and AI generated-images in election advertisements

    • Creation or possession of AI generated nonconsensual intimate imagery and child sexual abuse materials

• Creating frameworks for:

  • • Acceptable and unacceptable use of AI in any government function that impacts real people

    • Use of AI in law enforcement actions

    • Use of AI in election processes by officials or candidates

    • Legal and financial penalties against AI companies whose services are used for abusive purposes

    • Legal and financial penalties against individuals who use AI to replicate a real person's image or voice for the purpose of deception, slander, or other abusive purposes

    • Use of AI in healthcare, particularly as it relates to patient records and other privacy matters

    • Use of AI in education, particularly as it relates to student records, student use, staff use, and information gathering

    • Use of AI in business dealings with consumers, employees, prospective employees, and other purposes

    • Consumer protection against AI 

    • Limiting AI companies' ability to use AI to influence algorithms 

How do we restore transparency and integrity?

Recently, Wyoming has seen glaring instances of government officials embroiled in scandals and bouts of distrust, causing real frustration and legitimate questions about transparency and integrity. The people, not donors or powerful interests, come first -- always. A legislator’s job is not to serve donors or be beholden to money from big pockets -- it is to represent all of the people. People want and deserve to know that their officials will always be straight with them and will not engage in conduct unbefitting of their office, especially when interacting with the public or engaging in official duties. 

Whether it is CheckGate, where officials accepted campaign donations on the Wyoming House floor; or frustrations around the Radiant Nuclear facility proposal; or charges of DUI, people have come away with a common conclusion: We want leaders we can trust.

What should be done?

First and foremost, we have to demand accountability. That means, most directly, voting in every election. Elections are the people's most powerful tool of accountability. In addition to this, though, we must also remember to stay above the fray of divisiveness and mudslinging, remembering that, despite efforts to call us to our lowest selves, we must always bring out the best. That means demanding better from our leaders and not accepting a bar so low that it is beneath our feet. We must also tackle the very root of most corruption in our system: money and its influence on politicians. The Legislature has a role in promoting this, as do the people.

We need to be:

• Creating better transparency requirements for donations and expenditures by officials and candidates

• Codifying rules barring donations being distributed to officials during performance of their duties

• Supporting efforts like the Montana Plan, exploring a Wyoming alternative to limit the influence of corporate donations on politicians, making whatever changes necessary to stop corporate and dark money in Wyoming elections

• Creating frameworks for better community input on projects like data centers, nuclear projects, and other high-impact projects

• Increasing transparency between government, companies, and communities regarding business and project-approval decisions

• Encouraging civic participation, higher voting rates, and public testimony on important issues

• Creating frameworks for better public participation during legislative sessions

• Electing leaders with cool tempers and patience

• Electing leaders who follow the law