As the 2022 Budget Session of the Wyoming Legislature gets ready to enter it's final week on Monday, the deadline for bills to crossover to the opposite house passed on Wednesday.

That means that any proposed legislation that has not been approved in the house where it was originally proposed is dead for this session.

According to the legislature's Legislative Service Office, a total of 279 bills and resolutions were assigned numbers for the session. A little over half of those proposals--148 bills--remained active as of the end of the day on Wednesday.

In the Wyoming Senate, 73 out of 100 bills introduced have moved on to the House of Representatives for further consideration. The Wyoming House had 88 bills introduced, and of those, 75 have been sent on to the Senate.

A total of 91 bills in both houses are dead either because they failed to win introduction votes or missed deadlines to be considered.

It's worth mentioning that non-budget bills need a 2/3 majority vote for introduction during a budget session, a considerably higher threshold than the simple majority vote needed for introduction during a general session.

While there has been some discussion in recent years of doing away with the 2/3 majority vote needed for non-budget bills during a budget session, changing that rule would require a consitutional amendment, and proposal to do that have gotten little traction so far. That proved true again this session, as House Joint Resolution 4 sponsored by former House Speaker Steve Harshman [R-Natrona County] died without being introduced.

In fact, it hasn't been a good session for proposed constitutional amendments. Resolutions in that regard calling for a national Convention of The States, runoff elections for Wyoming primary elections, and increasing the mandatory retirement age for judges, among others, all died without getting very far in the process.

The next major deadline for this session will be on Monday, March 7. That's the last day bills can be reported out of committee in the opposite house from where they were introduced. March 10 is the last day for third reading on bills in the second house and the session is schedule to wrap up on Friday, March 11.

The two house will next week work on hammering out a final budget bill through a joint conference committee which will work to resolved diffrences in the budget bill approved by both bodies. Both houses will then hold concurrence votes before a final budget can be sent to Governor Mark Gordon.

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