Dems host listening session, identify issues to bring back to Legislature

JACKSON — Teton County residents have a litany of concerns keeping them up at night.

A lack of housing. Unaffordable and inaccessible health care. Unprotected public lands. Brain drain. Loss of reproductive rights. Intellectual censorship. Climate change denial. Extreme partisanship. A lack of transparency. The Wyoming Freedom Caucus’ influence.

Those 10 concerns were among the many that about 50 Teton County residents conveyed to Democratic lawmakers Thursday night at the Teton County Library. 

At a listening session, Reps. Mike Yin, D-Jackson, and Karlee Provenza, D-Laramie, asked attendees to open up and be candid about their concerns for Wyoming. The pair have traveled across the state over the last year hosting similar discussions to take a political pulse. Every community has identified the same issues, they said.

“We could have hired a consultant to do focus groups,” Provenza said. “But what we really wanted was to have neighbors sit down with their neighbors.”

The Wyoming Legislature is a 93-person citizen legislature, meaning lawmakers work day jobs and only convene for a few months each year. 

In the Senate, there are 29 Republicans and 2 Democrats. In the House of Representatives, there are 56 Republicans and six Democrats. 

Yin, Provenza and other members of their party are in the vast minority, but they asked the group Thursday what policies they would want to see in the next few years, in hopes that the Democratic Caucus can work toward solutions with Republican colleagues.

Attendees said they want open primaries in Wyoming elections (Republican legislators closed primaries in 2023) and Medicaid expansion, which the legislature has repeatedly shut down.

They called for free child care for all — a policy Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani is promoting as New York City’s mayor — and for Wyoming to be a model for aging policy.

During this winter’s legislative session, which begins Feb. 9 in Cheyenne, Provenza and Yin said their first focus is the budget. They said they want to use Wyomingites’ priorities, communicated in listening sessions, to help guide the state’s spending. This session, lawmakers will spend a month putting together Wyoming’s 2027-28 budget and look at updating public education spending.

“Where we spend our money is where our values are,” Provenza said.

Health care, property tax cuts and education are all budget issues, she said.

Because this year’s session is short — general sessions are longer than budget sessions — Provenza and Yin also said they want to use listening session feedback for the 2027 general session, where legislation can be introduced with fewer time constraints.

“There’s no expiration date on this,” she said.

One attendee asked whether Yin and Provenza could propose some of the policy requests as interim topics. 

The interim is the time period between sessions when lawmakers travel the state, hold committee meetings and draft bills to sponsor for the upcoming session. They focus on key priorities approved by the Wyoming Legislature’s Management Council. Because 2026 is an election year, Provenza said she worries lawmakers will use that time “to get YouTube clips” instead of doing work.

The 2026 election was also a big discussion topic Thursday for other reasons. 

Many wanted to know what they should be doing to get candidates who aligned with their values elected, as well as what to expect for constitutional amendments. A 50% property tax exemption is already on the ballot, and legislators made headlines this week for rallying to get a constitutional amendment banning abortion before the voters.

Yin and Provenza called on attendees to pay attention in and outside of Teton County.

“We basically need to get a veto-proof number of legislators in the Legislature if we want to stop just the constant onslaught of these social conservative bills,” Yin said.

Even disrupting the Freedom Caucus’ majority would “be enough to stop that,” he added.

This story was published on Jan. 10, 2026.