Education Accountability Bills Move Forward [AUDIO]

The Senate Education Committee approved House bills 72 and 91 Monday,sending both measures to the full Senate for debate.The bills deal with the effort to bring more accountability to Wyoming's K-12 education system that lawmakers have been working on for several years now. Lawmakers say parts of the effort that were supposed to be done by now weren't completed because the Wyoming Department of Education failed to do its job over the last year. The legislature removed state schools superintendent Cindy hill from heading up the agency,and lawmakers say the accountability effort can now resume although some aspects will be delayed.

Both the House and Senate on Friday approved the supplemental budget with their own particular amendments. A conference committee will meet this week to reconcile the differences.Representative Steve Harshman (HD-37) says the two chambers are not that far apart.

Well you're right now we'll get together with the Senate hopefully the middle of the week..

Senate Minority Floor Leader, Senator Chris Rothfuss (SD-9), says he's disappointed about the budget.

I would have liked to have seen a little more strategy going in to try and make sure we were funding things that need to be funded...

House Speaker Representative Tom Lubnau (HD-31) says overall he is pleased with budget discussions went.

The organization is running very, very well. We dealt with some very difficult issues as professionally as we could...

The Wyoming house gave initial approval to a bill that would allow hunters to use silencers, but the bill was amended to prohibit their use on big-game animals. Silencers would still be legal under the bill for shooting predators or non-game animals. Representative Allen Jaggi (HD-19), who is cosponsoring the bill,says he intends to try to amend it on its next reading in the house to allow silencers for big-game hunting.

If you think about that, that means if you take your gun out to shoot, that just means you are not going to use a suppressor.

Cheyenne Representative Lee Filer (HD-12) says he's okay with the amendment.

The one thing if this bill passes, you know I like the amendment....

Wyoming is one of the few western states that bar hunters from using silencers. Proponents say using silencers can help save hunters' hearing. Opponents say they have concerns that using silencers is not very sporting.

Complete Audio

Rep Harshman close on budget