Oglethorpe County’s new comprehensive plan is nearing adoption.

The county and the cities of Lexington, Arnoldsville, Crawford and Maxeys held a public hearing last Monday to inform the community of the plan itself, as well as the schedule of for adoption.

County Planner McKenzie Spooner said there were only a handful of residents who attended the meeting and watched the Board of Commissioners sign off on the final draft of Comprehensive Plan for 2041.

In the wake of the 2023 Legislature, the Montana Republican Party on Wednesday celebrated a stack of new laws restricting abortion and reproductive health care, setting up a likely clash with the state’s nearly 25-year-old court ruling that broadly permits abortion as a private medical choice.

Though Gov. Greg Gianforte spoke approvingly about a list of 10 bills carried by Republican lawmakers this session, he only signed five into law during a ceremony at the Capitol. Those included a ban on abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy unless to save the life of the mother and another that interprets Montana’s constitutional right to privacy in state law as not including a right to abortion. He said he looks forward to signing the other bills — including a blanket restriction on the most common type of abortion after the first trimester — after they are finalized by legislative staff and leadership and transmitted to his office.

“Thank you for protecting life, for protecting our children, for promoting stronger families. Thank you for giving a voice to the voiceless. Thank you for uniting in our shared belief that every human life is precious and must be protected,” Gianforte told the crowd filled with lawmakers and anti-abortion advocates.

The advancement of the longstanding conservative agenda comes less than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated federal protections for abortion. In the months that followed the order in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center, voters in many states rejected further regulations on abortion and failed to deliver Republicans a decisive majority in Congress during the 2022 midterm elections — electoral outcomes national analysts have linked to blowback over the fall of Roe v. Wade.

Abortion in Montana has for decades remained legal under the unanimous 1999 Montana Supreme Court ruling in Armstrong v. State. That precedent helped block Republican-backed legislation passed in 2021 from taking effect while litigation continues.

Attempting to chip away at the Armstrong ruling and curb abortion in myriad ways has remained a key priority for conservatives this session. Flanked by the governor and Republican legislators, anti-abortion advocate Jeff Laszloffy, president of the Montana Family Foundation, said this session was “the most pro-life legislative session in the history of the state of Montana” and that more work is still in store.

“With regard to the pro-life issue, as this governor is fond of saying, we are now directionally correct. But that’s just a start,” Laszloffy said. “We will not rest until the Armstrong decision is overturned, until every life is protected from the moment of conception. And until the scourge of abortion is lifted forever from the great state of Montana.”

The avalanche of bills, far more than those introduced last session, was met with full-throated opposition from reproductive rights advocates and Democrats. Opponents, including some people who testified publicly about their own abortions, argued the bills are out of step with what most Montanans want — appeals that failed to flip many Republican votes.

“Montanans take care of one another. We believe that living a life with dignity means that we can make private and personal decisions without government interference,” said Nicole Smith, executive director of Blue Mountain Clinic in Missoula, in a statement after the governor’s bill signing. “The 68th legislative session passed laws that seek to take away our fundamental rights. If implemented, these bills will directly harm our friends, families, and neighbors. We will continue standing up for what we know to be right, good, and moral.”

A SHIFTING LEGAL LANDSCAPE

Unless blocked by courts, the bills signed by the governor on Wednesday and those still waiting in the wings will add restrictions to abortion providers and curtail procedures at different stages of pregnancy. Together, the full slate of legislation will ban the most common procedure for abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy; prohibit abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy; bar any public funds including Medicaid from covering abortions except in rare circumstances; require parental notification for abortions sought by minors; mandate licensing for abortion clinics; adopt a narrowed version of the “born-alive” referendum Montana voters rejected in November; and codify an interpretation that the state’s constitutional right to privacy does not include the right to access an abortion.

Another bill, House Bill 786, adds reporting requirements for the prescription of abortion medication, and has already become law after Gianforte signed it in late April. The law will take effect on Oct. 1 of this year.

The bills signed on Wednesday include House Bill 303, a medical conscience bill that requires health care providers to opt-in to participating in abortions and allows them to abstain from offering other health care services; Senate Bill 154, the statutory interpretation of the Montana Constitution’s right to privacy; House Bill 575, which presumes viability at 24 weeks and prohibits procedures after that, and House Bill 625, which requires medical providers to offer life-saving care to newborn infants born after an abortion.

Supporters of the last bill say it explicitly allows parents to refuse procedures that are not reasonable, including those that “temporarily prolong the act of dying when death is imminent,” a feature of the debate over LR-131 last fall. Opponents reject that the revised language helps protect the rights of parents who are grieving pregnancy complications.

Several pieces of legislation, including HB 575 and HB 625, are set to take effect upon becoming law. As of Wednesday afternoon, no lawsuits attempting to block the policies had been announced.

Critics of the bills say many appear patently unconstitutional because of Montana’s legal precedent under the Armstrong decision. The immediate effective dates, they say, will likely jumpstart lawsuits for months to come.

“We have that procreative right of privacy and we have the right to make those decisions outside the Roe v. Wade decision,” said Robin Turner, a lobbyist who opposed the bills on behalf of the ACLU of Montana and the Montana Coalitions Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. “What this really does is create litigation … By having the bills go into immediate effect, it does call the question much sooner.”

Attorneys representing Planned Parenthood of Montana attempted in mid-April to temporarily block the enforcement of the 15-week restriction. At the time, the bill had passed both chambers of the Legislature but had not yet been passed to the governor’s office for his signature or veto.

Hours after that filing was submitted, Helena District Court Judge Kathy Seely rejected the motion for a temporary restraining order, adding a handwritten note near her signature.

“No bill has been signed. Thus, no ‘law’ to enjoin today,” she wrote. “Denied as premature.”

Plaintiffs have said they are prepared to resubmit their motion to block the law as soon as possible after the governor’s signature. University of Montana law professor Anna Conley said that timeline leaves room for the law to take effect until a court says otherwise.

“The law will be in effect unless it is enjoined by a court, either as a temporary restraining order … or as a preliminary injunction,” said Conley in an April emailed statement. “If a court denies a motion for a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction, the court’s denial can be appealed to the Montana Supreme Court.”

Ultimately, it is the state’s high court that will have to deliberate on the many legal challenges to the Armstrong ruling. The Montana Supreme Court last year upheld a district court ruling that blocked Republican abortion restrictions from taking effect while litigation continued but has not squarely weighed in on Armstrong in the years since the unanimous opinion was issued.

“It’s going to be very uncertain until courts start ruling,” said University of Montana law professor Craig Cowie in a written response to questions from MTFP. “Courts may stay the laws or allow them to go into effect (depending both on their views of the challenges to the laws about abortion and the changes to the laws about ordering injunctions). The Supreme Court may also rule on the stays, but ultimately we won’t know for sure until the Supreme Court answers the question on Armstrong.”

‘YOU DON’T KNOW MY SITUATION’

Caught within the legal and political gridlock are patients, families and providers evaluating how the new slate of bills would impact their lives. Montanans with personal stories about abortions have attended committee hearings and shared their experiences publicly, spurred on by restrictions in other states and, for some, the prospect of patients losing access in Montana.

In November, the same month newly elected lawmakers were imagining their futures in Helena, Bozeman resident Anne Angus and her husband were in mourning. Weeks earlier, Angus, 33, had received a new diagnosis about her pregnancy. Her baby had Eagle-Barrett syndrome, a rare condition affecting the urinary tract, abdomen, kidneys and lungs that can range in severity. Angus said her medical team identified the diagnosis as on the serious side of the spectrum around the 24-week mark of her pregnancy.

“They gave us the best-case scenario, which was a lifetime of, honestly, what I felt were experimental surgeries, very painful experimental surgeries,”

Angus, a data scientist who testified about her story at the Legislature this year, said in an April interview with Montana Free Press that her doctors, after more evaluation, suggested the family consider termination. In the middle of what she called a “very wanted” pregnancy, Angus was not prepared to pivot. After further consultations with specialists, she said, the medical reality of what her son was facing began to sink in.

“We made the decision there. Obviously, that night was rough,” Angus said. A week earlier she had bought an infant onesie printed with teddy bears — after leaving the hospital, she said, “I just stayed up all night crying, thinking he’s never going to wear that.”

Angus terminated her pregnancy two weeks later in November at an out-of-state clinic, partly because the procedure was beyond the scope of practice for abortion clinics in Montana. The experience broadened her perspective on reproductive rights, she said, and affirmed her belief that the government shouldn’t create blanket restrictions on highly personal circumstances.

“Now I understand, oh, pregnancy follows its own timeline. Pregnancy follows its own road,” Angus told Montana Free Press.

To the lawmakers supporting legislation that would override such personal decisions, Angus said she wishes they could understand her perspective.

“You’re never going to love my kid more than I do,” she said. “… There’s nothing shameful about doing what you think is most loving in a horrible situation,” she said.

Looking at the bills that have advanced through the session, Angus described being “terrified” about trying to become pregnant again. If she again needs to terminate the pregnancy for medical reasons, she said, she’s afraid of how Montana’s laws would restrict her options, including the bill that prohibits dilation and evacuation procedures.

“I’m looking at drive times to Washington and Colorado because if that passes, if I have an acute medical event, I’m not going to be able to get care here because [dilation and evacuation] is the safest, most effective way to terminate a pregnancy if you need to,” Angus said. “I’m not going to wait until I’m in septic shock to get care. I’m going to drive seven hours to Washington or nine hours to Colorado. It sucks I have to think about that, but I do.”

Two other Montanans who spoke to MTFP about their abortions noted other pieces of legislation that struck them as egregious infringements on reproductive rights, including the prohibitions on Medicaid and other public funding for abortions. One of those bills, House Bill 544, mimics a state health department rule that has been temporarily enjoined by a district court judge. Another, House Bill 862, seeks to implement the federal Hyde Amendment in state law, allowing Montana Medicaid funds to pay for abortion only in the cases of rape, incest or to prevent the pregnant person from dying.

Ali, another Bozeman resident who asked MTFP to withhold her last name to protect her privacy, said the Medicaid prohibitions would function as a sharp restriction on abortion for low-income patients. Ali said she was able to pay the roughly $800 for her abortion in 2021 out of her own pocket, without private insurance coverage, but that that option is not available to many people.

“I think that that’s one of the most devastating things we’ve done this session,” Ali said. “It’s obviously going to affect low-income people and people of color more than anybody else. And I think that’s a real shame that that has been passed this session. I think it’s going to do some serious harm.”

Above all, Ali said, the restrictions pushed by Republicans seem to conflict with what most Montanans want — a recent poll by the Public Religion Research Institute showed that 64% of state residents say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. The thought of spending years in court fighting restrictions at the state and national level, Ali said, is exhausting.

“There is just sort of like a general level of exhaustion that comes from feeling continually disappointed and nervous about what my options are going to be surrounding reproductive health care,” she said. “Historically, because of our Constitution, this has felt like a safer place to be. And I hope that that doesn’t continue to be sort of eroded and encroached on. It’s more or less a waste of people’s time to push legislation through that isn’t in line with our Constitution.”

‘WE DO FEEL THAT STRONG ABOUT IT’

Despite pushback from voters in other states over the last year indicating popular support for abortion rights, Republicans in Montana’s Legislature rarely voted against restrictions this session. Some of those who did, including Sen. Wendy McKamey, R-Great Falls, and Sen. Jeff Welborn, R-Dillon, indicated they saw privacy as a foundational right and that certain abortion bills risked government overreach.

Two other lawmakers from the majority party who asked for anonymity to discuss party politics said they didn’t agree with the full slate of abortion bills, attributing the focus on the issue to particularly devout Christian lawmakers who made it a priority. Regardless, both legislators said they couldn’t risk undermining their own bills or relationships with others in their party by voting against abortion restrictions.

Some sponsors of the bills framed their efforts as aligned with the Republican Party platform and fundamental to their personal prerogatives about protecting life before birth.

“I think it’s sad that the message is about the woman’s body and not the little girl whose body is inside that woman’s body,” said Rep. Lola Sheldon-Galloway, R-Great Falls, in an April interview. “… Even if Montana voted [in favor of abortion access] it’ll still be in our platform. And the day it isn’t there’ll be a lot of people that leave the Republican Party and do something else because we do feel that strong about it.”

Sheldon-Galloway, who sponsored HB 575 to limit abortion after 24 weeks and several other proposals, said she understands most Montanans don’t want a total ban on abortion — a reason she pointed to for why Republicans didn’t push a fetal personhood bill this session intended to outlaw abortion entirely. Instead, she said, she attempted to narrowly tailor her legislation while still protecting the unborn. In the case of HB 575, for example, Sheldon-Galloway did not include an exception for rape or incest victims, a personal sticking point she referenced with MTFP.

“People say I’m not being compassionate to people that, you know, got raped,” Sheldon-Galloway said. “To me, killing a child and being raped is two things that you have to live with for the rest of your life. I really believe in the Lord Jesus Christ healing and by giving birth to that child, he’ll heal you from the rape trauma. And through his grace, maybe even erase it from your memory. And I’ve seen that happen, too.”

Speaking at the May bill signing, Republican lawmakers and Gianforte framed the cumulative list of bills as a strong effort to protect life, children and families. The governor elaborated on that vision by referencing his proposed child tax credit, which lawmakers failed to advance, and the successfully passed $5,000 tax credit for adoptive parents. Both policies, he said, would help people who are considering abortions.

“Ultimately, every child deserves a loving home. Too often we lose unborn children because their parents don’t feel ready to welcome their child into the world with the support they need and deserve. Adoption, not abortion, is often the answer,” Gianforte said. “We will always support life because that’s the outcome we all strive for.”

Editor’s note: This article was updated on Wednesday, May 3, to correct bill descriptions of House Bill 303 and House Bill 625.

The post With some Republican abortion restrictions signed into law, critics blast government overreach into personal health care choices appeared first on Montana Free Press.

May 3, 12:02 pm: We have updated the article to include an additional statistic about staff separations.

Yesterday, May 2, Shasta County Board Supervisor Mary Rickert said that hearing from the County’s lowest-paid staff had changed her mind on the need for a more substantial wage increase.

But despite the more than two hours of comment from members of Shasta County’s United Public Employees Local 792 General Unit Staff,  the rest of the Board remained largely unmoved, voting to impose a wage increase of only 2.5% on the County’s lowest-paid workers.

It’s an amount that General Unit staff members say will not compensate for last year’s inflation increase of around 8.5%. They’ve also been impacted by a steep increase in their insurance premiums that has left many with less net take-home pay this year than last year.

Makayla Ferrington, who works for the County’s Children’s Services Department, told the Board she makes $23 dollars an hour, but nets only $2200 dollars a month after taxes and health insurance costs.

Her daily work with parents affected by poverty, she explained, has only increased her worry about how she will continue to support her two-year-old child on the low wages she receives.

The County’s General Unit staff have asked for a 15% wage increase, which would cost the County’s General Fund around $2.6 million annually. It’s a large amount, but less than the Board are expected to pay on optional changes to the elections system, including hand counting votes, which the County estimates will cost at least $4 million through the end of 2025.

But the stories of Ferrington and others did not change Board Supervisor Patrick Jones’ mind on wages. While he’s concerned about the well-being of staff, he said, he must focus on ensuring the fiscal well-being of the County.

He along with Supervisors Kevin Crye, Chris Kelstrom and Tim Garman voted to impose a 2.5% percent wage increase at an annual increased cost to the County of around $435,000.

Imposing wages is one of the County’s legal options after a series of good-faith bargaining attempts and the intervention of a state labor mediator failed to produce an agreement with the bargaining unit, which represents around 1,000 of Shasta County’s approximately 2200 staff members.

Shasta County General Unit staff serve critical service functions across almost 200 different job designations. They include legal secretaries, eligibility workers, peer support specialists, and community mental health staff, among many others.

Many of their jobs are 70% State-funded because they supply State-mandated services, which is why a Board’s staff report for yesterday’s meeting shows the total cost of a 2.5% wage increase for around 1,000 staff at more than $1.8 million but a cost to the County’s General Fund of only $435,000.

Dozens of UPEC GEN staff spoke to the Board during the May 2 meeting, calling on the County to institute a living wage that would allow staff members to pay their rent and feed their families without having to rely on government assistance themselves.

Jade Creager told the Board she’s an Eligibility Worker for the County’s Economic Mobility Branch, which helps to provide access to essential services like food, housing and medical care for the community’s most vulnerable.

She says she’s worked for the County for a little over a year and received two pay raises, but still nets less than she did when she started because of an increase in medical insurance costs.

“I’m back in my home with my parents in less than 600 square feet and I have to take care of them as well,” Creager tearfully told the Board.

“We’re worried about taking care of our families,” she continued. “And it’s not just parents taking care of their kids, it’s also us taking care of our parents when they’re getting older and they don’t have anyone else to rely on.”

Multiple staff members also used public comment to blow the whistle on staff vacancy levels that they say are contributing to a lack of compliance with State guidelines for distributing aid to those at risk, including people facing food and housing insecurity.  The County did not immediately reply to a request for comment on those claims.

Recent documents received by Shasta Scout via public records request indicate that County-wide, position vacancies are currently close to 19%. That’s up from 13% in mid-2021.

Related documents also received by records request show that in the last year, more than 270 County staff members left their jobs, including 100 from the County’s Social Services department.

Almost 70% of those staff members have left departments positioned under the County’s Health and Humans Services Agency. The County has not yet responded to a request for comment on what kinds of positions are included in that department.

Jennifer Pardue, an eligibility worker in the County’s CalWORKS division, told the Board that she’s the only fully trained employee in her unit, leaving her responsible for making annual aid determinations for over 2,000 cash-aid cases, all on her own.

“Legit I can push the button, I decrease, I deny or I grant benefits to families to pay their rent. I also do CalFRESH food stamps to give those families food and MediCal. If it’s a CalWORKS case and it’s ongoing, it comes to my unit.”

“We do not have enough people,” Pardue continued, “to serve the community. For these families to pay their rent . . . we can’t even give interviews for these kinds of redeterminations if they’re late. . . “

Stories like Pardue’s illustrate the pivotal importance of Shasta County’s General Unit staff to preventing homelessness and food insecurity and protecting public health and safety.

Many staff members emphasized this point during their public comments to the Board, reminding Supervisor Jones and others that if the recession he fears comes to pass, their work will become even more imperative for County residents.

County staff member and former Redding City Council candidate Ian Hill explained it this way:

“The General Unit carries out the work for many state- and federally-mandated programs and are largely funded as such. So even during an economic downturn they weather the storm far better than most.”

“And County residents dip heavily into those programs when things get tough,” Hill continued. “Even more reason to safeguard them now by ensuring they’re staffed.”

The Board’s vote yesterday imposed what is known as a unilateral wage increase, said Allen, the bargaining unit’s elected Business Manager. But it’s important to remember, he told Shasta Scout, that an imposed wage increase is not the same as a contract.

“They have the legal right to do it. But it doesn’t get them a contract. It doesn’t settle the strike. It doesn’t change the fact that we have an ongoing labor dispute.”

Under California’s Public Employees Relations Board (PERB) rules, the ongoing lack of a contract gives workers the right to re-open bargaining with the County again in the coming fiscal year, said Allen, regardless of what happens over the next two weeks.

Union members continue to take unpaid leave to strike, forming a picket line around the County’s administrative building.

The strike is scheduled to end May 12.

If you have a correction to this story you can submit it here. Have information to share? Email us: editor@shastascout.org

Additional Resources:

Stories From the Picket Line: Shasta County Workers Speak Out As UPEC Strike Begins

Shasta County Staff Will Strike Over Wages As Supervisors Consider Spending Millions More On Optional Election Changes

Mississippi’s license plates will no longer feature the words “In God We Trust” after Gov. Tate Reeves unveiled a new design on Tuesday, featuring a white background with a single white magnolia flower like the one on the state flag at its center.

The post ‘In God We Trust’ Absent On New Mississippi License Plates After Atheists’ Lawsuit appeared first on Mississippi Free Press.

As a wave of legislation restricting transgender rights swept through statehouses across the country this year, Wyoming broke with what some say is a decades-long tradition of blocking anti-LGBTQ bills.

Activists deployed a strategy, they say, that worked for decades: aligning LGBTQ rights with the core Republican principle that government should sparingly intervene in citizens’ private decisions.

In 1977 state lawmakers defined marriage as a civil contract between a male and a female, a blow to LGBTQ rights. But since then, “every single bill that would limit the civil rights of LGBTQ people in Wyoming has been defeated,” said Sara Burlingame, a former legislator and executive director of Wyoming Equality, an advocacy group. “This was the year that changed,” she said.

Burlingame was referencing a new law that will prohibit transgender girls from competing in middle- and high-school girls sports events. Asserting it is about fairness and not restriction, lawmakers voted overwhelmingly for Senate File 133 – Student eligibility in interscholastic sports during the 2023 general session. And while Gov. Mark Gordon called it “overly draconian,” he let the bill become law without his signature. It is set to go into effect in July.

“It is difficult for me to sign legislation into law that knowingly will cost the state and taxpayers money to litigate and may be challenged under Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause,” Gordon wrote in his letter to lawmakers. Wyoming Equality is in fact planning a legal challenge, and the U.S. Department of Education announced earlier this month a proposed change to Title IX that would make it illegal for schools to “categorically ban transgender students from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity just because of who they are.”

If a court challenge pauses Wyoming’s ban, the legislation would then require the governor to appoint a five-member commission to determine the eligibility of a student in interscholastic sports.

There were also victories for LGBTQ advocates in the 2023 session, including the defeat of two bills to limit gender-affirming care for minors and one that closely mirrored Florida’s restrictions on what can be discussed in public schools. But advocates like Burlingame expect those bills to return to the statehouse, and there’s concern that the sports ban’s passage marks a turning point for LGBTQ rights in Wyoming and the strategy used to protect them.

Background

The same year the Legislature defined marriage between a male and a female, lawmakers also repealed Wyoming’s anti-sodomy law.

“All of that happens in 1977,” Burlingame said. “So it’s this really banner year where the Wyoming Legislature … looks at gay rights and opens the door in one direction and sets a boundary in another direction.”

In 1982, Wyoming dropped common law crimes from its statutes, which legalized all sexual activity between consenting adults. But an impasse largely characterized the decades that followed, in which both protections for and restrictions of LGBTQ rights failed to get adequate support to become law.

For same-sex marriage, it was the courts, not the Legislature, that ultimately budged the needle. A federal district court ruling in 2014 made same-sex marriage legal in Wyoming the year before the United States Supreme Court made it constitutionally guaranteed nationwide.

After the high court settled the law, another stalemate came back into focus — a hate-crime law. Since the murder of Matthew Shepard in 1999, hate-crime legislation has failed repeatedly to get enough votes from lawmakers. Most recently, the Joint Judiciary Committee voted down legislation in 2021 that would have updated statutory language to create a de facto hate crime law. However, whether Wyoming already has bias-motivated statutes on the books depends on who you ask, with the American Civil Liberties Union of Wyoming and the U.S. Justice Department holding different views on a little-known state law, according to the Casper Star-Tribune.

In 2017, lawmakers introduced legislation to criminalize people using public restrooms that do not correspond with the gender assigned to them at birth. The bill was dead on arrival, failing to meet an initial deadline, but was the first legislation of its kind in Wyoming. At the time, former Republican Gov. Matt Mead said bills dealing with public restrooms would undermine the state’s nickname of “the Equality State.” A task force convened by Mead to devise a plan to diversify the state’s economy identified a statewide non-discrimination law as a key recommendation in its 2018 report.

“Recruiting, hiring, and retaining high-quality talent is essential to growing successful businesses in a global economy,” according the report. “It is important that Wyoming residents and visitors are treated with equality.”

While the state has yet to take such action, several local governments have addressed the issue, adopting non-discrimination ordinances.

Changing tides 

The Legislature has steadily moved farther to the right in recent years. In 2022, Republicans picked up four seats previously held by other parties. But that swelling conservative supermajority hasn’t necessarily brought a deeper commitment to a small-government mindset that has helped LGBTQ advocates in the past, Burlingame said. With the rise of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, which has grown its membership and its position in the statehouse, Burlingame said the body’s adherence to core Republican principles like limited government, equality and liberty has waned, making way for bills that previously wouldn’t have passed.

“We want people to truly recognize the full dignity and worth of LGBTQ Wyomingites,” Burlingame said. “But in the past, we’ve won not because people have strong feelings for the LGBTQ [community] but [because] they had strong feelings about the role of government.”

That’s become a less reliable strategy; Republican lawmakers butted heads over the proper scope of government during the 2023 session with several Freedom Caucus members arguing for a top-down approach in some cases.

“Local government is merely political subdivisions of this state,” Freedom Caucus member Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams (R-Cody) said on the House floor in response to colleagues’ criticisms that one of her bills eroded local control in favor of state power.

Several other factors facilitated the sports ban’s passage, Rep. Dan Zwonitzer (R-Cheyenne) said.

“I just think it was an emerging issue in the constituency and it dealt with kids,” he said, which differentiates it in his view from an adult issue. Zwonitzer is now the only openly gay member of the Wyoming Legislature, because Cathy Connolly — the first openly gay legislator in state history — did not seek re-election after 13 years in the House, and Burlingame and Chad Banks of Rock Springs lost their respective races in 2022.

Connolly was candid during her keynote address at The Democracy Lab Symposium hosted at the Albany County Public Library on Saturday. She told attendees that when Rep. Wendy Schuler (R-Evanston) first brought legislation to limit trans girls’ participation in school sports, in 2022, the two had agreed the “bill was a sledgehammer that codified discrimination to appease an angry mob.”

“I have the greatest respect for [Connolly], but I don’t remember saying that at all,” Schuler told WyoFile. Schuler also rejected the idea put forth by Connolly that the bill was about scoring “Republican street cred” to counter some of her more moderate views. Schuler is not part of the Freedom Caucus, and was challenged by one of its former members, Bob Wharff, in the 2022 election.

“I don’t go digging around to see what’s happening at the national level that might interest me,” Schuler said, adding that she relies on what she hears from constituents to draft legislation.

As to whether the ban is at odds with Wyoming’s proclivity for small government, Schuler said “there’s some truth to that,” adding that government intervention should be decided on a case-by-case basis.

“Sometimes, we as Republicans, we really don’t want the government in our business,” she said. “But then if we think we’ve got to right a wrong, then we do want them in our business.”

An analysis by The Washington Post found that more bills targeting LGBTQ rights — particularly transgender rights — have been introduced and become law in 2023 than at any other time in U.S. history. Disruptive opposition to that surge in other states has led to arrests and the barring of one transgender lawmaker from her own chamber.

Zwonitzer said he believes Wyoming’s sports ban is a more “reasonable approach, especially compared to a lot of other states [that] have gone a bit overboard when it comes to these issues.” Zwonitzer, who was one of six Republicans to break with party lines and vote against the ban, pointed to an amendment to exclude training or practicing with a team from the ban as a reasonable piece of it. Zwonitzer also puts stock in the intentions of the bill’s main sponsor, Schuler.

“I don’t think it was brought as a bill to attack the LGBT community, like a lot of the other bills in the past,” Zwonitzer said. “This is truly about fairness in women’s sports. So I think that’s why it passed.”

Strategy

A longtime athlete and coach, Schuler got her start in sports in the early days of Title IX. Enacted in 1972, the federal civil rights law prohibits sex discrimination at education institutions that receive federal funding in primary, secondary and higher education — effectively ensuring that everyone would have the same opportunities in school sports, regardless of their sex.

“I’ve been an advocate for girls and their sports opportunities ever since, because I was on the other end and saw how unfortunate it was that so many of us had to sit on the sidelines,” Schuler said. She first brought a bill to sideline transgender athletes in the 2022 budget session after she’d been approached by some constituents.

“Their kids had gone over and competed in Utah, and they’d [encountered] a couple of transgender athletes over there who just overwhelmed these gals,” Schuler said. She went back to the drawing board after the 2022 version of the bill died. Those efforts included working with Burlingame, who Schuler said has been a friend since they both started in the Legislature in 2019.

“I visited with her, talked with other people. Of course, she wanted me to just take away the ban completely, and I just said, ‘No, I can’t do that,’” Schuler said.

Instead, Schuler removed collegiate athletics from the bill and added language to create the commission, which largely resembles the one in Utah. Utah’s commission was activated last year after a judge reversed the state’s ban on the basis that it violated equal rights and due process under the state’s constitution. And similar to Utah’s commission, Wyoming’s law prescribes that the committee consist of certain persons — including a mental health professional and a parent of a current student — and that the committee’s work not be subject to public records law.

“She obviously thinks I’m very wrongheaded in my support for all transgender athletes, and I believe that her bill has potentially fatal consequences for children,” Burlingame said. One social worker told lawmakers during the 2023 session that Wyoming families with transgender children were in crisis on account of the bill, with most of those children being on suicide watch.

With such high stakes, Burlingame said some of her organization’s national partners have at times encouraged her to take a less compromising approach and to break relationships with lawmakers who don’t fully support LGBTQ rights.

“And we have to say, that doesn’t work and we don’t believe it,” Burlingame said. Still, Burlingame said she wants people to understand that the next chapter will require effort and it’s not just LGBTQ rights on the line.

“Government doesn’t exist to limit anyone’s civil rights and the Freedom Caucus is just destroying that concept,” Burlingame said. “Like they’re just taking an ax to it, and it will change the whole character of Wyoming.”

People, she continued, “will have to do something that costs them something, they’ll have to do something that puts them in a place of moral courage.”

The post Law marks turning point for LGBTQ rights in Wyoming. How did we get here? appeared first on WyoFile.

May 2, 7:10 am: We have updated the article to correct a state-mandated timeline for services.

May 1, 6:32 pm: We have updated the article to correct an error in an employment date and program name.

By 8:30 on May 1, nearly 300 Shasta County employees had already signed in at the picket line in front of the County’s Administrative building on Court Street.

They’re part of a bargaining unit that represents almost half the County’s staff. They’re striking after months of failed negotiations led to a Declaration of Impasse, a California labor law term that indicates recognition that future discussions would be futile.

Twyla Carpenter spent her early morning at the picket line. She’s the Vice President of Shasta County’s General Unit, a bargaining unit under United Public Employees of California Local 792.

Carpenter says many of her fellow staff are college-educated and like their jobs, but are so overworked and underpaid they don’t tend to stay with the County for long.

“Once they get in here,” Carpenter said, “and they see how little their paycheck is, once they bring it home and see the high cost of medical, they find out they can’t afford to work here.”

Shasta County’s General Unit includes almost 1,000 staff, working in almost 200 different classifications that include vital services like accounting and auditing, social work, animal regulation, permitting and building inspecting, and epidemiology.

They’re asking for a wage increase of 15% over the next three years which, they say, will help their salaries keep pace with rising inflation and a recent steep increase in their insurance premiums.

We visited the picket line on International Workers Day. Here are a few of the stories we heard.

Catreena Johnson

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Catreena Johnson says when her grandmother worked for Shasta County seventeen years ago, finding an opening for a County job was a rare opportunity.

Now, Johnson says, the number of staff vacancies and high staff turnover are overwhelming.

“I’m the lead worker in the call center for eligibility,” Johnson said, speaking to Shasta Scout at the UPEC Gen picket line on Tuesday morning.

“And the staffing shortages have really just shoved us into the ground. We’re drowning in work. We’re out of compliance. We can’t stop getting further behind and the State’s breathing down our necks for being out of compliance.”

Eligibility staff work in the County’s Economic Mobility Branch, helping to ensure that eligible Shasta County residents are able to access California-funded programs like CalFresh, which provides food stamps, and CalWORKS, which provides cash assistance to help families with children pay rent and other essential costs.

Those services must be provided on a strict state-mandated timeline to ensure that those most at-risk receive the help they need to prevent a further downward spiral into poverty, hunger, and homelessness, Johnson explained.

“Our direct services office, they handle the intake. They handle families coming in the day of, saying that they need homeless assistance or they’re going to sleep in their car. And we do interviews on the spot and get them what we can to help get them into a motel for the night, up to 16 nights for emergency assistance. And then once applicants are granted CalWORKs, there’s additional housing support that helps pay their monthly rent.”

Johnson said at the wages the County pays, she’s unsurprised that recruiting, hiring, and maintaining staff are so hard.

“When minimum wage is $15/hour,” Johnson explained, “and the positions we’re hiring start at $17 an hour and it takes three months of training before you even touch a live case?”

Virginia Mason

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Virginia Mason came to Shasta County from Contra Costa in 2021. She says she worked the same job there with fewer requirements and for twice the pay.

As an employment and training worker, Mason says she teaches people how to write resumes and perform well on interviews. Her program also provides a number of additional services, she says, including paying for childcare, education, housing, and transportation.

“We’re trying to reduce barriers to people becoming employed,” she said.

“We’re skilled workers and we have extensive training in our field. We’re not cashiers, you can’t train us in a week to do this. Not only that, but because of the social services that we provide, we talk to people at their worst. We definitely have emotional fatigue. It’s actually a training we have to go through. So to ask us to work for the same amount of money as the people at Chick-fil-A or Denny’s without giving us the pay that we deserve . . .”

Mason says the low wages are challenging. It’s hard knowing that she has clients who have graduated her program and are now making far more than she is.

But she’s also very concerned about staff vacancies.

“Right now, with the lack of workers that we have, there’s no way that we’re meeting state timeline requirements (for our program) and we must be being fined,” Mason said.

“I would be interested to know how far behind we are, because right now the state says case-carrying workers should have between 60-65 cases, but right now our workers are carrying 90-plus cases. So we’re not being able to give the correct services and attention to our clients that they deserve.”

“We’re overloaded,” Mason continued, “but they can’t hold onto workers at these wages because of the amount of stress [we experience]. Might as well go work somewhere else.”

Mary Shaver

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While Mary Shaver loves what she does, she says her income is no longer enough to pay her expenses.

“At this point, with inflation I’m struggling to pay my mortgage,” Shaver said. “I have two of my grown children living with me to help pay the bills.”

Shaver was a beneficiary of the County’s cash assistance program, before she began working for the County in 2010.

“Right now, I’m giving back and helping people. Some of our participants have never really had anybody to support them or be there for them. To tell them that they can make a difference, they can get good jobs. So we help people get education, work on barrier removal so they can get out and become productive members of society.”

You can read additional coverage of the Shasta County UPEC Gen Strike here.

If you have a correction to this story you can submit it here. Have information to share? Email us: editor@shastascout.org

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It started with a formal apology.

“California Native American peoples suffered violence, discrimination and exploitation sanctioned by state government throughout its history,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a 2019 statement. “We can never undo the wrongs inflicted on the peoples who have lived on this land that we now call California since time immemorial, but we can work together to build bridges, tell the truth about our past and begin to heal deep wounds.”

With that came an executive order to establish the California Truth and Healing Council  for Native Americans “to clarify the record — and provide their historical perspective — on the troubled relationship between tribes and the state.”

The council’s work could set an example for the rest of the country.

There have been similar efforts internationally, in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In the U.S., the Maine Wabanaki-State Truth and Reconciliation Commission examined harmful events relating to Wabanaki children and the Indian Child Welfare Act. There have also been instances of local governments giving land back to tribes.

But the California council, whose work is now underway, appears to be the first in the U.S. where a state is comprehensively looking to make reparations for the damage caused to its Indigenous communities.

The council is made up of 12 individuals from both federally and state-recognized tribes across California. Council members were nominated by tribes, but ultimately appointed by the state. There are more than 109 federally recognized tribes in California — and dozens more that are only state-recognized — so not every tribe has direct representation.

By 2025, the council must submit a report to the governor’s office that documents the full history of harm caused by the state. It will also make policy recommendations about reparations — which in this case may include land back and other ways to preserve California Native cultures — for past harm and prevention of further damage.

“We wanted to create a mechanism for tribes to be able to drive where the conversation was going,” said Christina Snider, Newsom’s tribal affairs secretary and a member of the Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians.

There have been similar efforts internationally, in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but the council appears to be the first in the U.S. where a state is comprehensively looking to make reparations for the damage caused to its Indigenous communities. A similar panel was established in Maine in 2012, the Maine Wabanaki-State Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but it explicitly examined harmful events relating to Wabanaki children and the Indian Child Welfare Act. There have also been instances of local governments giving land back to tribes.

“We’re hopeful that giving Native people and tribes the time to think about what they really want from this process, what they want as a meaningful outcome, will be reflected in recommendations that are thoughtful and diverse and take equity into account,” Snider said.

She hopes to call private and federal partners to the table to work on solutions together once the final report is done. It would also fill huge gaps in many non-Indigenous Californians’ understanding of Native peoples’ history in the state, she said.

More than two years into the council’s listening sessions, interviews and research throughout the state, several issues have emerged, Snider said.

“A major theme here has been the idea of California Indian identity,” she said. “California Native people aren’t seeing themselves in the stories that are being told about Native people in general. Then their identity isn’t being translated into policy changes, either.”

The need for elder care, housing and mental health services have also come up frequently, Snider said. But there are also acute generational divides created in many communities by urbanization, boarding schools and other policies that separated Native families.

The council has also heard a lot of feedback around land — something Newsom’s administration is suggesting policies to address. In 2022, the state started providing funding to some tribes to co-manage parts of the coast.

Currently, Snider said, “there’s almost no access to land ownership and no access to places that are spiritually significant and where people have lived since time immemorial.”

Kouslaa Kessler-Mata, a University of San Francisco associate professor and a member of the Truth and Healing Council and the Yak Tityu Tityu Northern Chumash and Yokut tribes, sees important work underway. But the infrequent meetings of the council and shortage of resources make her feel less empowered as a council member.

“I’m concerned about how the structure of the council is set up almost to position us as puppets,” Kessler-Mata said. “We’re not central to the process. We’re just there to help signify that something is happening, which is unfortunate.”

The council was set up through the state’s executive branch, rather than the legislature, where wide support and consensus is needed to pass initiatives. That means it has a more limited budget of only about $450,000 per year through the fiscal year ending in 2025,  an annual amount roughly a third of what the legislature-established California Reparations Task Force for African Americans said it needed this year just for consultants to help with their work. The Truth and Healing Council also has fewer contracted researchers and staffers at the state dedicated to assisting the completion of its report when compared to the Reparations Task Force, Kessler-Mata said.

“A budget is a moral document,” Kessler-Mata said. “That absence of funding has serious consequential results in our work. We can’t achieve our objectives in a really thorough way without additional support.”

Snider said that creating the council through the executive branch meant it started faster and had more flexibility in its structure, developed after consultation with tribes. The result is that tribal leaders have more say in the process than they might otherwise, she said.

Some of the most important healing work from the process, Kessler-Mata said, has come through a partnership between the council and the Decolonizing Wealth Project, an Indigenous and Black-led organization that supports reparatory justice initiatives across the country.

In February, the Decolonizing Wealth Project awarded grants to 13 tribes and Indigenous organizations in California to help with initiatives aimed at healing and changing narratives about their history. The grants will help tribes collect oral histories, provide travel stipends for members to go to Truth and Healing Council meetings, fund work documenting impacts around boarding schools and more.

“When we heard this effort was happening in California, we knew it was important to support,” said Carlos Rojas Alvarez, director of executive affairs and strategic initiatives at the Decolonizing Wealth Project.

Alvarez said there has been a push for a federal commission to examine the full impacts of Native American boarding schools. Between 1819 and 1969, hundreds of thousands of Native American children were taken or coerced away from their families and tribes, forced to attend government-sanctioned Indian boarding schools. Among the consequences: loss of language and culture, abuse, trauma and permanent separation of many children from their families. Alvarez said he hopes the California effort will help drive momentum to address the boarding school history and related issues in other states and by the federal government.

The grants also help address a big challenge for the council: California Indians are a diverse group with different histories and needs.

“One Native person’s story in California is not the same as anyone else’s,” Snider said. “Each person has a different story, perspective and idea for what they need to make them whole.”

Some tribes involved in the process aren’t federally recognized, for example. And each tribe is a sovereign political entity. Kessler-Mata said she is one of the few council members who isn’t a tribal leader, which she feels is important because she doesn’t have a stake in any tribe’s enrollment battle or other political issues. Her goal is to stay focused on what the state can do “to advance the rights of individual Indians.”

Another challenge, Kessler-Mata said, is capturing a precise picture of the experience of California Indians. Most data on Native Americans in California is about all Native Americans who live in the state, regardless of whether they are members of a California tribe.

While the council’s final report won’t be finished until 2025, Kessler-Mata has early priorities. She wants to see the state start collecting data on California Indians to measure indicators like homeownership rates, impacts from climate change, educational outcomes and treatment in the criminal justice system. She also says the state needs to provide greater equity in funding for California Indians.

“What we really need is a multi-sector approach for people to understand what has happened and what is happening,” Kessler-Mata said. “The Golden State was created at the cost of someone else. That implicates everyone.”

The post Pondering state reparations for tribes, a council documents history of harms appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.