CHEYENNE—Rep. Steve Harshman mulled doing something he’d not done in his 22 years of serving in the Wyoming Legislature after a fellow lawmaker behaved in a way that undermined the entire statehouse, the Casper lawmaker said.
“I thought about bringing a motion to reprimand a fellow House member over the weekend after I read a guest column in an online statewide newspaper,” Harshman said on the House floor Monday morning.
The Wyoming Constitution allows both the House and Senate to discipline members for contempt or disorderly behavior.
The column in question was written by Rep. John Bear, a Gillette Republican who previously chaired the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.
Several news outlets published the column, in which Bear accused non-Freedom Caucus lawmakers of being “lobbyist-legislator hybrids.”
Without naming names, Bear took aim at budget amendments brought by Reps. Harshman, Elissa Campbell, R-Casper; Lloyd Larsen, R-Lander; Karlee Provenza, D-Laramie; Trey Sherwood, D-Laramie; and Pamela Thayer, R-Rawlins.
“Meanwhile, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus and our conservative allies are working hard to cut wasteful spending while maintaining the constitutional functions of government,” Bear wrote.
What Bear called wasteful spending included money for public schools, maternity care, wildfire recovery funds, affordable housing grants and state dollars intended to leverage private and federal funds for energy projects, among other things.
Harshman, a former two-time speaker of the House, stopped short of bringing a disciplinary motion. Instead, he invoked a House rule that permits members five minutes to address a personal matter on the floor.
“For the representative from Campbell County to sit down, write and submit an article to a statewide paper that states that members of this House are lobbyists is to impugn the motives of the members and accuse members of being financially interested in their vote,” Harshman said. “That’s a serious accusation.”
Harshman acknowledged he has also made mistakes on the floor. In 2021, he apologized after cursing then-Rep. Chuck Gray in a hot mic moment.
“It’s important to remember who we are and what we stand for in Wyoming,” Harshman said. “Words matter, so behaviors like these damage the collegiality of this body and the respect for this institution and the entire state of Wyoming. And here in Wyoming, we’re better than that.”
After Harshman concluded his remarks, there was no further discussion on the floor.
“OK, members, moving on,” Speaker of the House Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, said, before the House shifted to introducing Senate files.
Meanwhile, the Freedom Caucus quickly took to social media to double down.
“We are disturbed by the blatant disregard for the First Amendment embodied by a growing number of lawmakers in Wyoming who seek to silence criticism and dissent through reprimands and lawfare,” the Freedom Caucus wrote on X and Facebook.
Harshman was not the first lawmaker to rebuke Bear’s accusations.
As the House discussed a budget amendment Friday to make $40 million in wildfire recovery funds available through grants as opposed to loans, Provenza spoke up.
“This is a compromise and that’s often what this body has done. And there’s a lot of value and weight in that at times. That doesn’t make me a lobbyist. That makes me a representative of my community,” Provenza said.
“That makes me a representative of Wyoming’s western heritage. That makes me a representative of the people of the [agricultural] communities that are going to benefit from this,” she said.
Another statement of Bear’s also got pushback on the floor earlier this session.
In a press release titled, “There’s a new sheriff in town,” Bear accused Gov. Mark Gordon and two past Joint Appropriations committees of failing to follow a state law governing spending.
Harshman challenged Bear’s fidelity to the law during a debate on a bill to drain the School Foundation Program, starting with approximately a $25 million cut for the 2026 fiscal year, by pointing out that the state’s constitution requires Wyoming to fund public education.
“And then the court order will take over and raise property taxes on everybody, and I wonder how many will be held accountable for this vote,” Harshman said.
“This ain’t about no little plastic badge or anything else,” Harshman said, calling out Bear mythologizing himself as a sheriff. “This is a real deal.”
Bear did not respond to Harshman’s comments on the floor.
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