Senator Cooper reflects on first week of legislative session

Senator Cooper reflects on first week of legislative session

BY BARBARA ANNE GREENE 

Senator Ed Cooper, R-Ten Sleep, said the first week of the legislative session went well. 

“We got some really good bills passed already,” he said. “We have some really good bills covered in our committees.” 

Cooper continued that there was civility and legislators got along well with good cooperation. Cooper sits on the Minerals, Business & Economic Development Committee. Two bills from that committee had to do with enhanced oil recovery. They passed out of committee. 

“It, in the long term, should be pretty good (for Wyoming). Pretty good implications for the Big Horn Basin and for the oil and gas industry in general.” 

He anticipated it being heard by the committee of the whole earlier this week. 

Cooper believes that one of his bills will be heard by the Appropriations Committee during the second week. That bill is SF0087-Prescriptive easement for electricity delivery. The bill reads in part: “AN ACT relating to property, conveyances and security transactions; establishing prescriptive easements for electricity delivery; providing requirements for the prescriptive easements; specifying uses of the prescriptive easements; providing definitions; specifying applicability; and providing for an effective date.

He explained why the bill is important: “As our REA (Rural Electric Association) infrastructure is aging, we have to continually be upgrading and repairing. We are running into situations where  an easement wasn’t put in place years ago, when we electrified. As ownerships of property changes over the years, a lot of the newer owners have moved in here from other places. They don’t really understand what the process was.” 

Cooper said the lack of access can be detrimental for the infrastructure. The legislators passed a similar law a few years back, but it was addressing ditches. SF 87 has been vetted by Wyoming Farm Bureau and the Wyoming Stockgrowers Association. The need for the bill was brought to Cooper by the Wyoming Rural Electric Association. 

The senator said there are a lot of good ideas for bills out there from legislators. At the same time, the legislation needs to make sure those bills are constitutional in Wyoming. “Because they are big national social bills versus rather than nuts/bolts of running the state,” he said. “We have to be careful of that.”