Chairmen appointed to new committee that focuses on Wyoming's billion-dollar gambling industry
CHEYENNE — Wyoming's billion-dollar gambling industry will be the sole focus of a new select committee created by legislative leadership this year, given the 'heavy lift' of the complex issue.
'The issue is, there's no home committee for gaming,' said Sen. John Kolb, R-Rock Springs, one of the co-chairmen for the new Select Committee on Gaming. 'It's been kind of the unwanted child, getting passed from committee to committee.'
Last year, the Legislature's Joint Appropriations Committee took the first stab at investigating gambling in Wyoming. The JAC created a special working group devoted to exploring this topic and paid for a statewide comprehensive study of the gambling industry. By the end of the interim, five committee-sponsored bills related to gambling were filed for the 2025 legislative session.
One of these bills focused on allowing local governments to have a say in approving historic horse racing machines, and another would have allowed national betting on Wyoming live horse races.
However, a majority of these bills failed at the beginning of the session, and none made it to the finish line.
This year, the Management Council created the new select committee that will be entirely dedicated to studying gambling issues in Wyoming.
There are six members on the committee, three from the House of Representatives and three from the Senate.
No meetings have been scheduled yet, however.
Rep. Jayme Lien, R-Casper, and Kolb are the co-chairpersons of the committee. Kolb told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle he'd like to focus on local governmental control to issue gambling licenses and unifying revenue from the gaming industry to make it more equitable.
'There's a lot of issues with how the formulations have been constructed over the years, for lack of a better word, how this activity's been taxed,' Kolb said. 'It's certainly not uniform across the board, with different types of gaming activities.'
He elaborated that gambling revenue is 'complex' and 'not some one-size-fits-all situation.'
The gaming-related bill that made it farthest through the legislative session was House Bill 85, 'Local approval for simulcasting.' This bill would have given city and town governments the authority to approve or deny simulcast permits, a power that is currently reserved at the county level. HB 85 made it all the way through the House before dying in the Senate president's drawer.
Before the creation of the new committee was announced earlier this month at a Management Council meeting, the Joint Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources listed gambling and lottery issues as one of its priorities for the interim.
Both chairmen told the WTE the committee will likely focus on lottery issues during the interim, but will hand over gambling to the new select committee. Co-chair Sen. Bill Landen, R-Casper, said the committee will review the modernization of the lottery and look at safety and security for retailers.
Co-chair Rep. Andrew Byron, R-Jackson, said he appreciated that there's a new select committee to take on the heavy lift of gambling issues, especially after legislative leadership reduced the number of committee meeting days from six to four this interim.
Byron hosted an educational meeting at 6 o'clock one morning during the session and invited lawmakers to attend to learbn more about the gambling industry. The meeting was led by Wyoming Gaming Commission Executive Director Nick Larramendy.
'If anything, it made me realize that … it needs its own standing committee,' Byron said. 'It's become such a huge industry. … It's the Wild West right now as it relates to what's happening in Wyoming.'
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