- There are only six Democrats among the 62 elected members of the Wyoming House of Representatives.

That makes them all conspicuous.

Perhaps none more so at the moment than state Representative Karlee Provenza of Laramie during this session, she's become a key figure and one of the most talked about incidents at the Capitol in many years.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming, PBS.

Join us now for capital Outlook.

Welcome to Capital Outlook.

We're here tonight, I'll say with state Representative Carly Provenza, house District 45 Albany County.

Laramie, tell us about your district.

Is it the city of Laramie primarily, or is it spread out?

- So it is from the river to 15th Street, so it's mostly like downtown and kind of the tree district.

- You are a species Democrats in the Wyoming legislature.

Aren too many of those, I think.

Am I right in saying there's six in the house and that's 62 members all told.

What, where do you stand in your career?

What, what term is this for you?

- This is my third term, so I'm in my sixth year here.

I've been reelected twice now, and I won my first election, obviously.

But yeah, so when I started, I believe we had five members.

So we grew a member last year.

So we're, we're gaining ground.

But you know, I think overall for me, political party is irrelevant.

Yeah.

It's about making sure that you bring good policy and solutions for Wyoming and how do you frame the issues so that just about anybody can agree with them.

And that just means talking to people where they're at and being a democrat means that I have to know how to work with just about anybody.

- There are only six Democrats, but they're the same number of committees that all the Republicans staff as well.

How many are you on this year?

- I'm on two standing committees, so I'm on the Joint agriculture committee and I am also on the travel, recreation and wildlife.

And it's a great honor to serve on those committees.

As you may know, I fight fiercely for public lands and I get the opportunity to do that on both of those committees.

- Yeah, so it's, I, we had Senator Guru on a two years ago, and at that, during that session, he told us he was on nine different committees.

Yeah, because that's the senate where there are even few Democrats and few senators.

So you're gonna cover all those committees that have representation.

- Yeah.

- Well, it's a big workload.

Thinking back to 2020, when the vacancy became apparent in your district, what motivated you to think about elected office?

- Oh, gosh.

Long question or long answer, I guess I, I grew up poor and I, my family often was on different types of assistance.

My parents were both disabled and my mom needed healthcare.

And I remember being in the car with my husband thinking about how can we maybe contact her state senator, not state senator, but her US senator to figure out how we could help her with some healthcare issue that she was struggling with.

And I just was struck by this feeling of, you know, I don't, I don't have to ask myself to do the right thing.

Government didn't feel like something that represented people like us.

People that struggled to get by, struggled to live paycheck to paycheck and to no fault of their own.

And I thought that it was important that government represent people like that because there's just more and more of us every day that are, that know what it's like to work hard and barely get by.

- So you thought, let me try, - Guess.

I'll try.

Yeah.

I mean, there's a lot of other things I think that led me here, but that sentiment was something that, that, I mean, I carry to this day.

- Hmm.

What's it like day to day to be in your position of the house?

I had a, one of your party colleagues last year said, well, it's like, I guess this person walked in in the room and said, here I am just outta the lion's den.

Do you feel that way sometimes?

Or is that too pneumatic?

- Yeah, I mean, some days it feels that way, particularly this year, I'll be honest.

But I mean, everybody's working incredibly hard all the time this year.

We've had many nights that lasted well past midnight.

And that, I think that's just the work.

I don't know if it differs much between me and, and anybody, but any of my Republican colleagues.

It's just, we are all fighting for our communities and unfortunately there's just notter that many democrats to kind of help bring our perspective to that.

So it sometimes calls for more time at the microphone.

- It might have been more like the lions den, especially this year.

So let's get to the thing that I think probably is on the lines of people who are seeing this interview and following what's happened in the session this year.

And I, it's been well reported and I promise you that I'm not gonna dwell on it, but it's interesting that I'm happy to talk to you about it and for your willingness to discuss the parts of it that you can.

There was an incident on the floor of the house where someone came in with media credentials, which was interesting to me because I have media credentials and have never done this thing that this person did, walked on and fairly near your desk and began handing pieces of paper to certain people and certain lawmakers.

And you took a picture of that with your phone, I presume.

- Yeah.

- Why'd you do that?

What did you, what about what you were seeing made you do that?

- I, you know, I, I recognized the Rebecca Ell who was coming onto the floor, and I, I've seen her around, I, I know kind of what her background is and fighting against housing mitigation fees and I, but I was struck by what was in her hand, which was the check.

It looked like a check to me from many feet away.

And then as she approached other members, it became clear to me what she was doing.

And I, it struck me as an egregious use of the house floor.

And I love Wyoming and I love the institution that I serve in, and I respect it greatly and to watch that violated what I thought that it was.

And so I took a photo.

I don't really know what compelled me to do that other than I guess I just need to look into this.

And so I, I took the photo and I, I did, I sent it to the press shortly after on my own volition.

I'll, I'll share that.

No one told me to do that.

I just thought this was so egregious that the people of Wyoming needed to know about it.

And, and quite frankly, and, and I think you'll understand this, giving that photo to the press meant that it had to be corroborated.

It meant that the press couldn't take that picture and just publish it.

They needed to approach the people that got the checks.

And so when I handed it to the press, to me, it was an opportunity to find what the truth was and if what happened, what I thought was happening was actually true.

- Well, I'm glad to hear you put it that way.

And of course, that's one of the things that occurred to me and some of the people that work in the next room here during the session, I haven't heard that particular point brought up all that much.

And particularly in the, in the defense of what happened.

Much of the defense seems to be, well, there's no law against it, there's no rule against it.

What do you think of that argument?

- I mean, I think the, in the investigative committee came out with their findings tonight, and that's kind of essentially what what they found was it was, it, it was a campaign contribution.

And there's no specific outline as to where you can do that.

And there's not evidence, at least available to them that says that there were bribes that were made.

And I've never made that accusation either.

I released the footage, representative Yin talked about it on the floor a couple days after, and, and he didn't name anybody, and he didn't use the word bribery.

Rachel Rodriguez Williams used that word.

So I, I don't know what law enforcement's gonna find.

I don't know all the information.

I just know that what I saw was wrong and that I think we owe it to the people of Wyoming to be transparent.

And if we're going to actually fix the core issues that are at play here, which is how do we fund campaigns and what is proper role of legislators and the proper role of lobbyists, I think we need to start with being honest about what happened and have an honest look at ourselves.

- Sure.

One of the questions that came up in the people I talked to and in my own mind was, how was it the, the person who did this was a credentialed media person for the session?

And of course I take that seriously.

I've never walked on the floor with checks.

I've never walked on the floor, I don't think.

And so I, I hope that, and I've told others, I'm, I'm hoping that gets looked at as well, what does it mean to be a credential media person and what should it mean and so forth.

- Yeah.

- Well, there's no rule against it, but there sort of is now.

Yeah.

The governor took some action, the Senate took some action.

Do you think the House will, or where does that stand?

Or can you talk about that?

- I mean, the house did change rules immediately that says we can't solicit campaign contributions in areas where the speaker is the authority.

Right.

Which I think was a good move.

I think that there's questions about, you know, I know she's a member of the media, but is she a registered lobbyist and does she fit under the statutes that she should be required to be a registered lobbyist?

And if that's the case, what is the Secretary of State doing?

- Yeah.

I can't, I'm not trying to use our show to get into arguments with anybody here.

I would just say that I've never heard of a member of the media making openly making campaign contributions directly like this.

Most members of the media don't do it at all.

- Yeah.

- And, and take that as a point of pride.

So this adds another layer to the - Yeah.

- To the, the issue.

- I don't think that a member of the press would do that.

And I don't think a normal citizen would either.

- Yeah.

- I think that the public is outraged because I think that they understand the sanctity of the roles that we serve, and this is the people's house.

And to have a wealthy donor come down and hand out checks to lawmakers is a violation of their trust.

- There's been some widespread criticism of it.

Of course.

And, and there's been some criticism directed at you as well.

And I guess the house was adjourned when this happened, but you did take the photo and strictly speaking, I don't know the rules fairly as well as you do.

You've been on the rules committee, I believe, in your career, but I know that during the session when the, when the session is convened, photos on the house floor are not permitted, or people shooting plenty of photos from above.

And of course it's being streamed live.

- Yeah.

- So it wasn't as if it was behind closed doors and you suddenly pulled back the curtain.

- Yeah.

- Strictly speaking, as you understand it, is it against the rules to shoot a photo on the house floor after the gavel?

- It is not against the rules.

Nothing I did is against the rules.

This narrative that I did do something wrong is an effort to deflect from what happened.

Yeah.

And it's an effort to try and make me a scapegoat rather than the people who actually did violate the public's trust.

- Yeah.

I've often said in my news career, when someone complained to me about something that had been in our newspaper, I would say, you know, so easily avoided.

Wasn't it had you just not done this thing and then, but people then found out about, and began paying attention to.

- And another thing I think too is it, I I've been, you know, I've been accused of not giving people grace and I I think that had members handled this differently, maybe it wouldn't have turned out to be what it is.

Yeah.

It's an apology goes a long way.

I heard that tonight on the floor directed at me, and maybe it was a lapse of judgment.

Again, I, I didn't accuse anyone of committing bribery because people make mistakes and I didn't know the circumstances.

And I, I still am not gonna accuse any members of anything.

But I, I think that the effort to claim that I am the wrongdoer here is, is a, is an action that I think makes this not go away.

I think the public wants us to take accountability for our actions.

- Yeah.

So often that's the case I've observed.

And I bet you have too.

So when something comes up that is a, creates a bit of a stink, which this certainly has too often, the response to it is something that actually makes it worse.

That, that prolongs it keeps it in the public mind.

But that is, boy, that's a hard lesson for human beings to learn.

It - Is.

As - Here we're seeing it, maybe seeing it again.

- Yeah.

- This is the budget session.

Yeah.

The thing that you're supposed to do by law have to do by law is in 20 days instead of the 40 days that we have last year, and that we'll have next year, is to get the biennium budget done.

And somewhat surprisingly to me, here we are with a couple of days still to go in the session that's now finished.

And as recently as a week ago when we were here, I know I was expecting sort of this knockdown, drag out, bare knuckled fight to the finish based on the discrepancies and the pace of work in the house.

You were part of this middle of the night, 150 amendment session a couple of weeks ago.

And the senate pretty proud of itself for saying, Hey, let's do this thing that in my mind is totally unprecedented.

Let's just accept the governor's budget and we'll start from there and then sit back and watch the scrapping around in the, in, in the house.

Yet when it came time to go to the conference committee, put the two bills against each other, they weren't, in terms of the billions of a budget wasn't that big a deal.

- Yeah.

- But almost immediately that got accomplished.

Do you think the so-called check gate thing that we were discussing earlier had any effect on speeding that process up?

Is that possible?

- I think that the budget was widely unpopular with the people of Wyoming.

And it is difficult to juggle multiple things that the public is unhappy with.

I don't know what was in the minds of JCC, I wasn't even in the room for that.

But I will say that I think the public deserves an immense amount of gratitude to themselves because they said we're not okay with cutting the budget to the University of Wyoming.

We're not okay with seeing our public television and our public media taken away from us.

- For the record, I didn't ask you to say that, but thank you for saying it.

- Yeah.

I, I think that, I mean, again, people want transparency.

Not a good year to cut funding to the press.

So I, I just think that all of the public outcry for what was the original budget bill meant something.

And that is the power of the people.

And it's, it's a beautiful thing.

- I knew a legislator in Fremont County years ago, and I asked him in an interview before the session, what are your constituents talking about?

And he said, honestly, I wish more constituents would contact me about things.

I really don't hear all that much.

And he, he lamented that he said, I, that that means that we hear more from other legislators, from party operatives, from lobbyists and not as much from the public.

I get the feeling this year and had more people just informally tell me they got more feedback on the budget than they've ever had in their careers.

And some of 'em have been in the legislature for a long time.

Yeah.

You heard some of this too, presumably.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

I think people are catching on.

I think that they're engaged.

I think that there are just people across the state who are hungry for something else.

And so that, so they're making sure that those things are heard.

And again, I think that having more public engagement and, and more civic education is very helpful.

- So the, the two bills came together fairly quickly and passed fairly quickly.

And I think the governor signed it yesterday, didn't he?

And so it's that part of it's finished.

Are you satisfied with the outcome of the budget, relatively speaking?

- Yeah.

I think overall, certainly from where we started, we're in a much better position.

Yeah.

You know, I'll say I didn't get everything on my Christmas wishlist.

And for anybody that watched on second reading amendments, I kept saying, this is a love letter to moms and babies.

'cause I brought amendments to fund maternal health care.

I brought amendments for rural hospitals.

I brought amendments for our public defender's office.

And those things didn't all necessarily get adopted, but for the most part, we, we took care of maternal healthcare, of mental healthcare.

We took care of our public employees.

And that that was a, that was a big one, I think had that amendment not made it in, I would've continued to be a no vote on, on the budget.

And we saw increased funding for seniors for disability waivers, wildfire recovery, invasive grasses.

I mean, we were able to, the, the dozens, I think dozens of hours maybe, you know, how many hours we spent debating in the house side.

I've never seen so much debate.

But all of the things that we fought for, for our communities, or at least many of them were included in the final budget.

So those grueling hours to one 30 in the morning maybe didn't pay off in the, in the house in terms of our amendments passing.

But the people back home saw that we were fighting.

And the the end result was that we got what we needed for our communities for the most part.

- In the recent years, you've had both Senator Rothfus and Representative Sherwood here for the show as well, and they echoed each other to an extent and said, one of the things that we intend to do to make a contribution is just to be heard on these, these issues.

And I know that Senator Roth, for example, on the K 12 recalibration bill, which I'm gonna ask you about in a minute.

- Yeah.

- He, he stepped forward and he kind of, he helped, he helped bridge a lot of gaps there by presenting a big detailed amendment that aimed at solving some problems.

And it helped everybody move forward.

It wasn't like it was a bill that he sponsored that got passed and signed into law, but there's a democrat who is a very respected guy.

I think everybody who's watched for all these years knows that.

And that's a kind of a contribution that minority party can make.

- Yeah.

- Needs to make.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I think that there's many times that I have gotten up and said, this is, you know, this doesn't align with our constitution.

And that has, has changed the body's actions.

And, and I think that there's just, yeah, there's ample opportunity for the minority party to continue to bring the solutions and hope that the other side takes them.

- So now there's time to debate and look over the huge K through 12 education recalibration bill.

Yeah.

Which you pointed out in debate that I heard said, you know, this, there hasn't been the last time the legislator legislature managed to pass this thing, which is supposed to be done every five years, was when you were a child.

He said, and it's been a long time and it's a big, big, big, big bill.

The last time it was done was 2011, but I'll note that that was a 40 day general session.

- Yeah.

- This is the sort of bill which normally could consume an entire session almost by itself.

Now there's a little more time.

You went through lots of debate on it today that I happened to hear.

We're gonna get there.

- I think so.

I mean the, the amendment that I was concerned about tonight was removed.

I think we're back in constitutionality.

I think we're providing equitable funding for quality education across the state of Wyoming, which is the constitutional mandate.

Right.

So I think we are doing right by our teachers.

I think we're doing right by our students.

And yeah, I, I mean, I, I voted for it and, and I voted, I voted down the recalibration bill that originally came to the house.

And I think now seeing where we ended up, that was a good strategic move.

- Right.

We had speaker Nyman on, and he was professed some sort of shock that that had happened because he claimed it worked a lot on the interim.

We finally got a committee vote that brought it out that had been a unanimous vote, and then all of a sudden it, there was a a, a change.

But here, two or three weeks later, you think it, that wasn't all bad.

I mean, we got to a better place because of that.

- Yeah.

I think that the Senate got to have a, a good conversation that brought the bill closer to where our educators and our kids needed it to be.

And it came over to the house and it largely reflected what was done over there and, and certainly reflected what I think our educators across the state need to ensure that equitable quality education for all of our children.

- So again, an example I think I hear you saying where lawmakers heard from constituents and thought, well, maybe this isn't the way to go.

Shouldn't they have heard cons from constituents during that long committee process in the interim?

I mean, - I think they did.

Yeah.

I, I mean, I think that I wasn't at recalibration.

Yeah.

I would've liked to have served on the committee, but I wasn't given the opportunity.

Sure.

But I, I understand that people showed up and, and I think that that brought the bill closer, but it, it just, it needed it, it just continued to need some work and, and it's a big undertaking.

- Oh boy.

- So, you know, I don't fault anybody at this point, but I am, I'm grateful we passed what I think is a quality recalibration bill and is really gonna set the tone for how do we take care of our teachers and our kids and our community schools?

- What takes another 15 years to do it.

Yeah.

Better get it right this time.

- Yeah.

Golly g we better get it right.

- Hope it doesn't take that long.

Yeah.

But history can, will be the judge of that.

You're, I'm not calling names or anything, but you're sometimes called a lightning rod, a firebrand kind of a person, a legislature.

I've just met you today for the first time.

Do you mind that characterization?

- No, I am driven by my core convictions of integrity.

And if that's a lightning rod, then maybe that's what we - Need.

I've, I've observed just casually outside the studio and outside the chambers, as you're walking along, people speak to you and say things to you and you turn and say, give it right back to them.

You're not here to be anybody's punching bag.

I have a feeling.

- No, I don't think I'm anybody's punching bag.

And I think that the people of house District 45 would house, district 45 would say that I'm a warrior for them.

And to me, that's what matters.

I'm fighting for the people back home and I'm, I'm fighting for the people of Wyoming, not just my district.

And I think that the people of Wyoming would probably support that statement at this point.

- So you're finishing, or you're, you're in your third term now in election year 2026 gonna run again.

- I am, - I'll reveal that we're here coming up on 9:00 PM - Yeah.

- On a, on a Wednesday.

And you've had a long, long day.

You made time for us.

I do appreciate that.

And some people have described you in media reports as embattled.

I don't get the sense of that from you just sitting here with you and - Yeah.

I, I sleep just fine at night knowing that I'm on the right side of history.

- That's a, I I'm happy to hear that tonight will be one of those nights.

So for more ways of reasons than one, I have a feeling Karlee Provenza Thanks.

Good luck with the rest of the session.

Thanks for being with us on Capital Outlook.

- Thanks for having me.