Members of the Select Committee on Gaming spent the bulk of its Aug. 8 meeting debating how to restore or rework local control over where and whether HHR and other pari‑mutuel activities may locate.

The committee discussed a working draft (26 LSO 0 1 45, working draft 01:45) intended to give local governments a formal role in permitting gaming-related premises. Representative Johnson argued the draft should be rewritten so that local control would be exercised through zoning rather than a local licensing/approval step, saying, “I would like this to be exclusively a zoning issue, and local authorities shall issue a permit if the permitting approval is gone through the commission,” and suggesting zoning would prevent local officials from picking winners and losers. Other members disagreed, saying changing the bill to adopt a zoning framework would be a dramatic structural shift that could have large unintended consequences and likely kill the bill this year.

A motion by Representative Johnson to strike the local-approval language (effectively removing subsection g and replacing it later with zoning language) went to discussion and a voice vote. The amendment failed on a voice vote. Following that vote, the committee did not adopt Representative Johnson’s substitution, but it did take two steps to advance the package of proposals:

- The body voted to carry the existing working draft forward to the next meeting in its current form. That motion passed on a voice vote.
- The committee also instructed Legislative Service Office (LSO) to draft a second, separate bill that would pursue local control via zoning and conditional‑use permitting. The chairs requested that the draft include a starting limit for the number of HHR terminals per permitted racetrack (the chairs suggested 1,200 terminals as a placeholder) and direction that the Gaming Commission promulgate rules consistent with any statutory changes.

The debate focused on three practical problems with switching to zoning: 1) many Wyoming counties do not have zoning ordinances, so zoning would not uniformly deliver local control; 2) once a use is zoned in, property owners gain vested rights (often referred to in committee discussion as “takings” risk) that can make it difficult to later remove or limit uses; and 3) a wholesale swap to zoning was viewed as a sweeping restructuring that would require more time than the task force has available this interim. Matt Hall of the Wyoming Association of Municipalities and Jeremiah Ryman of the Wyoming County Commissioners Association each told the committee that many municipalities and counties lack detailed zoning tools to address gaming and that any zoning-based approach would likely require additional technical assistance and time to implement.

Several committee members said they would support pursuing a separate, more focused zoning bill (or competing bills) next session rather than making the change inside the current working draft. The chairs instructed LSO to begin drafting the zoning-focused bill and to coordinate with local governments and the Gaming Commission so the task force could evaluate the proposal at its next meeting.

Ending: The committee did not adopt Representative Johnson’s zoning substitution but kept local control central to its work. Members directed staff to produce a separate zoning bill draft, and they carried the existing working draft forward for additional work at the next meeting.