CHEYENNE -- This is the time of year when legislative committee work is coming to fruition after several meetings since lawmakers adjourned in March.

As usual, there has been and will be a cluster of committee meetings right up until the Christmas holiday, and then on into January to the Feb. 8 opening of the short 20-day budget session.

You may ask: Why should I care?

Well, legislators may be cooking up a fuel tax increase or intend to remove a tax exemption you now enjoy, among other things. Those proposals are before the Joint Interim Revenue Committee.

Committee work by individual legislators is time-gobbling and tedious, but it is the meat of the legislative process. Committee bills traditionally carry more weight and have a better chance of passing the Legislature.

The system works like this:

* Near the end of a legislative session, members of the standing committees meet separately and talk over what they want to study during the interim, listing the topics by priority. They estimate the number of meetings and the cost.

* The chairmen take the lists to the legislative management council, which includes legislative leaders who serve as the administrative arm of the Legislature. The council may change the priorities or add topics. For example, the Joint Judiciary Committee had a budget of $30,000 for three 2-day meetings.

The main business of the budget session is, of course, the budget. All non-budget bills need a two-thirds majority vote to be considered.

The exception -- in the House, but not the Senate -- is for interim committee bills.

Sen. Gerald Geis, R-Worland, believes the decline in state revenues will limit the number of non-budget bills to be offered this session, given the actions of the committees on which he sits.

With 28 years in the Senate, Geis has seen sessions before when the legislators thought they were running out of money.

"So we'll ride this one and see what happens," Geis said.

"I think this session is probably going to be one of extreme caution because of the amount of uncertainty in the environment we're looking at," said Sen. Charles Scott, R-Casper, who has served four years in the House and 27 years in the Senate.

He noted that revenue projections show a worse picture in the 2013-14 biennium than the next biennium that starts July 1, 2010. That was the pattern in the last economic bust, Scott said.

Another uncertainty is national health care reform.

Scott is chairman of the Senate Committee on Labor, Health and Social Services, which will ultimately have to respond to the reform plan if it passes Congress.

"I just see a tremendous amount of uncertainty, Scott said.

Gov. Dave Freudenthal will submit his budget recommendation to the legislators by Dec. 1, as required by state law. He said his budget is "static" and has no money for cost-of-living raises for state employees or schools.

There will be enough dollars to adequately fund school and school capital construction, but not a whole lot for cities, towns and counties and non-school capital projects, he told reporters last week.

Freudenthal cut 10 percent from state agency budget last spring.

Sen. Mike Massie, D-Laramie, a member of the Joint Appropriations Committee, and other lawmakers want to look at the state's rainy-day accounts for one-time spending for local governments, for example.

Massie said he believes the consensus is that revenues will come close to paying for the standard budgets for state agencies and no further cuts will be necessary.

Three so-called rainy-day accounts will have more than $900 million balances at the end of the current biennium. They are the legislative stabilization reserve account at $692 million; the budget reserve account, $96 million; and the spending policy reserve account, $130 million, according to the report from the Consensus Revenue Estimating Group.

Another Joint Appropriations Committee member, Sen. Curt Meier, R-LaGrange, opposes raiding the rainy-day accounts. He said the state lost more than $1 billion in expected revenue over a one-year period. The state should have at least that much money in reserves in case revenues tank again in the future, he said.

Meier expects lots of discussion on lack of additional money for the wildlife trust fund and other trust funds and on education in general.

Contact Joan Barron by e-mail at joan.barron@trib.com or by phone at (307) 632-1244.

Work before the session

The Wyoming Legislature has 10 standing committees and 10 select committees that have been studying issues ranging from taxes to noxious weeds in the interim between legislative sessions. The following is a list of standing committees that will meet in November and December, followed by the assigned work topics of other standing committees:

Joint Judiciary Committee

* Nov. 16-17, University of Wyoming College of Law, Laramie

* Nov. 18, Herschler Building, Room 1699, Cheyenne

The committee will consider draft legislation relating to juvenile justice matters, liens, duty of care, court security officers and carbon sequestration permit requirements.

Joint Revenue Committee

* Nov. 18-19, Capitol Building, Room 302, Cheyenne

The committee will continue its work on approved interim topics including the receipt of the Wind Energy Task Force report, tax increment financing, taxation of digital products, the CAMA system, and consideration of proposed legislation on revenues and exemptions.

The committee will discuss eight draft bills:

* To remove the exemptions for fire protection, pollution control and underground mining equipment.

* To require annual application for charitable, religious and private schools which are exempt from taxation.

* To remove the exemption for a certain volume of carbon dioxide.

* To remove all sales and use tax exemptions which are not constitutionally required.

* To impose a fuel tax increase phased in over two years.

* To impose a statewide property tax levy.

* To impose a tax on the production of electricity.

* To create a task force to study zero-based budgeting.

Joint Appropriations Committee

* Dec. 7-11, Capitol Building, Room 204, Cheyenne

The committee will hold budget hearings for state agencies.

The committee also was assigned to

* Study the cash flow for the Hathaway Scholarship Program and other endowment accounts.

* Study health insurance costs for active state, university and community college employees.

* Analyze state retirement cost-of-living increases.

* Address future large county and municipal projects.

* Look at community health center money.

Joint Labor, Health and Social Services Committee

* Dec. 7, Capitol Building, Room 302, Cheyenne

The committee's major assignment is to analyze the impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and other federal legislation on state programs. The committee also is studying workplace safety, including any initiatives from the governor's office; compensation of health care providers; and review of about 20 reports from state agencies.

Other committees that will be meeting before the session and their major interim assignments:

* Joint Education Committee -- school district accountability, including measurements of individual student achievement; school foundation program reductions if necessary; and transportation and special education funding.

* Joint Agriculture, State and Public Lands and Water Resources Committee -- brucellosis management, the responsibility of the Wyoming Livestock Board in managing pet animals, water management, invasive plants and rangeland monitoring.

* Joint Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee -- creation of a preference point program for resident elk, deer and antelope licenses; update of the free and reduced price license recoupment program; reports on wolf management, sage grouse and wildlife heritage foundation; and a master plan for state tourism board.

* Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee -- Review statutes on limited liability companies and special districts; low-voltage licensing by the State Fire Marshal's Office; energy utility rate making and its impact on consumers.

* Joint Transportation, Highways and Military Affairs Committee -- Interstate 80 funding and tolling options; statutes on abandoned vehicles and recreational vehicle registration; the need for additional snow fences; Wyoming Department of Transportation contracting procedures; and funding of the state's public transportation systems.

* Joint Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee -- sanitary landfills, report from the carbon sequestration work group, development of wind power, clean coal technology, energy transmission issues, regulation of collection agencies.

The 10 select committees on water development, archaic laws, legislative technology and process, air transportation, tribal relations, legislative facilities, natural resource funding, school facilities, capital financing and investment and water have been working on issues related to their specific topics.

-- Compiled by Joan Barron