Posted Tuesday, March 7, 2017 3:18 pm

Local staffers for Wyoming’s three members of Congress heard plenty of concerns to pass along to their bosses during a meeting in Powell last week.

Around 28 citizens attended the “office hours” hosted by field representatives for Sens. Mike Enzi and John Barrasso and Rep. Liz Cheney — a dramatic increase from typical meetings — and many attendees took aim at the country’s direction under Republican President Donald Trump and the Republican-led Congress.

“We’ve got an unstable president who’s loaded the cabinet with billionaires and incompetents and this worries me,” Geoff Baumann of Powell told the staffers. “It seems to me that our Congress is so far to the right that all they’re doing is stumbling over each other to get further to the right.”

“It’s just not the country that I grew up (in) and learned about,” Baumann said. “It’s just such a mess right now.”

A number of attendees specifically faulted Wyoming’s Republican delegation on their efforts to roll back environmental regulations. Other commenters weighed in on a wide range of issues during the hour-long session, generally taking positions to the left of Enzi, Barrasso and Cheney; their comments included concern about restrictions on immigration, the potential impact to preventive health care for women if the Affordable Care Act is repealed, a need for limits on campaign spending by corporations, a request to limit mentally ill individuals’ ability to acquire firearms, support for a woman’s ability to have an abortion and opposition to tax dollars going to private schools that teach creationism.

People across the country, often led by those with more liberal leanings, have been demanding that their representatives and senator host town hall sessions across the country and listen to their constituents.

The very first question for the field representatives — Jennifer Fernandez for Enzi, Pam Buline for Barrasso and Lindy Linn for Rep. Liz Cheney — was why the delegation itself wasn’t present.

Buline explained that the field representatives hold the listening sessions four times a year — and that Enzi, Barrasso and Cheney were working in Washington last week.

“Do they have plans to come any time soon?” pressed Marynell Oechsner of Powell.

“I can’t answer that, but we will sure put the request in,” Buline responded; the staffers added that Enzi, Barrasso and Cheney would be responding to the concerns raised at the meeting by letter.

Toward the close of the hour-long gathering, Mickey Waddell of Powell said it was obvious that “we have a lot of concerns and in this … one-sided state, they (Wyoming’s delegation) seem to think they don’t have to be accountable.”

“You gals have good benefits and good salaries,” Waddell told the three staffers, saying she previously worked for a senator. “But … if you can’t answer the questions, then why are we having this meeting? You’re the go-between? They need to be here; they need to see us and understand us.”

Waddell added that, “this is happening all over the country because they’re afraid to come back and answer to the people. We are the people, and I want them here to visit us as soon as possible — not a letter in the mail.”

Jim McEvoy of Powell was among those who challenged the delegation’s efforts to boost the declining coal market, saying “nothing’s going to bring it back.”

“Why are they turning back regulations intended to protect the environment: our water, our air, the climate?” McEvoy asked, also saying that global warming is “serious and it’s detrimental to the whole planet.”

Mike Specht of Clark, the chairman of the Park County Democratic Party, asked the delegation to require higher reclamation bonds and royalty rates from coal companies.

Locals who hold differing views from Republican leaders in Wyoming and Washington, D.C., have spoken up in recent months. That included a Park County Women and Allies March the day after Trump’s inauguration and delivering a petition with 95 signatures opposing Betsy DeVos’ confirmation as Secretary of Education to Sen. Enzi’s Cody office in February.

Meanwhile, about a half-dozen of the attendees at Thursday’s office hours came specifically to express concern about the negative impact that the federal Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014 — better known as just the Choice Act — is having on local veterans as they seek medical care. Those concerns will be detailed in a future Tribune story.