Local prosecutor running as Republican for Senate District 5

Wyoming Tribune-Eagle - 4/30/2018

April 30--CHEYENNE -- A Laramie County prosecutor is announcing his bid to be the next Republican state senator from District 5, which serves west-central Laramie County.

Ryan Wright says he's running to reduce crime and recidivism, boost the state's economy and apply a forward-looking view to ensure success in the future.

Wright was raised in Sheridan, graduating from Sheridan College at just 17 years old. He became a licensed insurance agent at 18 and later completed his undergraduate degree in political science at Northern Arizona University, according to a news release.

He then attended Georgetown University's law school and worked under then-Chairman U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee before moving to New York City to practice commercial and corporate law.

He returned to Wyoming in 2012 and moved to Laramie County in 2015 to work at the Laramie County District Attorney's Office.

Wright said his experience has given him a unique view of escalating crime in Laramie County and how it could be remedied through changes to the law.

"Something needs to be done," he said. "We don't have any prosecutors in the state Legislature, and there are very few people with a criminal justice background. It's really difficult to fix laws that you don't understand are broken."

While handling felony drug crimes for federal courts and the Laramie County District Attorney's Office, Wright said he became familiar with the cycle of addiction that creates a revolving door for some offenders.

"A lot of the crime that we prosecute and that keeps happening is substance abuse related -- it's drugs, it's alcohol, it's a mixture of the two," he said. "As soon as (the offender) is done with treatment, they go back to the same group of friends ... and they fall back into the same pattern."

One way to remedy the problem could be to make it easier for people to get treatment out of state, he said.

"Then they can actually break the cycle of being away from all the people and all of the other users and dealers in their life," Wright said.

Another way to stop the cycle is to adequately fund treatment programs in state corrections facilities, he said.

"We try to save a dollar today and we spend 10 tomorrow because these people don't get adequate services, we can't do what we need to be doing," he said.

And in order to fix the state's perennial budget issues, Wright said the state needs to take a forward-thinking approach.

One of the ways to boost state coffers and ensure financial stability would be to invest heavily in the state's sovereign funds, he said. In Fiscal Year 2017, the state treasurer's office managed nearly $20.8 billion in investible funds. The largest, the Permanent Wyoming Mineral Trust Fund, had a market value of more than $7.6 billion in Fiscal Year 2017.

"Focusing on the growth of sovereign funds is vital," Wright said. "I know there have been some people who have suggested taking money out of these funds or putting less in ... but really, these are the retirement funds for the state, for all the citizens."

In the short term, Wright suggested raising money through a property tax system based on use, changing the law to allow the government to tap into millions of dollars in unwanted property that has sat in the state treasurer's office for more than 10 years and investing in more vocational training.

Another option is attracting technological businesses, he said.

The Wyoming Legislature recently passed bills that open the door for more widespread use of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin.

"The main problems here is sometimes we don't give enough support and encourage things like that," he said. "We are the perfect climate for data storage, data mining (and) data processing ... but a lot of the stuff requires people to understand that if you don't build the legal structure for it, they're not coming."

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