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Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Daily Darwin: Sunday, January 8, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Unlikely to end well...

Daily Darwin: Sunday, January 8, 2023

Kerry Drake

Business & Tourism

Business

LARAMIE — The closure of any rural Wyoming hospital is “an economic earthquake” in a rural state that already has huge holes in its access to health care.

That’s the message Natrona Collective Health Trust (NCHT) CEO Beth Worthen had Friday during a statewide Healthcare Policy Summit at the Hilton Garden Inn.

If that’s true, Wyoming could have up to six tremors — three within the next two to three years — if hospitals now at risk of closure actually shut their doors.

“It doesn't just mean patients drive farther. It means the employer anchoring that town's economy disappears,” said Worthen. "The payroll that sustained the main street, the school funding, the housing market — gone.”

Worthen said she’s worried that the future of these institutions may be impacted by an initiative Wyoming voters will see on their ballots in November’s general election, when they will be asked to exempt 50% of a primary residence’s assessed value from property taxes.

Worthen noted that many of Wyoming’s rural hospitals and the 18 hospital districts statewide depend on local property tax revenue to operate.

They are already dealing with the loss of 25% of property tax revenue that the Legislature approved in 2025, she said.

"That (property tax) revenue is part of what keeps emergency departments open, labor and delivery wards staffed, and the lights on in communities where no private operator would stay,” said Worthen. 

NCHT, Wyoming’s largest private foundation, is not taking a position on the ballot initiative.

But Worthen said voters need to understand that a significant reduction in property tax revenues in a community where a hospital is already operating on thin margins “isn’t a separate question from rural hospital sustainability. It's the same question.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Thin Margins"}]

To understand how thin hospital margins really are, Jeff Sollis, CEO of St. John’s Health in Jackson, shared how much his hospital receives in payments.

Sollis said 60% of the payer mix is from Medicare and 6% from Medicaid. A total of 29% is from health insurance payments, and 5% is self-paid by patients.

"We get paid around $90 million from Medicare and our costs are $120 million,” he said. “Medicaid reimburses us $2.8 million for $10 million of work. We lose about $43.7 million a year from providing services.”

Sollis said it’s only when private insurance pays that St. John’s is able to make up some of the difference, which annually leaves the hospital 5% in the hole.

“We have to figure out how we get to a 5% gain so we can reinvest in our people, our facilities, and technology,” he said. “So, it’s a very challenging set of circumstances.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Maternity Desert"}]

About 22% — more than one-fifth — of Wyoming is considered a “maternity desert” where communities don’t have birthing facilities or an obstetrical physician, the 

Since 2022, hospitals in Evanston, Rawlins, Kemmerer and Wheatland have closed their labor and delivery wards, Worthen said.

Wyoming now has 16 birthing hospitals across 97,000 square miles, she said, adding that hospitals find it exceptionally difficult to recruit and retain OB-GYNs.

Casper, a regional hub for health care services, had six OB-GYNs 18 months ago. Now there are two.

Marguerite Herman of Healthy Wyoming, which has long advocated for Medicaid expansion that the Legislature has repeatedly elected not to do, attended the summit and addressed the maternity desert issue.

“It’s one of those things where you have high fixed costs and low volume,” she said. “It’s just not going to pencil out for a hospital in Rawlins to have a full maternity ward.

“But at the same time, is this something that the state owes its residents, to not have to travel more than 100 miles to deliver a baby in the freezing winter?

Herman said the state may need to find supplemental money, whether it’s from the state or federal governments, to provide critical birthing centers in rural areas.

Worthen openly wonders if Wyoming officials have the political will to do that.

“Other states, like Alaska, are doing things better than we are, and they actually have more challenging geography than we have,” Worthen said. “We need the will to put the pieces together to keep our children here.”

Worthen, a sixth-generation Wyomingite, said her son Connor is a game warden in Saratoga, and his wife Kylie just graduated from the University Law School.

She said they want to have children, which fills Worthen “with a combination of joy and dread.”

The nearest obstetrician to Saratoga is in Laramie.

Worthen said that in the summer, it’s a lovely 45-minute drive over the Snowy Range, but in winter the trip must be made on Interstate 80, and the drive time at least doubles.

“A woman in her ninth month is not calculating that drive in ideal conditions,” Worthen said. “Two of my three children have left Wyoming for opportunities they couldn’t find here. I want to see my grandchildren born here."

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<title>Six Wyoming Hospitals Are At Risk Of Closure, Wyoming Health Official Warns | Cowboy State Daily</title>

At a healthcare summit in Laramie on Friday, one health official said six Wyoming hospitals are at risk of closure. Natrona Collective Health Trust CEO Beth Worthen said closing rural Wyoming hospitals would be “an economic earthquake."

Six Wyoming Hospitals Are At Risk Of Closure, Wyoming Health Official Warns

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center issued 

which could bring more of what Wyoming doesn’t need — warmer, drier conditions.

After monitoring above-average temperatures in the Pacific Ocean for the last month, the NWS believes that, “El Niño conditions are present and expected to strengthen into the Northern Hemisphere winter 2026-27,” according to the advisory.

“There is a 63% chance of a very strong El Niño during November-January … that would rank among the largest El Niño events in the historical record going back to 1950,” the advisory reads. “Even very strong El Niño events do not lead to the expected impact everywhere, but stronger events can more significantly tilt the odds in favor of expected outcomes.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Weather watchers around the world noticed the NOAA predictions."}]

 discussed how El Niño can “supercharge” hurricanes in the Pacific and worsen drought from the Caribbean and southern Africa to Australia.

 referenced studies that concluded El Niño has a history of leading to European food insecurity, severe forest fires, and civil wars in the tropics.

, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres described El Niño as an "urgent climate warning" and said that the anticipated impacts “will pour fuel on the fire of a warming world."

Yet even with high certainty of a strong El Niño, there’s still a lot of uncertainty about what that means for Wyoming and the world over the next year.

Cowboy State Daily meteorologist Don Day is calling for patience as this system develops.

“We're going to have an El Niño,” he said. “It's going to be a strong one, and it's going to impact global weather patterns, but what does it exactly mean for Mister Joe in DuBois, Wyoming? We’re going to have to wait and see how the pattern unfolds.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Advised Vs Favored"}]

The El Niño advisory is NOAA’s most direct acknowledgment that a strong El Niño has been developing. However, that doesn’t mean extrapolating predictions and long-range forecasts has become any easier.

“The advisory means that El Niño conditions are present and expected to strengthen into the winter,” said meteorologist Noah Myers with the NWS office in Riverton. “It's really hard to draw conclusions from that.”

Myers said the best thing meteorologists can do right now is compare current El Niño patterns with those of previous El Niño years. Then, they can determine what’s “favorable” in the months ahead in terms of temperatures and precipitation.

[{"type":"text","text":"However, determining what’s favorable is not the same as a guarantee."}]

“Whatever’s favored doesn’t mean we're going to absolutely be warmer, drier, colder, or wetter depending on where you are,” Myers said. “It’s what has happened, on average, in the past in these conditions.”

Day said he and his fellow meteorologists tend to be “our own worst enemies” in this respect. 

He’s particularly perturbed by the runaway narrative of the “super El Niño” that’s been circulating for months but kicked into overdrive with NOAA’s advisory.

“If you're going to tell people it's going to be the strongest El Niño of all time, it would be really good to also say something that's going to be six months from now is subject to change,” he said. “It's really hard to glob on to one particular outcome, especially this far in advance.”

Day said he could show people maps of the last 20 documented El Niños, and none of them would be exactly the same. Trying to pinpoint which of those years is most similar to what will manifest later this year would be an effort in futility.

“There are trends and similarities, but they're never exactly the same every time,” he said. “People need to be aware of that.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Wyoming’s Lack Of Favor"}]

Even with all the uncertainty, NOAA’s El Niño advisory is significant. Nobody’s denying that or its determination that it could be one of the strongest in the last 50 years.

“The safest bet is that there’s an El Niño coming, and it's going to be strong,” Day said. “How the impacts unfold really depends on what could happen five or six months from now.”

[{"type":"text","text":"But what is the most likely outcome? "}]

Myers had some insight on what tends to be favorable in Wyoming during El Niño years.

For one thing, El Niño tends to be more of a winter pattern than a summer one. NOAA might have issued its advisory this month, but the significant impacts won’t be felt until later this year.

“Winter is when these impacts are most pronounced,” Myers said. “We don't usually see as strong an impact during the summer.”

As tends to happen with all weather systems, El Niño won’t have an equitable impact on Wyoming. According to Myers, there are consistent trends that pop up from studying years past.

“Going into the winter, we usually see slightly warmer temperatures across northern and western Wyoming, and normal or slightly cooler temperatures across central and southern Wyoming,” he said.

When it comes to precipitation, Myers said El Niño tends to make Wyoming dry “across the board,” but that’s been especially true in northwest Wyoming.

“The Absarokas, Tetons, and Yellowstone National Park is where we’d see the driest conditions, but it’s drier pretty much everywhere in Wyoming,” he said.

That’s not a great El Niño outlook. It’s also very far from a guarantee of what Wyomingites should expect.

“We’ve observed El Niños when it’s been the exact opposite of what I just described,” Myers said. “There are clues that can tell us what might happen, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Months To Go"}]

Day is unmoved by most articles and forecasts about El Niño, 

, and “the strongest El Niño in half a century.” For him, those are bold statements to make this early.

“We're several months removed from when the biggest El Niño impacts happen in this part of the country, and here we are in June talking about a Super El Niño,” he said. “Every El Niño has its own personality and different sets of results. That’s why I'm a lot more cautious.”

Day’s caution stems from several months of long-range models collapsing in their seasonal predictions. 

in Wyoming until it turned out to be one of 

With that track record, one can see why Day’s reluctant to offer any predictions on what’ll happen when El Niño reaches Wyoming, let alone what its strongest impacts will be this winter.

For Day, “nothing’s changed” with NOAA’s El Niño advisory. He’s acknowledged that El Niño is coming, and the odds favor a strong El Niño, but that’s as far as he’s willing to go.

“NOAA’s going for it,” he said. “We've got El Niño, but we're not in an El Niño yet.”

Myers agreed that it’s best to stay cautious, even with the certainty of a coming El Niño.

“The conditions are present, and El Niño is favored,” he said. “El Niño does have a tendency for cooler-than-normal summers during El Niño years, so we might see that as we transition into it, but we don’t know what’s going to happen at this point.”

All the discussion on what is or isn’t favorable or likely as a strong El Niño develops can be frustrating for Wyomingites.

With an ongoing drought following an extremely disappointing winter, the prospect of another long-term weather pattern favoring warmer, drier conditions for another full season isn’t encouraging.

Day understands that frustration, which is why he’s not buying into or promoting the deluge of what he calls El Niño “clickbait” that’s emerged since NOAA issued its advisory.

“People read these things, and they want to know what's that going to mean for them,” he said. “That's a perfectly reasonable question, and the perfectly reasonable scientific answer is we need to see how it develops.”

One thing Day and Myers reiterated is that Wyoming won’t experience El Niño’s strongest impacts until winter. For the sake of sanity, it’s best not to anticipate what might or might not happen once those impacts arrive.

“There’s plenty of time between now and then,” Day said. “There will probably be a strong El Niño, but we need to see how it develops. Let’s see how things come together.”

Nino don day 6 12 26

<title>NOAA Officially Declares El Niño Is Here, Don Day Still Ain't Buying It Yet | Cowboy State Daily</title>

NOAA and the National Weather Service have officially declared an El Niño has formed, which could mean more of what Wyoming doesn’t need — warmer, drier conditions. Wyoming meteorologist Don Day says he still ain’t buying it yet calling predictions "clickbait."

NOAA Officially Declares El Niño Is Here, Don Day Still Ain't Buying It Yet

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Crime & Courts

Courts

A Utah car dealer is facing 15 felony charges in Wyoming after state investigators uncovered what they describe as a trail of forged signatures, fake notary stamps and dead vehicle owners.

Court records show Scott Keith Pryor, owner of The Good Car Dealer in Salt Lake City, has been charged with 15 counts of falsification, alteration, forgery or counterfeiting of vehicle title documents.

Each count carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

A Laramie County judge found probable cause June 4 to support an arrest warrant, and as of Friday afternoon, the warrant hand’t been served on Pryor.

The investigation centers on 15 hail-damaged Wyoming vehicles, but Wyoming Department of Transportation investigator Shane Fox wrote in an affidavit that Pryor bought 292 vehicles worth nearly $2 million through Copart auctions during the previous 12 months.

At the center of the case is an investigation by Fox, a senior investigator with WYDOT's Compliance and Investigation Section.

Fox wrote that the case began after employees in the Laramie County Clerk's Office noticed more than a dozen duplicate title applications they described as "very odd" and suspicious.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Hailstorm Cars And Missing Titles"}]

The vehicles all trace back to a massive August 2025 Cheyenne hailstorm that caused widespread damage. 

Fox wrote that Pryor bought 15 Wyoming vehicles through Copart auctions in Colorado after insurance companies took possession of them following hail-damage claims.

Many of the vehicles were sold as "parts only," meaning they came with bills of sale rather than traditional titles.

Vehicles sold as parts-only units typically bring far less money than vehicles carrying clear titles. A clean title can dramatically increase a vehicle's resale value, the affidavit says.

Fox wrote that Pryor later submitted duplicate title applications through Laramie County in an attempt to obtain Wyoming titles for the vehicles.

[{"type":"text","text":"The applications all claimed the original titles had been lost."}]

Cheyenne auto dealer Dallas Tyrrell said dealers across southeast Wyoming are still dealing with the aftermath of the historic hailstorm.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Dead Woman"}]

One of Pryor's applications involved a Wyoming woman who died July 12, 2025, nearly three weeks before the Aug. 1 storm.

"It would have been impossible for (the woman) to sign the duplicate title application," Fox wrote.

The duplicate title application bearing her signature was dated March 5, 2026.

The investigator tracked down notaries and vehicle owners, the affidavit says. Several notaries allegedly told investigators the stamps were not theirs, the signatures were not theirs and they had never signed the documents in question.

Several vehicle owners also told investigators they never signed duplicate title applications.

In one case, Fox wrote that he met personally with a U.S. Air Force member stationed at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne.

The service member reviewed the paperwork and said he had never signed the application. The same pattern appears again and again, documented throughout an 11-page criminal affidavit.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Facebook Connection"}]

As investigators dug deeper, the trail led to a company called Tennessee Titles, the affidavit says.

Pryor allegedly told investigators he found the company through Facebook and paid about $150 per title application, Fox wrote.

The people he dealt with were identified only as "Rashard" and "Miss Catherine," and primarily communicated through Facebook Messenger.

When Fox asked to see proof, Pryor reportedly said the computer used for those messages had been replaced, and the records were no longer accessible.

Pryor could not provide documentation establishing the legitimacy of the company or proof of payment.

He did acknowledge obtaining lien releases from financial institutions and completing money orders that were mailed to the Laramie County Clerk's Office along with the duplicate title applications, the affidavit says.

By then, investigators had begun contacting vehicle owners scattered across multiple states.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Forged Names, Forged Stamps"}]

Fox wrote that one Colorado notary employed by Copart reviewed paperwork bearing her name and told investigators neither the stamp nor signature were hers. A Utah notary allegedly said the same thing.

Another notary denied notarizing multiple applications tied to the investigation, Fox wrote in the affidavit.

[{"type":"text","text":"Several vehicle owners denied authorizing the documents."}]

One business executive told investigators a person listed on a title application had no affiliation with the company and no authority to sign documents on its behalf.

[{"type":"text","text":"Fox wrote that he became convinced numerous signatures had been forged."}]

The affidavit details vehicle after vehicle, owner after owner and notary after notary, each producing similar results, the affidavit says.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Why Titles Matter"}]

The allegations may sound like little more than paperwork fraud, but Tyrrell said vehicle titles can dramatically affect a vehicle's value and whether buyers can insure, finance or legally operate it.

A clean title is every bit as important as what's under the hood, he confirmed. 

Tyrrell said reputable dealers carefully examine a vehicle's title history before offering it for sale.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"We see victims to scams like this all the time,\" he said."}]

Tyrrell said consumers should work with licensed, reputable dealers and pay close attention to a vehicle's title history before making a purchase.

"It's so important to use somebody that has a license and is reputable," he said, adding that often these scamsters don't get prosecuted at all because the schemes are comlex. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Long Road Ahead"}]

Fox believes the duplicate title applications allowed vehicles that had moved through the insurance and salvage system to re-enter the marketplace with Wyoming titles.

He wrote that some of the vehicles had previously been sold through Copart as salvage or parts-only units.

The affidavit alleges Pryor later sold the vehicles to buyers in Utah with unbranded titles, and at a "nice profit." 

Fox declined to answer questions about the case and did not respond to additional requests for comment.

Good car dealer 6 12 26

<title>Car Dealer Faces 15 Felonies In Alleged $2 Million Resale Of Hail-Damaged Cars | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Utah car dealer is facing 15 Wyoming felony charges for the alleged attempted illegal resale of nearly $2 million worth of hail-damaged vehicles. Investigators describe a trail of alleged forged signatures, fake notary stamps and dead vehicle owners.

Car Dealer Faces 15 Felonies In Alleged $2 Million Resale Of Hail-Damaged Cars

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

A retired Wyoming judge on Friday struck down three state-level abortion restrictions.

One would have required abortion clinics to be licensed as surgical centers and that abortionists to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 10 miles of the clinic. Another would have required women 

 an ultrasound 48 hours before taking abortion drugs.

The third law took on the abortion issue from a backward angle: it was a response to the COVID-19 era, when at least one Wyoming doctor reportedly suffered professional consequences for prescribing off-label drugs to treat

The Legislature in 2025 gave protections to doctors prescribing drugs off-label, but carved out abortion drugs so that medical professionals prescribing off-label abortion drugs wouldn’t enjoy those protections.

None of these laws survive the Wyoming Constitution’s call for health care autonomy, ruled District Court Judge Thomas Campbell, who was called to return to the bench in 2025 and oversee this case in place of any regularly-seated Natrona County District Court Judge.

The difference between retired judges recalled to service and seated district court judges in Wyoming is that seated judges face retention elections every six years.

Campbell’s Friday order gave summary judgment — which is a pre-trial win — to the pro-choice coalition suing the state.

The judge said the pro-choice group provided evidence “that abortion is inherently safe.”

[{"type":"text","text":"The ‘Johnson’ Ruling"}]

Campbell’s order relies on the Jan. 6 ruling by the Wyoming Supreme Court, called the “Johnson” ruling. 

That ruling struck down two laws that together banned nearly all abortions, but had exemptions for medical emergencies, rape, and incest. 

The Johnson case, a landmark ruling in Wyoming, declares that abortion access is a fundamental health care right under the Constitution’s health care clause. 

To overcome that right, the state would have to survive the most rigorous standard in constitutional law and show it has a compelling interest to restrict the right, and that its restrictions are both capable of achieving that interest and narrowly tailored to do so.

According to Campbell, Wyoming didn’t bring adequate evidence to show it needs these abortion restrictions. The judge blocked all three laws, permanently, from being enforced.

“In these instances, the Court agrees with the (pro

choice group) Plaintiffs’ characterization that these laws ‘are solutions in need of a problem,’” wrote Campbell in the order.

The Wyoming Attorney General’s Office had argued that the ultrasound requirement would help protect women who don’t know they have ectopic pregnancies and take abortion drugs, risking ruptures and other serious conditions.

Campbell said the study the state brought as evidence was inadequate 

 there were anachronisms in the evidence.

As for the 48-hour waiting period, wrote Campbell, “the State cites 

 empirical evidence regarding the propriety of a waiting period.”

The AG’s office had argued, conversely, that the waiting period would help a woman consider the accuracy of her ultrasound and whether she wants a second opinion on it.

The state had defended the law requiring clinics to meet surgical center requirements by noting that it would tether abortion clinics to cleanliness standards in the associated Wyoming Department of Health rules.

But the state failed to show that the abortion clinic isn’t already meeting cleanliness standards, Campbell parried.

“Thus, the Court cannot conclude this concern is justified,” wrote Campbell. “Instead, the harm remains speculative.”

Regarding the law’s requirement for admitting privileges, the state had argued that abortionists should be linked with a nearby hospital because otherwise, they could simply send harmed women to an emergency room and dodge accountability for botched surgeries.

Campbell called that allegation conclusory, and said the state offered no evidence “regarding the prevalence of such an event.”

Campbell also maintained that the carveout under Wyoming’s off-label protection law acted like a harm to those prescribing chemical abortions.

“As the Plaintiffs aptly note, mifepristone and misoprostol are the most common medications prescribed for a chemical abortion,” Campbell wrote, “the combination of which is considered an ‘off-label indication’ for the drugs.”

By excluding them from protections, the carveout would have greenlit consequences for chemical abortion providers, Campbell concluded.

[{"type":"text","text":"And The Next Rodeo"}]

Wyoming has been defending its many abortion bans and restrictions from roughly the same pro-choice coalition since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and made the issue a state-level policy decision in 2022. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Even after the Johnson case and Friday's ruling, the battle continues. "}]

The Legislature passed the Human Heartbeat Act in its most recent lawmaking session, banning abortions generally after the point in gestation at which a fetal heartbeat can be heard, about six weeks. 

A retired Wyoming judge on Friday struck down three state-level abortion laws, including one requiring abortion clinics be licensed as surgical centers. He said the pro-choice group challenging the laws provided evidence “that abortion is inherently safe.”

Daily Darwin: Sunday, January 8, 2023

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