One More For The Road

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

<title>One More For The Road: Friday, September 1, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Go ahead and put that anywhere...

One More For The Road: Friday, September 1, 2023

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

Clair McFarland

Government & Politics

Politics

Media outlets gasped last week at the socialist movement’s success in the New York congressional 

That success headed west Tuesday, to Wyoming’s southern neighbor of Colorado.

Democratic socialist Melat Kiros, 29, defeated 15-term incumbent U.S. House Rep. Diana DeGette in Tuesday evening’s primary election.

Colorado Public Radio called the ouster “a stunning blow to the Democratic establishment in Denver and continuing a run of leftist victories in major cities.”

Former Wyoming Gov. Mike Sullivan, a Dvemocrat, told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday that he wasn’t surprised at the move by Denver voters, but he doubted the proximity of a House socialist – if Kiros wins the general election – will affect Wyoming much.

“We have our own issues, and we’re certainly more sensitive to certain issues than others,” Sullivan said. “And it doesn’t necessarily divide us or make us closer to anybody else.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Could Deepen 'Don't Colorado My Wyoming' Sentiment"}]

Liz Brimmer, longtime Wyoming politico, agreed in general, but said having a socialist congressional neighbor could galvanize Wyoming even harder into a tendency it already has: spurning anything that looks like Colorado governance.  

“I think Wyoming uniformly and strongly feels, you know, ‘Don’t Colorado my Wyoming',” Brimmer said. “And I think if anything, it deepens that sentiment.”

Brimmer said the ouster speaks of “these times, where there’s no doubt an anti-incumbent strain.” But no one will know all the reasons, nor should presume too much, until the voter data return, she said.

The Republicans saw the anti-incumbent strain surface differently, with newcomers ousting President Donald Trump’s foes in GOP primary elections.

State Rep. Landon Brown, R-Cheyenne, who is finishing off his final legislative term, voiced fascination with the election outcome.

Brown, a self-described political junkie, lives about 14 miles from the Colorado border.

He said the ouster shows Denver is increasingly dictating the rest of Colorado’s fate, and that the state is growing more polarized.

On the Republican gubernatorial primary side, The 

 a half-point lead for Victor Marx as of Wednesday.

“He’s just as crazy as a democratic socialist on the left,” said Brown.

As for DeGette’s defeat, it’s not as symptomatic as one would think, he added.

“She was running a ‘Hey, I’m the incumbent and I’ve been here 30 years’ (campaign),” he said.

That hurt her. As did a growing divide on the left over Israel’s approach to its many foes — and Congress’ funding of Israeli war and defense efforts, said Brown.

Israel was also a fulcrum in the May primary loss of libertarian-leaning incumbent Rep. Thomas Massie, of Kentucky. But the Republican voters took the inverse approach on that one, nominating the candidate who supports funding Israeli war efforts.

Jack Speight, the GOP strategist who helped Wyoming Gov. Stan Hathaway to victory in 1966, told Cowboy State Daily Kiros’ win is alarming.

Speight was a Democrat when he graduated from the University of Wyoming law school. But the allure of capitalism and the prevailing logic of his good friends pulled him to the Republican side, he said in another interview last month.

The socialist victories of 2026 are “sad for this country. It may well affect the results of this fall, and nationwide,” he said. He called it a shift of California transplants into the Rockies, and a symptom of a growing entitlement.

[{"type":"text","text":"Colorado isn’t the only Wyoming neighbor with socialist momentum."}]

Sam Forstag, a smoke jumper endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-New York, won his primary bid for Montana’s U.S. House District 1 on June 2.

Forstag may be less favored than Kiros going into the general election: No Democrat has won that Montana House district this century.

 a “test for left-leaning politicians” who have been arguing for a populist surge in the blue party.

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<title>Win By Colorado Socialist Could Galvanize Wyoming Independence, Says Politico | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Fresh after socialist-backed candidates' success in New York's U.S. House primaries, Colorado Democrats nominated their own socialist House candidate Tuesday. Having a socialist neighbor could galvanize Wyoming's independence even more, one politico said. 

Win By Colorado Socialist Could Galvanize Wyoming Independence, Says Politico

Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

Rock Springs city employees have been cleared of wrongdoing after a county investigation found no evidence the city's engineering contract selection process improperly favored a former mayor's engineering firm.

 by Rock Springs resident Shirley Cukale and City Councilman Rick Milonas, who claimed the city's request-for-proposal (RFP) process lacked transparency and unfairly benefited JFC Engineering, according to a letter from Sweetwater County Attorney Daniel Erramouspe.

The investigation's conclusion arrives as Mayor Max Mickelson and Milonas — longtime political adversaries — are both running for mayor alongside Katherine Phelps. The top two finishers in the August primary will advance to November's general election.

Mickelson announced the findings Tuesday in a video posted to the City of Rock Springs Government Facebook page.

“'Corrupt as hell’ — that's the accusation that got thrown around about our city," Mickelson said.

Mickelson said he doesn’t normally read from prepared statements, but “occasionally there is an issue that is severe enough that I need to read from a prepared statement to ensure I am being completely accurate.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bitter Creek Contract"}]

The county investigation centered on whether the city of Rock Springs demonstrated a conflict of interest when it awarded a $372,000 contract to JFC Corporation — the engineering company owned by former mayor Tim Kaumo – to manage the Bitter Creek Reconstruction Project.

Kaumo pleaded no contest in 2023 to official misconduct and conflict-of-interest charges after a joint FBI and Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation probe into city contract bidding. Investigators found Kaumo improperly used his position in 2020 to steer work to his engineering company.

In an October 2025 letter to then-Sweetwater County Lieutenant Rich Fischer, Milonas alleged Kaumo still maintained a financial interest in JFC and noted Kaumo, City Engineer Paul Kauchich and City Attorney Richard Beckwith were childhood friends.

Milonas also alleged Kauchich selected every member of the RFP evaluation committee and claimed the process lacked independent oversight.

[{"type":"text","text":"Erramouspe rejected those claims."}]

His investigation found the city issued 11 engineering-service RFPs between January 2023 and February 2026. JFC received three of those contracts.

"There is no evidence that any of these awards were made illegally or in violation of the statutory RFP process," Erramouspe wrote. "Additionally, the fact that JFC received only three of eleven contracts strongly suggests the process is not being manipulated to systematically favor the firm."

Erramouspe also denied Milonas' request for the names of RFP committee members.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"“Corrupt As Hell”"}]

Although Mickelson did not identify who called the city "corrupt as hell" in his video, Milonas sent Fischer an April 3 email stating the city's reputation had become tainted.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"A corrupt reputation makes us ALL look bad,\" Milonas wrote."}]

He alleged that Mickelson knew about a "corrupt RFP process" but "chooses to do nothing."

Mickelson told Cowboy State Daily those accusations unfairly targeted both city employees and elected officials.

"Not only does Councilman Milonas accuse our city employees of being complicit in corruption, but he states I am actively participating in it," Mickelson said. "Elected officials have a higher duty to ensure their statements are based in fact. ... It is a dereliction of duty to make statements like the one Councilman Milonas made based on nothing more than vapors."

He said the investigation demonstrated the city followed Wyoming law throughout its procurement process.

"Nothing was held back," Mickelson said. "We are following state statute on our RFP process."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Milonas Pushes Back"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Milonas responded Wednesday with a Facebook video of his own."}]

"Oh, Maxine's at it again," he said. "Corrupt as hell. I never said that. Never."

[{"type":"text","text":"He said he is trying to move forward and focus on solutions."}]

“But it’s extremely hard,” he said, “because I’m always defending myself.

"We need change. And that change is going to take a very special person. Very special, like myself. Mayor Rick Milonas, 2026."

Milonas also connected the investigation to a series of ethics complaints exchanged between himself and city officials over the past year.

Milonas said Fischer called him on March 30, 2026, to talk about the October 2025 letter.

A day later, he said, police showed up at his door and handed him a formal ethics complaint. The complaint, filed by Urban Renewal Agency Director Chad Banks, alleged that Milonas was abusive and created a hostile work environment for city employees after Milonas accused Banks, who is gay, of advancing a “gay agenda.”

The complaint came five months after the city council adopted a code of ethics that Milonas alone opposed.

Milonas retaliated with his own ethics complaint against the mayor, saying, “He ambushed me at a City Council meeting about a conversation he eavesdropped on and falsely accused me of saying things I didn’t say.”

In May, the Rock Springs City Council dismissed Milonas’ complaint, one week after finding that he had violated the city’s ethics code in Banks’ complaint against him.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Cost Beyond Dollars"}]

Mickelson said he addressed the investigation publicly because residents deserved to know the city had been accused and ultimately cleared.

"The office of the mayor has a duty and an obligation to keep the public aware of what its government is doing, good, bad and indifferent," he said. "Muckraking because of sour grapes is a disappointing position for an elected official to take."

While the city was cleared, Mickelson said the allegations still came at a cost.

It cost taxpayers money, and it weighed on the consciences of city employees, he said.

“The employees in our city get up every day and do this work honestly,” he said. “They heard ‘corrupt as hell’ applied to their jobs and applied to their work.

“I am incredibly tired of people throwing mud, for whatever reason, about who we are.” 

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<title>Rock Springs Council Cleared Of Allegation City Favored Cronies On Contract Bids | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The Sweetwater County Attorney's Office found no evidence the Rock Springs City Council illegally favored contract bids for a company. “'Corrupt as hell’ — that's the accusation that got thrown around about our city," said the mayor about the allegation.

Rock Springs Council Cleared Of Allegation City Favored Cronies On Contract Bids

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Mark Heinz

Around Wyoming

Lake Powell, a key reservoir on the Colorado River, is shrinking toward "dead pool," which means water won't flow downriver anymore — and that could in turn pinch Wyoming’s municipal and industrial water supplies with more demand from Flaming Gorge Reservoir.

Lake Powell, on the Utah-Arizona state line, is in dire condition, 

By next spring, it’s expected to fall into “minimum power pool,” meaning having barely just enough water to generate hydroelectric power at Glen Canyon Dam.

If it falls even farther, that could put the reservoir at “dead pool,” or unable to generate hydroelectric power, according to reports.

That's despite roughly 1 million acre-feet expected to be 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Paper Water Rights’"}]

Dead pool is considered only a worst-case scenario among water managers.

But if it happens, it could lead to some stark choices, said Wyoming state Sen. Larry Hicks, who served on the Legislature’s Select Water Committee.

In such a scenario, “power generation is subservient” to irrigation water rights, he told Cowboy State Daily.

“Power Generation is important, but it’s not as important as maintaining peoples’ livelihood,” Hicks said. 

The looming dilemmas over Colorado River water rest in the fact that water management is rooted in “paper water rights,” he said.

Many of those are tied to the 1922 Colorado River Compact, which includes seven states, Mexico and numerous Native American Tribes.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Just Not Enough Water"}]

In Wyoming, many farmers’ and ranchers’ water rights predate the 1922 Compact, going as far back as the 1880s.

That means if spats break out over Compact water rights as the river’s supply dwindles, farms and ranches along the Green and Little Snake rivers would be largely unaffected, Hicks said.

The Compact designates roughly 15 million acre-feet per year, supposedly evenly split at 7.5 million acre-feet between the Upper Basin and Lower Basin.

The Upper Basin states are Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico. Arizona, Nevada and California comprise the Lower Basin.

River flows in recent years have been as low as about 10 million acre-feet, Hicks said.

If the Lower Basin states made an emergency “call on the river” for more access to the Upper Basin allocation, Wyoming’s farmers and ranchers wouldn't catch the brunt of it, he said.

“The Trona industry and big municipalities in Wyoming” would be most at risk of losing vital water, he said.

For instance, even though Cheyenne isn’t physically connected to the Colorado River system, it still depends upon of it because of water-exchange agreements on the North Platte River.

“Arizona is the state that’s most likely to litigate and say, ‘We’re entitled to this water; you need to send it to us’,” Hicks said.

The growing crisis on the Colorado River “is a concern for Cheyenne and our board of public utility,” Mayor Patrick Collins told Cowboy State Daily.

The city gets about “two-thirds of our water” from sources tied to the Colorado River water contract exchange agreements, he said.

Cheyenne has been preparing for potential water shortages, Collins said.

“If they make a call on the river, it’s going to take a while to take effect,” he said, adding that Cheyenne has a roughly four-year backup storage supply.

Cheyenne has been frugal with its water, typically using about half of its full allocation, Collins added.

Despite growth, the city is using about the same amount of water it was 10 years ago, he said.

In the long term, Cheyenne also hopes to break away from Colorado River dependency.

“We have good leads on replacement water from other areas,” he said, without going into detail.

“There is an irrigation district that we’ve been working with, and some industrial users on the Platte River,” Collins said.

Rock Springs mayor Max Mickelson said the city has some water rights dating to 1871, and is therefore immune to any effects tied to the 1922 Colorado River Compact.

“Our system has never overdrawn its allocation the way the Lower Basin has. The current diversion data our Joint Powers Water Board presented to council shows zero deficit under today's conditions. 11,011 acre-feet of annual demand against roughly 2,413 acre-feet available on average, showing no shortfall in any month,” he stated in an email to Cowboy State Daily.

“That's not luck. That's a century of municipal water management that lived within its means. While states downstream built entire metro economies on water that was never really there in average years.” 

The local economy has felt the effects of increasing pressure on Flaming Gorge from the Lower Basin, Mickelson said. The city doesn’t draw from it directly, but is tied to the recreation economy.

“Our recreation, fishing, and marinas economies will all take a hit,” he said. "Our exposure so far has been to the regional environment and economy, not to the water coming out of our faucets.” 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘It’s A Concern’"}]

If Lake Powell hits dead pool, that would be a concern for Rock Springs, Mickelson said, noting the federal response to the crisis at Lake Powell is to pull from Flaming Gorge.  

“The Bureau of Reclamation's own modeling, presented to council this May, shows a projected shortfall of 2.0 to 2.3 million acre-feet by March 2027,” Mickelson wrote.

“So, yes, it's a concern, but it is fundamentally about fairness. The Flaming Gorge Reservoir is filled by our river and is treated as insurance for a 1922 compact built on flow numbers that were too generous from the start. We watch Powell's elevation because every foot drop is another argument for draining more from our basin,” he said.

Rock Springs, and Wyoming in general, has been proactive, passing voluntary conservation legislation while keeping underlying water rights protected, Mickelson said.

The Upper Basin should continue in that vein, he added.

“Wyoming has a seat at the table and needs to demand a storage agreement that lets Upper Basin states bank conserved water. We need an explicit federally acknowledged agreement that Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado hold unused apportionment under the original compact. We did not overbuild its claim,” Mickelson wrote.  

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<title>Lake Powell Water Critically Low; Wyoming Expects More Demand On Flaming Gorge | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Already at critically low levels, Lake Powell is close to being "dead pool," which means water won't flow downriver anymore. That has Wyoming cities and industries worried that will mean more demand for water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir.

Lake Powell Water Critically Low; Wyoming Expects More Demand On Flaming Gorge

Wildlife

A rancher near Choteau, Montana, caught video of six grizzlies strolling across his calving lot behind his barn late Monday, and said there were as many as seven bears on his property that night.

The next morning, rancher Neal Collins said agents from Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks hazed as many as 10 grizzlies out of patches of brush across the road from his place.

Collins said no people or livestock were attacked by the bears on his place, and FWP used non-lethal “cracker” shotgun shells to scare off the bears.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A ‘Herd’ Of Grizzlies"}]

Sparky Wallace, a friend of Collins who also lives near Choteau, somewhat humorously described the group of grizzlies as a “herd.”

A group of bears is actually called a "sleuth." Or sometimes, an older term, a “sloth” is used to describe a gathering of bears. 

He told Cowboy State Daily he and some of his neighbors have had encounters with multiple bears, as the number of grizzlies out on the prairie has steadily increased.  

Chad White, a bear management specialist with Montana FWP, said the bears on Collins’ property were probably a “couple of family groups that have been hanging out in the area.”

Meaning, they were likely two related adult females such as “a mother and daughter” and their cubs, White said.

The Choteau area has been busy with bear activity this spring and summer. The bears wander from the Rocky Mountain Front onto the prairie along the Teton River, which flows past Choteau. 

The bears might be feeding on green vegetation and other natural food sources, then taking shelter in brush patches.

“It may be that he (Collins) has the natural shelter for day bedding and they were traveling around the area,” White said. 

White said the FWP bear manager responding to Collins’ call told him as many as 10 grizzlies fled once the hazing stared.

FWP personnel fired cracker shells into the brush where the bears were holed up. Cracker shells fire a small explosive charge with a delayed fuse, designed to explode in the air and ward off predators such as bears and wolves.

“The six or seven bears in the family groups ran off in one direction, and two or three more ran off in another direction,” he said.

It’s not known where the other two or three bears might have come from, White added.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Alarm Barks"}]

Collins said he was first alerted to the bears’ presence Monday when one of his dogs started frantically barking at about 9:30 p.m.

“We’ve got this one dog that’s supposed to be a cow dog, but she’s really not,” he said. “She was just barking, barking, barking. She barks on occasion, but not like that.” 

He said he stepped outside to investigate and saw a “flash of a bear.”

So, he immediately went back into his house, shooing the dog inside with him.

A camera he has mounted on the backside of his barn caught video and photos of the bears.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘You Get Immune To It’"}]

Collins’ ranch is about 35 miles out on the prairie from the Rocky Mountain front.

Grizzlies are usually associated with mountain habitat. However, they were originally a Great Plains species, and were driven into the mountains as the West was settled.

Grizzlies have been growing in number and expanding their range in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho in recent decades. In Montana, they’ve been pushing ever-farther onto the prairies.

Collins said his father was in his 70s before he ever saw a grizzly anywhere near Choteau. But the bears have become a common sight of late.

When asked if having the bears around worried him, Collins said, “I suppose, but you get immune to it.”

Even so, he’s not happy about the growing number of prairie grizzlies.

“There here, even though I don’t want them here,” he said.

In Wyoming, grizzlies attacking cattle is frequently listed as the leading cause of human-bear conflict.

Collins said he hasn’t lost any livestock to bears yet.

"Even so, they sure don’t help them (the cattle) even if they don’t kill them,” he said. "They move through the cattle herd and stir them up.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bird Hunting Gets Wild"}]

North-central Montana is a bird hunter’s paradise. And in decades past, grizzlies would have been the furthest things from bird hunters’ minds.

That’s not the case any longer. In 2023, 

 between bird and whitetail deer hunters in separate incidents.

Those occurred in the vicinity of the Freezeout Lake Wildlife Management Area. It’s between Choteau and Fairfield, Montana, about 40 miles west of Great Falls.

Collins said that several years ago, a bird hunter had to shoot and kill a charging grizzly across the road from his place.

“He ended up with a scratch on his arm, because the last shot was right at the end of the gun barrel,” he said.

Wallace, a horse trainer and saddle maker, said he’s run into multiple grizzlies while bird hunting.

“I hunt ducks a lot. And even on the little prairie potholes out here, you’ve got to walk in there loaded and ready for bears,” he said.

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<title>Holy Cow! Montana Rancher Spots 'Herd' Of 7 Grizzlies On Property | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Montana rancher Neal Collins said a camera on his barn captured a "herd" of seven grizzlies on his property Monday night. The next morning, agents from Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks hazed 10 grizzlies out of brush across the road from his place.

Holy Cow! Montana Rancher Spots 'Herd' Of 7 Grizzlies On Property

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld Idaho and West Virginia’s bans on male participation in girls’ school sports.

Many Wyoming Republicans applauded the decision, including Gov. Mark Gordon, who had derided the state’s own cross-sex sports ban while allowing it to become law in 2023.

Idaho passed its Fairness in Women’s Sports Act in 2020. It was the nation’s first law preventing biological male students from competing on public school and club female sports teams. 

One year later, West Virginia passed its Save Women’s Sports Act, barring male participation in secondary school and collegiate-level female sports.

Transgender students challenged each ban in litigation that culminated in the Supreme Court’s Tuesday decision to uphold them.

In the meantime, the Wyoming Legislature in 2023 passed a ban on male competition in public, interscholastic female sports from grades 7-12.

It replaced Wyoming’s prior, case-by-case administrative evaluation system for individual students. Idaho and West Virginia had similar, case-by-case systems in place before they passed their respective bans in 2020 and 2021.  

Gordon let the Wyoming bill pass into law without his signature — and at the time derided it as “draconian” and “discriminatory.”

“While he supports and agrees with the overall goal of fairness in competitive female sports,” said a March 17, 2023, 

, the governor believed the ban to be “overly draconian, is discriminatory without attention to individual circumstances or mitigating factors and pays little attention to the fundamental principles of equality.”  

The statement said Gordon believed the bill’s intent is “well-meaning as a way to protect the integrity and fairness of women’s sports in our state,” but that an outright ban “sends a harmful message that these individuals and their families do not deserve the same opportunities as others.”  

In an about-face, Gov. Mark Gordon lauded a U.S. Supreme Court ruling Tuesday upholding states' bans on trans participation in girls' sports. In 2023 he called Wyoming's first trans sports ban "draconian."

One More For The Road: Friday, September 1, 2023

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