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

<title>You Still Here? Friday, February 16, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

You Still Here? Friday, February 16, 2024

 When rioting, teamwork is key. Before jumping off a car, for example, make sure your fellow rioter has no plan to open the door...

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

Clair McFarland

Government & Politics

Politics

 In Hot Springs County, the divide in Wyoming’s active Republican political base is actually a chasm.

That breach usually falls between the GOP faction more aligned with the Wyoming Freedom Caucus and the faction that tends to oppose it.  

It resurfaced Monday night at the Hot Springs County Republican Central Committee meeting, where precinct committee people and their elected officers gathered to handle regular business.

 delegate, Cheryl Aguiar, made a motion to nearly drain the party’s checking account by sending $4,000 to the Wyoming Republican Party. She didn’t explain the motion to committee leaders at the time.

Her motion failed on a 6-6 tie vote, after which five people, including Aguiar, left the meeting.

People on both sides of the controversy told Cowboy State Daily the voters’ departure left the party short of a quorum and unable to pay its other bills, including to local businesses.

Aguiar said in a Wednesday interview that she made the motion at the request of a large group to protest some members’ efforts last month to “sabotage” the party’s fundraiser dinner by hosting an alternate event on the same night, May 29.

“They literally tried to sabotage – to steal money from our yearly fundraiser; to hold an alternate event to punish the state (party),” Aguiar said. “Why come and punish the county if you’re mad at something the state (party) did?”

Aguiar said that for her part, she left the meeting Monday because the chair was letting attendees heckle and berate her – a claim Chair Joe Martinez disputes.

Multiple critics of Aguiar’s move countered in Tuesday and Wednesday interviews, calling the members’ departure childish.

“I think it’s pretty crappy to walk out on paying the bills for the (gala) that they all held,” precinct committeewoman Shurie Scheel said. “It’s one thing to be mad about it. It’s another to screw over the caterer.”

The party also owes other small businesses money, including the local newspaper, the Independent Record, for advertising, she said.

Scheel said she’s unsure if the local party will have a quorum again before new precinct committee people are sworn in next January, as it’s uncertain if the walkouts – whom she cast as sympathetic to the Wyoming Freedom Caucus wing of the GOP – will return to vote.

Scheel said she and her husband might have to pay the catering business, We Got Your 6 Catering, in the meantime.

[{"type":"text","text":"A Court Case, Two Galas"}]

 Martinez as the local party chair and Scheel’s husband, Phil Scheel, as state committeeman. The judge ruled May 29 that the other people who’d been serving as chair and state committeeman for the past 15 months – Bradyn Harvey and Russell Lewis – were elected in a manner that violated state law.

Monday’s gathering was also the first meeting after the battle of two galas.

The Hot Springs County GOP planned a Charlie Kirk memorial fundraiser dinner for May 29.

Scheel had been organizing the dinner. But she quit planning it to support an alternate “Take Back Wyoming” dinner set for the same evening.

Scheel told Cowboy State Daily she backed the alternate dinner to protest the state Republican Party’s new bylaw declaring a right to donate to or endorse some Republicans over others during the primary election cycle.

State law forbids the GOP and any other major party from taking sides among its own candidates in the primary election. The party is free to back Republicans against Democratic candidates and others in the general election, however. The state party is suing Wyoming over the primary backing ban right now, saying the statute violates the group’s First Amendment rights.  

“Take Back Wyoming: Non-Freedom Caucus Republican Candidates Shop Party,” the banner for the alternate May 29 gala says. “Supporting fair primaries and grassroots conservative values.”

Scheel told Cowboy State Daily she disagrees with the state party’s mission to overturn the state law because primary election day is “the day the voters of the Republican party choose their candidates. The party shouldn’t be choosing the candidates. The voters should.”

: “It shouldn’t be a room full of party insiders who decide who the Republican Party nominee will be, and then tell the voters who to choose. And, the more I thought about it, the more pissed off I got about it.”  

[{"type":"text","text":"So We Carried On"}]

In Aguiar’s telling, Scheel and others answered a state party maneuver with “retaliation” against the county party.

Aguiar said as one voter she doesn’t like the idea of the state party sending money to candidates pre-primary either, though she thinks the party should be able to endorse candidates during that phase.

[{"type":"text","text":"For her, that’s beside the point."}]

“We had to spend – I think there were three of us that spent three solid days calling candidates” to arrange the party, Aguiar said. “We did a good job.”

 U.S. House candidate Steve Friess and Secretary of State Candidate Rachel Williams (also known as state Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams) attended the GOP dinner.

 included a $1,900 bill to the caterer, $146 in advertising and other costs totaling about $2,904.

Martinez attended the Charlie Kirk dinner, which Aguiar said is to his credit. Other than the alleged heckling incident, Aguiar also spoke favorably of Martinez as party chair.

Aguiar said her husband had also run a profitable gun raffle for the party. 

Aguiar concluded that Scheel and the others involved in planning the alternate, protest dinner “don’t care.”

“These people do not care about the Hot Springs County Republican Party,” Aguiar said.

But after the judge’s order – filed the same evening as both dinners – the party leadership changed, and the party tilted toward the group not aligned with the more populist Wyoming Freedom Caucus.

“And for them to get the money that we raised, despite their sabotaging of the alternate event … I did not think it would be in good hands,” Aguiar said.

Aguiar said she and her husband, Bob Aguiar – who is also a Hot Springs County commissioner – left together, and Pam Phillips, to whom they’d given a ride, walked out as well.

She called it incidental that two more committee members, Michele Stevens and Russell Lewis, left the meeting at that time.

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

Aguiar was adamant that she didn’t make her motion to drain the account because of the judge’s order; she made it on behalf of a bigger group because of the dueling gala incident.

[{"type":"text","text":"Martinez doubts that, he said Wednesday."}]

The Charlie Kirk dinner raised less than $1,500 after expenses, while Aguiar moved to shift $4,000 from the local party’s account to its statewide counterpart.

“I mean, if it was specifically (because of) the Charlie Kirk dinner then that dollar amount should have been consistent with the actual profit,” Martinez said.

Martinez said he doesn’t believe anyone was heckling or verbally abusing Aguiar at the meeting, though the conversation grew “emotional.”

“It was an emotional item,” he recalled. “People wanted to know what the reasons for sending that money to the state were.”

Cowboy State Daily has been working to coordinate a phone interview with Stevens and will update this story if she speaks to the incident.

Lewis told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday that the walkout wasn't coordinated. He said he walked out because of the dueling galas incident - not because of the court's order that removed him from leadership. 

Sherman Skelton, a school board member who attended the meeting as a spectator, said the walkout seemed coordinated.

“I felt very much like those people (should be) there to represent me, our precinct. Not their personal agendas,” said Skelton said. "And it was probably one of the most childish things I’d ever seen in my life."

Shurie Scheel said the walkout appeared “staged," that Aguiar said, "OK, let's go everyone," and they all rose in unison and left. Scheel said that Aguiar acknowledged on her way out that the committee wouldn't have a quorum after they all left.

Aguiar for her part said party members in Scheel's camp merely have "Aguiar derangement syndrome" and that Shurie Scheel is unhappy that Aguiar's husband defeated Shurie's husband in the last County Commission race. 

Charlie kirk dinner via RRW political facebook page 6 17 26

<title>Hot Springs County GOP Members Walk Out After Failed Vote To Drain Account | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The Hot Springs County GOP rejected a party leader's bid Monday to nearly drain its bank account and send $4,000 to the state party. Then five people on the losing side of the question walked out, leaving not enough voters to pay their bills.
 

Hot Springs County GOP Members Walk Out After Failed Vote To Drain Account

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Crime & Courts

Courts

A 12-person Laramie County jury found former South Cheyenne Water and Sewer District General Manager Dena Hansen guilty Wednesday of stealing about $350,000 from the district over nearly a decade.

A Laramie County District Court clerk confirmed Hansen's conviction on a single felony theft count. The verdict form was not publicly available Wednesday afternoon.

The case centered on allegations that about $350,000 was diverted from the South Cheyenne Water and Sewer District between 2014 and 2024 while Hansen oversaw its finances.

For years, the amounts were small enough to disappear into a stack of utility bills.

[{"type":"text","text":"A few hundred dollars one month. A little more the next."}]

Some was cash handed across a counter by customers paying water bills. Checks sometimes sat for days before clearing. Deposit slips appeared to tell different stories, depending on which copy investigators examined.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Familiar Face"}]

According to court records, Hansen worked for the district for more than 30 years.

Employees told investigators she was deeply involved in the district's day-to-day financial operations.

She handled deposits, interacted with customers, and maintained broad control over money moving through the office, says an affidavit of probable cause. 

The district serves customers south of Cheyenne, collecting monthly payments from residents and businesses for water and sewer service.

Those payments arrived in different forms — checks, cash and money orders — and for years appeared to move through the office without raising significant alarms.

After concerns arose about district finances in 2024, the South Cheyenne Water and Sewer District hired forensic accounting firm Jacobson and Associates to review years of records.

That review ultimately identified what investigators alleged were hundreds of thousands of dollars in missing funds.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Two Deposit Slips"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"One of the recurring details in the affidavit involved deposit slips."}]

Investigators alleged Hansen prepared bank deposits using duplicate deposit forms.

The yellow copies retained by the district frequently showed larger amounts than the white copies submitted to the bank -- a discrepancy that became a focus of the investigation.

In one section of the affidavit, investigators wrote that deposit slips appeared to have been altered using correction fluid before being delivered to the bank.

The records described instances where the amount recorded on the district's copy did not match the amount ultimately deposited.

Investigators concluded cash had been removed from deposits before they reached district accounts.

The affidavit further alleged that checks were sometimes substituted for missing cash to make deposit totals appear balanced.

Employees told investigators the district did not begin accepting online payments until October 2021.

According to witness statements summarized in the affidavit, Hansen opposed implementing online payment options.

Several employees reportedly told investigators they never understood why online payments were resisted.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Customers Complaints"}]

The investigation also uncovered complaints from customers who noticed something unusual.

Some customers contacted the district wondering why their checks had not cleared their bank accounts.

Investigators said those reports suggested certain checks were being held before being deposited, notes the affidavit. 

The delays became one of many small pieces investigators later compared against deposit records and customer payments.

Employees interviewed during the investigation described Hansen as the person primarily responsible for deposits.

Several told investigators they did not routinely transport deposits to the bank themselves.

[{"type":"text","text":"Others reported that Hansen sometimes took deposits home overnight."}]

The affidavit notes that employees said deposits occasionally left the office with Hansen.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Cash Trail "}]

The affidavit details a review of personal banking records belonging to Hansen and her husband.

According to investigators, bank records showed approximately $242,573.88 in cash deposits into personal accounts between 2014 and 2024.

Most of those occurred during the same years investigators identified substantial shortages in district deposits.

The accounting review attempted to compare money missing from district accounts with cash appearing elsewhere.

Month after month, investigators charted shortages ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars.

[{"type":"text","text":"Some months showed no shortages at all."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Others showed significant discrepancies."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Over time, investigators alleged, the missing amounts accumulated."}]

Forensic accountants identified approximately $263,934.73 in missing funds between 2017 and 2024.

A review of earlier records, covering July 2014 through June 2017, identified an additional estimated $96,000 in missing deposits.

Combined, investigators concluded roughly $350,000 had disappeared from district accounts.

The investigation eventually grew into a criminal case supported by years of financial records, employee interviews, and forensic accounting analyses.

When prosecutors filed the felony theft charge, the resulting affidavit stretched across dozens of pages detailing deposit records, customer payments and banking activity dating to 2014.

A 12-person jury heard the case during a trial that began June 8.

A sentencing date had not been announced as of Wednesday afternoon. Under Wyoming law, felony theft is punishable by up to 10 years in prison, a fine of up to $10,000, or both.

Dena Hansen and Cheyenne green sign IMG 6015 6 17 26

<title>Jury Finds Former Cheyenne Water Manager Guilty Of Stealing $350K Over A Decade | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Laramie County jury on Wednesday found the former manager of the South Cheyenne Water and Sewer District guilty of stealing about $350,000 from district accounts over a decade. For years, the amounts were small enough to disappear into a stack of utility bills. She faces up to 10 years in prison.

Jury Finds Former Cheyenne Water Manager Guilty Of Stealing $350K Over A Decade

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

Andrew Rossi

Business

Agriculture

There's a big bee emergency in Yellowstone National Park after a semi-truck carrying dozens of beehives crashed Tuesday.

Dalton Broadus of West Yellowstone, Montana, was driving north along U.S. Highway 191 around 9 a.m. Tuesday when he drove past the scene.

Damaged and destroyed beehives were scattered across a quarter-mile stretch of road. Bees were swarming his vehicle, several tow trucks and a Yellowstone ambulance were at the scene, and someone in a beekeeping suit was already assessing the area.

“It happened about an hour before I got there, I believe,” Broadus said.

The Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office, Hebgen Basin Fire/EMS, the Montana Department of Transportation, and the Montana Department of Agriculture responded to the scene.

James Peterson, dispatch manager for Eaton Road Solutions, told Cowboy State Daily his company received a call from the National Park Service to recover the flipped semi-truck. He wasn’t sure what caused the accident.

“We brought three recovery trucks and two traffic-control trucks from Idaho Falls,” he said. “It took us about three hours to get it back up.”

Peterson said Eaton’s crews were heading back to the scene Wednesday night to start recovering the damaged hives and, hopefully, the bees that had been residing inside.

“We’ve been working one-on-one with the company (that owns the hives), and they’re trying to save what they can,” he said.

The crews will require bee suits while on the scene. Fortunately, Eaton already had some at the ready.

“We haven’t dealt much with bees,” Peterson said. “This was our second bee call in 15 years, and we still have the beekeeping suits we got for the first call."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bee Catastrophe"}]

After viewing Broadus’s video, Cheyenne venture capitalist and beekeeper Michael Jordan said that, from what he could see, the incident was “a devastating loss” for all involved.

“From the way it looks. I’d think about 40 to 50 percent of what’s there is salvageable, maybe,” he said. “It’s a big dump across a long section, so I’d say they’ve got a three-day ordeal ahead of them.”

According to Jordan, an average honey box can hold between 75,000 and 125,000 bees. Each box costs around $500 and generates $2,000 in profit from honey production.

A semi-truck like the one that crashed can carry 250 to 500 honey boxes, and potentially double that if they’re trying to save space.

[{"type":"text","text":"“There could be up to 1,000 of those boxes in one load,” he said."}]

That’s easily millions of bees and hundreds of thousands of dollars lost in Yellowstone.

Jordan has been involved in similar incidents. He helped coordinate a salvage effort after a beehive-carrying semi-truck was involved in an incident on I-80 near Arlington.

“The first four hours are critical,” he said. “The truck drivers, the insurance company, and the owners of the colonies have to work together and approve everything. Somebody on-site is going to be the manager, and they’ll figure out how to fix the problem, so there’s a lot of communication that needs to happen.”

In this incident, all parties will have to coordinate with the Park Service. They’ll need to have a lot of input, given the accident happened in Yellowstone, and fines could be assessed.

“When your boat sinks in Glendale Lake, they charge you for littering, not to mention salvage,” Jordan said. “It’s going to be a pretty big loss, and that’s just the property damage. The owners will need approval from the insurance companies, and then there’s whatever liability the trucking company will have with the NPS. If the mitigation takes too long, they could lose everything."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bee Recovery"}]

Jordan wasn’t sure how the NPS would manage a 500-hive bee recovery in Yellowstone.

In a high-traffic area, such as a highway through Yellowstone during the summer, the first step in a successful recovery might be to call the fire department, he said. That’s potentially the worst-case scenario for the bees and the beekeepers, but the quickest solution for the NPS.

“If the bees are deemed a hazard to traffic, the fire department might go ahead and foam the whole area,” Jordan said. “That kills everything in the area, but you can go in and clear everything out without having to close down the highway.”

As for the bees, Jordan said everyone involved in the salvage operation must make critical moves within 48 hours. That’s how long they have before the surviving bees move on.

“The queens are going to be looking for locations where they feel safe,” he said. “If you can’t get new hives set up in 48 hours, the queens will migrate and leave a pheromone trail that the bees accommodating her in that hive will follow.”

Tracking down and individually placing the queens in new or rebuilt honey boxes is the best strategy, assuming the surviving queens can be located. Otherwise, there might be a big bee population in northwest Yellowstone.

“If the queens are in Yellowstone, they’re going to migrate into Yellowstone’s forests,” he said. “You can prevent that if you find the queens and put them in individual hives, but you have 48 hours to do it.”

When Jordan helped salvage the scene near Arlington, they successfully recovered 70% of the bees that had been on the semi-truck. They accomplished this by quickly setting up new honey boxes in a safe spot near the scene.

“Bees are very communal,” he said. “They work on a swarm mentality, and they can migrate and integrate into a new colony pretty easily. Once the new housing is set up, they’ll typically migrate to those locations within 24 hours.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Busy As Bees"}]

Jordan imagines the companies that owned the damaged honey boxes are coordinating a large response and rushing new housing to the scene.

“I’d say salvaging those colonies and hives will be a three-day ordeal, working 18 hours a day,” he said. “It depends on who’s managing the cleanup. The owners will want to keep as much product as they can, and there are many factors that go into that.”

That already complicated and urgent effort will likely become even more complex, given that it all needs to happen within a national park. The NPS might implement its own strategy to ensure the safety of visitors, traffic and the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem.

, a Yellowstone spokesperson said there were no reported injuries.

"Although the highway remains open, expect delays and traffic control measures as cleanup and mitigation work continue at the site of the accident,” the statement reads.

Broadus had the same takeaway from the incident as he’s had for years driving that 55-mph section of road in Yellowstone's northwest corner: slow down.

“I’m surprised there aren’t more accidents like this,” he said. “I drive from West Yellowstone every day during the summer. People speed quite a bit and pass within tight margins of oncoming traffic. They need to slow down.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Any way you look at it, it’s not good."}]

“I feel bad for all the people involved,” Jordan said. “There could be two or three owners of those hives, and that’s a lot of money. That’s their livelihood. That’s at least one whole company that has to rebuild.”

Bees 6 18 26

<title>Semitruck Carrying Millions Of Bees Crashes In Yellowstone National Park | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A semitruck carrying millions of honeybees flipped over on U.S. Highway 191 in Yellowstone National Park on Tuesday. Cheyenne beekeeper Michael Jordan called the scene "a devastating loss" of hundreds of thousands of dollars to the owners of the bees.

Semitruck Carrying Millions Of Bees Crashes In Yellowstone National Park

Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

A mishmash of factors including drought are causing a historic cattle shortage that's led to a continuing tightened beef supply across the United States, which in turn has beef at record-high prices.

Yet people are still buying beef and showing a willingness to pay a higher price for it.

While the situation looks bleak now, Wyoming ranchers are optimistic 

 confident that herds will be rebuilt eventually and that, one of these days, it will rain 

, a shortage analysts expect will continue pushing prices higher through at least next year.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports 2027 prices are expected to be even higher because of continued limited supply.

Drought, rising production costs, an aging ranching population and concerns about livestock disease have combined to make rebuilding the nation's herd a slow and expensive proposition.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Drought the No. 1 Culprit"}]

For former National Cattlemen's Beef Association president and Laramie County rancher Mark Eisele, one factor towers above the rest.

"This is about drought, pure and simple," Eisele told Cowboy State Daily. "It's as big and as widespread as it's ever been."

Eisele said he is considering selling calves and yearlings earlier than usual this year because pastures have not produced enough forage to sustain his herd.

"You used to be able to go over to the next valley and rent some grass or buy some hay," he said. "You might even go over into the next county or the next state. Now, that's not an option."

When drought forces ranchers to sell breeding cows, rebuilding takes years, Eisele said. Producers must retain heifers that otherwise would have gone to market, reducing beef supplies in the short term before increasing them later.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Herds Are Hard To Rebuild"}]

Unlike other agricultural sectors, cattle production cannot be ramped up quickly.

Todd Fornstrom, Wyoming Farm Bureau President and a rancher, sees herd building as a long game.

It can take two years or more for cows to give birth. At one year, a calf is old enough for the breeding system, Fornstrom said, but it will still be another year at least before that calf has a chance of breeding.

[{"type":"text","text":"And that assumes the rancher retains the calves."}]

“You have to make the decision to sell them or keep them for rebreeding,” Fornstrom told Cowboy State Daily.  

Fornstrom said he is choosing this year to sell off his calves, because he is earning all-time highs.

“The decision I’m making right now is, when I’m at an all-time high of selling calves, do I sell now and reinvest that money into my operation or do I retain my calves?” he said. “Ranchers are making those tough decisions.”

Overall, Fornstrom said Wyoming ranchers are retaining more cattle this year than they did last year. While that might be good news, “that’s only the start of the relief, because we still have two years before the calves are even able to breed,” he said.

[{"type":"text","text":"“It’s the long game you have to play as a rancher.”"}]

Drought and demand are pushing beef to record high prices, leaving Wyoming ranchers praying for rain even if Americans are willing to pay more. "This is about drought, pure and simple," said a Laramie County rancher.

You Still Here? Friday, February 16, 2024

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