It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Friday, August 30. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - brought to you by ServeWyoming - Wyoming's center for volunteerism and AmeriCorps service for the last 30 years! For volunteer opportunities, visit ServeWyoming dot org.
--
Dr. Eric Cubin filed a lawsuit Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming against Governor Mark Gordon for forcing him off the Wyoming Board of Medicine in April.
Gordon pushed him off because of Cubin’s public support of a law banning transgender medical treatments and surgeries on minors. Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson reports that the Liberty Justice Center, a nonprofit advocacy group representing Cubin on a pro bono basis, is arguing that Gordon infringed on Cubin’s First Amendment rights through retaliation.
“This all came in response to Cubin actively lobbying state lawmakers on a bill that prevents medical providers from providing transgender treatments and surgeries to minors in Wyoming. Cubin had been advocating in support of this bill while he was actively a member of the Board of Medicine. Gordon thought that was inappropriate and a conflict of interest, so he forced him to resign off the board. So now Cubin is suing.”
The Liberty Justice Center is requesting a court order reinstating Cubin to the board.
Read the full story HERE.
--
The National Transportation Safety Board released its preliminary report Wednesday on a plane crash in northern Wyoming in late July that killed all seven on board, including three members of the popular gospel music group, the Nelons.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that the pilot told the Salt Lake City Air Route Traffic Control Center that he’d lost his autopilot function, as the plane performed sharp right and left turns while climbing and dropping through the air about 12 miles northeast of Recluse, Wyoming, the afternoon of July 26.
“It's not sounding exactly like the expert analysis that we got very, very early on, where… a crash investigator was saying that the plane was pitching up and down and possibly shedding parts. It's sounding rather like the plane started looping or zigzagging left and right while climbing and falling moments before it hit the ground… the preliminary report said that one witness saw the plane barrel roll before it hit the ground. The pilot declared an emergency. The control tower was saying things like, oh, you know, here's the altitude guidelines. Where do you need to land? What do you need? Do you need help? And then they lost contact.”
Three members from the Gospel Hall of Fame quartet The Nelons died in the crash, as did the pilot and three other people on board.
Read the full story HERE.
--
It’s been more than 16 months since 30 tons of ammonium nitrate, a chemical used in explosives in Wyoming coal mines, left Cheyenne’s Dyno Nobel factory on the western edge of the city April 12, 2023, and disappeared a few days later in the desert of central California.
On Wednesday, the Federal Railroad Administration told energy reporter Pat Maio that an investigation into the circumstances of the missing chemical remains “open and ongoing.”
“The Federal Railroad Administration finally decided to get motivated after two months of me hounding them to give me another update on the final report for what happened to the ammonium nitrate, which can blow things up… They said there will be some actions that are imposed against somebody, but they're not saying whether it'll be the railroad in which the ammonium nitrate leaked out of the rail car when it went to saltdale, California, or they won't say if it never got loaded into the railcar.”
Ammonium nitrate is primarily used as a fertilizer, but it also was a key chemical used in the bomb that terrorist Timothy McVeigh built to blow up a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
Read the full story HERE.
--
A spiderweb of water lines are positioned in and around all of the historic structures at Brooks Lake Lodge and dozens of crews from an overall incident management team of 500 firefighters have been brought to the scene to cross-train for protecting the historic Wyoming lodge.
The general manager of the historic lodge told Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean he is continually impressed by what he sees happening on the ground to fight the Fish Creek Fire, which is threatening the property in the Bridger-Teton National Forest of northwest Wyoming.
“what that means is, if the fire is coming on strong at, say, Brooks Lake Lodge, but nothing's really happening over here at Pinnacle, Brooks Lake Lodge will be able to draw on that force at that's at Pinnacle that's cross trained with them, so that we can grow the firefighting force wherever we need it, whenever we need it. It's just building that extra resilience, that extra redundancy.”
Fire crews are continuing traffic control on U.S. Highway 26/287 and Togwotee Pass, preemptively cutting down trees that could catch fire and potentially spread embers across the highway, or even fall onto the highway itself.
Read the full story HERE.
--
In fire-ravaged swaths of northern Wyoming where hundreds of thousands of acres of grasslands have burned, antelope have had a hard time, with many burned to death.
Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that there is also a concern that a lack of forage in burnt-out areas could starve out elk and deer over the coming winter.
“In the immediate sense, the wildfires don't seem to be having that much effect on wildlife really, pronghorn…Game and Fish as of this week, they they either found dead or had to put down around 50 antelope that have been lost directly to the fire, and that's probably because they're just not as good at getting over fences as deer and elk are…what the concern is now is the lingering effects, like animals that have suffered really severe smoke inhalation that could lead to to pneumonia, or animals that might have suffered burns could start suffering from infections.”
Although the immediate wildlife death toll seems minimal, the fires could have deadly long-term effects. For now, Game and Fish, other agencies and local landowners are keeping an eye on things.
Read the full story HERE.
--
The drama and legal wrangling over a controversial 101-foot-tall Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints temple planned in Cody appears to be over, at least for now.
Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson reports that the nearly ten-thousand-square-foot temple has been the focus of fierce opposition by some Cody residents for more than a year now - but District Court Judge John Perry ruled Monday that construction can move forward.
“The whole approval process of the temple had stretched more than 18 months because of a lawsuit that was filed trying to block construction of the temple last summer. Finally, this is the final ruling on it, and the temple will be definitively be allowed to proceed. Technically, actually, the church already had a green light to start building the temple all the way back in the winter time, but they voluntarily said that they would hold off until the judge made a final ruling on the matter.”
The church did not immediately respond to Cowboy State Daily's request for comment on the ruling, but it has already been staging building components for the temple near its site on Skyline Drive.
Read the full story HERE.
--
A Wyoming judge on Thursday rejected a tourist’s claim that bear-spraying an unwelcome visitor to her Grand Teton National Park campsite was self-defense.
Judge Melissa Owens didn’t accept Shannon DeWitt’s claim that when she bear-sprayed a Colorado woman near her campsite in June, it was because the Colorado woman - who said she was looking for her custom cowboy hat - had tried to veer her car toward both Dewitt and her husband, Ben. That’s according to crime and courts reporter Clair McFarland.
“The people whose campsite she kept walking through … thought that she was an intruder… the husband is said to have kind of squared up against her and then shot after her as she tried to get away, and the wife is said to have bear sprayed her through her open window… on the stand today, the wife has been telling a different story, where she. Saying, actually, this woman veered at me, and I reacted by grabbing pepper spray I happened to have in my pocket and blasting her.”
A jury could still find that Dewitt acted in self-defense and acquit her.
Read the full story HERE.
--
More than eight years ago, New Mexico’s Kit Carson Electric Cooperative became the first distribution electricity cooperative to sever ties with Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, a giant cooperative with member organizations in a four-state territory, including parts of Wyoming.
With Kit Carson late on filing its financial report on 2023 results, talk among Wyoming’s co-ops has picked up a common theme: The grass isn’t necessarily greener on the other side. So energy reporter Pat Maio called Kit Carson’s CEO to find out what’s really happening there.
“They basically denied it and said that things are fine and dandy there, and that financially, they're okay, and that they're 100% renewable, which may he speculated, is the problem here. So, you know, as you know, the Wyoming co ops are all into coal fired generation, relying heavily on Laramie River Station.”
There are eight co-ops in Wyoming who are members of Tri-State, who have been vocal about preserving the coal-fired Laramie River Station one of the last remaining coal plants with no plans to close in the Cowboy State.
Read the full story HERE.
--
The mayor of Evanston and his city attorney are angry with their local newspaper’s coverage of a hot mic incident involving a city employee who left a scathing voicemail for a local resident after thinking he had already hung up the phone.
Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson reports that the Evanston City Council is now divided, with a letter of “no confidence” in Mayor Kent Williams, issued by some members.
“This all stems from a city employee who accidentally left a voicemail to a member of the public. This was after he thought he had hung up the phone while giving a voicemail, when in fact he did not hang up and made some rather incendiary remarks about that person… the local newspaper covered what had happened there, and they gave it front and center attention in the paper above the fold, the front page. And the mayor Kent Williams expressed extreme frustration that how much coverage the newspaper had given to the matter at a city council meeting.”
Mayor Williams told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday afternoon that relations have since improved significantly between he and the newspaper, although he said it’s been “an ugly month” between the city and the Herald.
Read the full story HERE.
--
A Cheyenne man, formerly from Guernsey, is accusing local police of entering his home without providing a warrant and tasing him to retaliate for his decision to record their encounter on his cellphone.
According to crime and courts reporter Clair McFarland, the attorney representing the plaintiff just won a settlement for a different client, on a similar case out of Cheyenne.
“Just days ago, Jordyn Surber of Coal Creek law secured $127,000 plus settlement for her clients Myron Woods, there in Cheyenne, over police entering his home without a warrant, kind of tackling him, arresting him. So I mean, within just days of that settlement becoming public, she filed a lawsuit on behalf of another client, alleging some similar circumstances in Guernsey. So you have a Guernsey man who says that he was never presented with a warrant when police came and forced their way into his home and tased him.”
The new complaint accuses two Guernsey police officers of using excessive force and of entering his home without a warrant, probable cause or legal justification.
Read the full story HERE.
--
Wyoming state Senator Troy McKeown doesn’t believe Vice President Kamala Harris’ call for a federal ban on “price gouging” for groceries is going to work.
Along with being a state legislator, McKeown is also a grocer. He owns Don’s Supermarket stores in Gillette and Wright, and told politics reporter Leo Wolfson that the worst thing Harris could do is get involved with regulating this industry more.
“Grocery costs have absolutely increased in the last four years. They're actually up 30% since 2019 while unit volumes are flat, according to Forbes magazine. So what that shows is that consumers are spending more money to get the exact same amount of groceries as they did in the past, which is a legitimate hardship when considering median household income prices have not increased. But McKeown does not believe this is the right way to go about the problem. He believes that government regulation is too high and that will absolutely help the problem if that was reduced.”
Grocery stores are historically known for low profit margins on the products they sell. Price increases can often be a response to other supply chain issues or problems related to other industries.
Read the full story HERE.
--
And that’s today’s news! For a deeper dive into the people and issues that affect Wyoming, check out The Roundup, conversations with the most interesting people in the Cowboy State. A new episode drops tomorrow, when I have a conversation with the founder of the non-profit “Missing People Of Wyoming,” Desiree Tinoco. You can find the link on our website, on our YouTube channel, and wherever you get your podcasts. And of course, you'll find it in our FREE daily email newsletter!
Thanks for tuning in - I’m Wendy Corr, for Cowboy State Daily.
