It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Tuesday, September 10th. 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"
Law enforcement officials in Thermopolis have confirmed that a shooting took place in a residential neighborhood Monday afternoon.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland was on the scene shortly after the incident. She spoke with neighbors who told her one of the residents had been yelling and swinging around a baseball bat, hitting the home he shares with his father. When officers arrived, the man charged the police vehicle.
“Then the action went behind a house and the neighbors lost sight of it, but the neighbor that said the man was charging the cop car also said he heard a couple Taser blasts followed by the gunshots… I have spoken with the mayor of Thermopolis and the director of DCI, and neither is confirming whether there's a fatality.”
This is a developing story, and Cowboy State Daily will report more details as they become available.
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Although Secretary of State Chuck Gray has been a frequent critic of Gov. Mark Gordon, State Treasurer Curt Meier hadn’t — until now.
At Saturday’s Wyoming Republican Party Central Committee meeting in Douglas, Meier criticized the governor for opposing a proposal that could give his office more power over the state’s investments - and Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson reports that Meier used forceful language.
“He said that Gordon is being a hypocrite. He said he's tired of taking his crap and that it's just absolutely ridiculous that this happened. He said that the governor blindsided him with this information and sandbagged him that he had not prior to this meeting ever brought this to his attention, these concerns, and he thought that was very inappropriate.”
Gordon’s office declined to directly respond to Meier’s comments, but Betsy Anderson, the governor’s general counsel and deputy chief of staff, explained that Gordon is concerned the proposal amounted to putting too much power in one man’s hand.
Read the full story HERE.
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A school district in east-central Wyoming could become the latest in the state to allow employees to conceal carry firearms.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that residents are being asked to comment on a proposed rule that would allow some teachers to carry firearms concealed, on which the Converse County School District 1 is scheduled to vote in October.
The proposed policy is similar to those in other Wyoming school districts that have concealed carry for employees, including in Uinta, Fremont, Park and Campbell counties.
“I didn't circle back to every school district that has done this but lander and so landers, Fremont County one and then Campbell County, they both said, you know, they have these districts in place, or these policies in place. Campbell County's is more of a hybrid. They have it for some of their schools, not all. And there's going well in Lander, it's been five years, and the board vice chair said we haven't had any accidental discharges or anyone drop a pistol or anyone go ballistic.”
The rule is before the school board on a public comment phase, with a vote scheduled for Oct. 8.
Read the full story HERE.
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A Monday afternoon thunderstorm literally blew through Thermopolis, creating a surge of strong winds downtown and sparking several fires in the region.
Thermopolis Volunteer Fire Department Chief Mark Collins told Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi that the agency responded to two active fires that were sparked as a result of the storm.
“He told me that at this time, there's no buildings or anything at risk, except for possibly some equipment in the oil field, so they're monitoring the fire at this point, one, as of Monday afternoon, it burned 500 acres. The other, it burned 150 and they were close enough that they might burn together into a single fire. So still too early to say exactly what's going on. They're monitoring the situation, but it doesn't seem like any of the residents of Thermopolis are in danger at this time.”
Cowboy State Daily Meteorologist Don Day said while these furious winds can happen in the wake of any thunderstorm, Thermopolis’s terrain tends to amplify the impact.
Read the full story HERE.
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Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association Inc., a 41-member co-op in a four-state region that includes parts of Wyoming, has received $679 million from a federal rural electrification program aimed at boosting renewable energy generation.
But Cowboy State Daily’s Pat Maio reports that the money from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Empowering Rural America program would come at the cost of coal-fired power plants.
“It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out, but it's putting more and more pressure on the coal industry to deal with this crush of renewable energy that's coming along. You know, whether the coal industry likes it or not, it's coming, and you got to deal with it.”
The Laramie River Station, a 1,710 megawatt coal-fired power plant in Wheatland, is not being considered for closure because of its strategic importance to supply electricity to the electrical grid for reliability purposes.
Read the full story HERE.
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Gathering data for accurate property values assessments in Wyoming comes with a certain level of risk. People by and large don’t like others telling them they own money, and a recent trend of property valuation’s skyrocketing in some counties have some getting downright hostile toward their local assessors.
Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports that the Natrona County Assessor’s field staff have had more hostile encounters than normal as they’ve tried to do their jobs.
“She is really afraid to send out her field workers to measure buildings and the things that assessors have to do in the summertime and that her workers have faced threats of, of basically violence and hostility and been threatened, I guess she said, with guns… in Fremont County's assessor told me that she, too, a couple years ago, went her crew face, actually at gunpoint, a man not letting them off the property, and he was holding a gun.”
Under Wyoming law, assessors in each county are required to physically inspect all real properties at least once every six years to ensure property characteristic data is accurate. Aerial photography is allowed as a replacement for an onsite visit under some conditions.
Read the full story HERE.
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The fiery and fatal crash that closed eastbound Interstate 80 for more than eight hours Saturday was caused by a semi trailer colliding into another commercial truck that was parked on the shoulder.
Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson reports that the driver who hit the parked semi was killed.
“The Wyoming Highway Patrol has released a little more information about the crash that closed the eastbound lanes of I 80 around Rollins for about little more than eight hours on Saturday. It was, it was quite a bad crash… apparently, one semi driver crossed over the line into the shoulder where another semi had parked, and so his semi crashed into the park, semi, which jackknifed them both across both lanes of the highway, and the first semi burst into flames and the driver died.”
Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi spoke to some of the travelers who found themselves stuck for hours on the interstate.
“The bigger takeaway is that these are Wyoming drivers, so they anticipate these sort of things in winter, these summer standstills on highways, not just I 80, but across Wyoming, are pretty rare, but they can happen, and a lot of people keep their winter emergency kit in their vehicle for winter. But there's some merit in keeping that thing in there all the time, because when you're stuck in a standstill, like they were on I 80 for several hours, having food water, in the case, when it's cold, having a change of clothes, blankets, sleeping bags, all of these things. It's not a bad idea to have those things in your car all the time, because you never know when something like this is going to happen.”
Many of the non-commercial drivers going east on I-80 that morning were on their way to the University of Wyoming’s football home opener in Laramie.
Read the full story HERE.
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Duck numbers in northern breeding grounds are way up from last year at an estimated 34 million, including about 6.6 million of the mallard ducks coveted by hunters.
But outdoors reporter Mark Heinz spoke to waterfowl experts who say that those numbers mean nothing for Wyoming duck hunters unless, and until, winter storms start driving all those birds south.
“We do have kind of a good pocket of really good waterfowl hunting over in the Torrington area, kind of in the eastern part of the state, catches the edge of one of the major flyways… from what our meteorologist Don Day is telling us… Winter is going to be fairly mild, but then it's going to start to get a little bit more severe toward October and November. And that's good news, because that's exactly what the duck hunters and the guides waterfowl guides need to push those birds down out of Canada and Montana and then into Wyoming.”
Waterfowl hunting seasons are set to open later this month across much of Wyoming, and some will run through January, or even early February.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming residents will no longer have to travel outside the state or get help from a military friend to satisfy their donut and coffee fix.
On Monday morning, the first Dunkin’ Donuts franchise to open to the public in Wyoming opened at the Horse Palace Swan Ranch in Cheyenne. Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson said the 350-square foot restaurant is inside the new 30,000-square-foot gaming amusement center that opened earlier this summer.
“Spoke to Steven Gibson, who's the director of marketing for Wyoming Horse Racing LLC, and Gibson said they were looking for a restaurant that you couldn't necessarily find in Cheyenne, something a little different that might catch people's attention. And they reached out to Dunkin’, and sure enough, they were willing to serve up their donuts and coffee, so people will have that to look forward to if they want to go gamble or just get a donut or a cup of joe.”
Until Monday, the only Dunkin’ located in Wyoming was at the F.E. Warren Military Base, which is not open to the general public.
Read the full story HERE.
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And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel.
I’m Wendy Corr, for Cowboy State Daily.
