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[{"type":"text","text":"Pass looks a little high...."}]

Sports 10 25 24

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

<title>Today In Sports: Friday, October 25, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Pass looks a little high....

Today In Sports: Friday, October 25, 2024

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

Clair McFarland

Government & Politics

Politics

counties on Thursday that a 4% cap on yearly increases in residential property taxes is unconstitutional, and the counties shouldn’t let taxpayers have that exemption.

The State Equalization Board will refuse to certify this year’s property tax assessment figures if counties keep that cap on them, the report says.

The board’s two-person majority — Chair Jayne Mockler and Vice-Chair Marty Hardscog — wrote in the Thursday report that the 4% increase cap for residential property taxes has arbitrary impacts across the state. 

It also disproportionately insulates high-end homes, and disfavors homeowners in more sluggish market areas, the report asserts.

But the report’s main point, and conclusion from the past two years’ tax data, is that the 4% cap violates the Wyoming Constitution’s call for equal and uniform property taxes within each class of property.

The board hasn’t yet issued an order requiring Wyoming’s county assessors to rework their pending tax bills without the cap.

But it expects to do so in the coming weeks after working with counties, Mockler told Cowboy State Daily in a Thursday phone interview.

“We issued this report today that says if that cap doesn’t come off, Marty and I can’t vote to certify residential property taxes. Because they’re not uniform,” said Mockler. “It’ll be followed with an order ... (and) our goal is ultimately to remove the cap.”  

Mockler noted that the board isn’t targeting the other, narrower exemptions with this report — like the 25% property tax cut passed in 2025 or the long-term homeowner exemption.

More than half of the state’s residential property tax values fall under the 4% increase cap, the report says.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"But We Don’t Get A Tax Free Year"}]

This kind of push from the state board is unprecedented, Converse County Assessor Dixie Huxtable told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday.

But Wyomingites shouldn’t expect a tax-free year over the maneuver, she said.

“Everyone’s in agreement there will be residential property taxes for 2026,” she said. “This … is just a step in the process of getting different values the board feels is appropriate.”

The pending mandate leaves Wyoming counties somewhere between following the 4% cap requirement in state law and following another state law that tells assessors to obey the state board, she said.  

“You’re asking us to go against the law? Under the law we have to apply the 4% cap and you’re saying we can’t,” she reflected from the report.

[{"type":"text","text":"“It’s so bizarre it’s funny,” Huxtable added. "}]

She said she was digesting the report Thursday afternoon, and had just been to a phone meeting with the board officials, assessors, and county attorneys.

Two days earlier on Tuesday, Huxtable had just urged the Legislature’s Joint Revenue Committee to approach more changes to the state’s property tax law with caution, because assessors are always trying to keep up with the many changes lawmakers have brought in recent years.

Assessors are at the mercy of state law and are working hard to follow it, she’d said.  

Reflecting on the board’s Thursday report, Huxtable told Cowboy State Daily that assessors are now trying to gain clarification on what to do in the coming weeks.

“We’re on standby,” she said, adding that from her meeting with the board, her impression is, “They’d be tickled pink to go to court” on this issue.

Wyoming Attorney General Keith Kautz said Thursday that he doesn’t know of any litigation on this currently, “but if there is a challenge, we will support what the Legislature did.”

Rep. Barry Crago, R-Buffalo, who has since become a state senator, was the sponsor on the main bill the board’s Thursday report derides as unconstitutional.

Crago did not return a Thursday afternoon voicemail request for comment by publication.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Different Homes, Different Taxes"}]

The board’s report points to inconsistencies across the Wyoming property tax structure.

People who upgrade their homes by changing the footprint of those homes lose the cap exemption to a reset that year, while people who upgrade only the interior do not, says the report.

It says some homes have had their tax bills so thoroughly capped, they’re paying less than half of the state-mandated property tax rate.

“The caps, by design, generate highly disparate tax consequences for 

It accuses the law of discriminating arbitrarily between different homeowners across Wyoming.

“The demarcation between taxpayers receiving a tax windfall, versus those who do not, serves no rational basis,” the document adds.

Rep. Liz Storer, D-Jackson, told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday that she had voted for the 4% tax cap during the tax hikes of 2024. But she views the law as more of a short-term fix. 

"It was a tourniquet; it was a short-term fix," she said. "Butif you leave the tourniquet on, you damage the body." 

Storer's home region of Teton County accounts for huge property tax revenues in Wyoming. She has tried over the years to get lawmakers to stop applying property tax breaks to people's secondary homes. 

Of the $860.2 million in exemptions the 4% cap is expected to cause this year, Teton County accounts for $507.9 million, says a Department of Revenue memo Storer sent to Cowboy State Daily. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Lawsuit That Wasn’t"}]

The board warned lawmakers before the 4% cap bill’s passage that board members believed it’s unconstitutional.

 “the die was cast,” says the report.

The board examined the residential assessment values and looked for inverted valuations, that is where higher-valued properties were assessed at lower taxable values than other, similarly situated properties.

The board during the 2025 tax calculation process had just two members, Mockler and Hardscog. They voted that year to certify the tax values, but said that those values were probably invalid. Still, they wanted to gather one more year of data to be sure, the report says.

They also planned to release a Nov. 13, 2025, order requiring assessors to stop giving the exemption.

Gov. Mark Gordon’s office asked the board not to issue that order, the report says.

In November and early December, the governor’s office and Wyoming Attorney General’s Office met with Hardscog and Mockler to talk about filing an action asking a court to judge the issue.

The governor’s office and AG’s office agreed the state board should file that court action, the report says.

The litigation was slated to be filed Jan. 20. Gordon’s office asked for multiple delays, at first to communicate the lawsuit with legislative leaders. 

When Gordon’s office asked for another delay two days later, Hardscog and Mockler said they wouldn’t certify the property tax values after the June tax calculation process, “without a working resolution of their constitutional concerns,” says the report.

Property tax chyenne 1 6 11 26

<title>Wyoming Tax Board Says 4% Cap On Property Tax Is Unconstitutional, Won't Accept It | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Wyoming’s state-level property tax board told counties on Thursday that a 4% cap on yearly increases in residential property taxes is unconstitutional and it will refuse to certify this year's property tax assessment figures if the cap remains.

Wyoming Tax Board Says 4% Cap On Property Tax Is Unconstitutional, Won't Accept It

Lubnau head 2

Tom Lubnau

Opinion

When a party to an argument resorts to name-calling, it is usually a sign they have misplaced the facts somewhere between outrage and the send button.

The far-right wing of the Republican party, when confronted with opposing opinions, has resorted to the limited vocabulary of labeling “RINOs” or “Democrats” (much to the chagrin of real rhinoceroses and Democrats).

Apparently, once the sacred word “RINO” is hurled into the air, the argument is over. Facts are no longer required. Evidence is dismissed. Logic is excused from the premises. 

The speaker may then retire triumphantly to Facebook, where a dozen people named “Patriot1776” will applaud the performance.

This column is a plea to step up their name-calling game.

If you are losing an argument on the facts, at least lose the argument in style.

, Edmond Rostand wrote one of literature's most brilliant responses to gutter name calling tactics. 

The main character, Cyrano, a poet, is told by an opponent: "Your nose is very big." Cyrano is not offended by the insult, but by its laziness. He proceeds to share better insults. 

 of Cyrano. Steve Martin offered a modernized version in 

Instead of political pundits sitting in front of their computers in the middle of the night in their underwear, anonymously pounding “RINO or Closet Democrat” for the thousandth time, put on some pajamas and try to step up your game.

With my apologies to Rostand, and to literature generally, here are some more clever things you might say about my column. 

If you wanted to be aggressive, you might say: "Sir, if I wrote such a column, I'd delete it, bury the laptop and move to Tierra Del Fuego under an assumed name!"

Friendly: "It must annoy you when your readers fall asleep before the second paragraph. You really should have a specially shaped pillow designed for them!"

Descriptive: "'Tis a ramble, pettifoggery, a tangent, a complete circumnavigation of the point!"

Curious: "What is the purpose of that enormous word count? Do you charge by the word?"

Gracious: "Oh, how you must love the truth! You have shared none and keep it all for yourself.”

Hostile: "When you submit your copy and the editor's screams escape the newsroom, the neighbors must think the building's on fire!"

Considerate: "When you write your headline, keep your thesis somewhere nearby, else your readers may never find it!" 

Tender: "Oh, someone please get this man a fact-checker, else his reputation might fade still further in the sun!" 

Pedantic: "Only such a publication as one staffed entirely by those completely ignorant of the real world could have printed such a vast accumulation of recycled opinions and borrowed conclusions beneath a byline!"

Flippant: "What a fashionable place to put your unsolicited opinions!" 

Emphatic: "No deadline but the end of the earth would be urgent enough to make you get to the point, oh majestic windbag!"

Dramatic: "When he writes a column, 5000 lilies die!" 

Admiring: "Oh, what a perfect advertisement for the merits of brevity!" 

Lyrical: "Is that a column? And you, a writer?"

Miller-esque: "That opinion is not worth a quart of skim piss."

Symons-like: “That column is two standard deviations away from intelligent.”

Rustic: "Is that thing a column? No, it must be a hay wagon, or a prize-winning crop of manure!"

Military: "Aim that prose at the enemy and bore them into submission!"

Practical: "Submit it to the sleep clinic! I'm sure it would be their most effective treatment!"

Cyrano concludes: “All of these things you might have said, if you were a man of wit and letters in the slightest. But, sadly, of wit you never had an atom, and of letters you have only three—and they spell A-S-S!”

Now, before anyone writes to complain, let me clarify. 

"ASS" is not a pejorative. It is a behavioral classification.

It describes a person who is too lazy to look up the facts, too impatient to consider an opposing viewpoint, and too confident to recognize either deficiency. 

Such a person can often be identified by the bluish glow of a computer monitor reflecting off their face sometime around 1:47 a.m. as they compose a comment beginning with the phrase, "Well actually..."

So, my anonymous friends, sharpen your pencils.

If you must hurl insults into the electronic ether, at least make them clever.

Research the facts. Construct an argument. Employ a metaphor.

And for heaven’s sake, stop making rhinoceroses look bad.

Tom Lubnau served in the Wyoming Legislature from 2004 to 2015 and is a former Speaker of the House. He can be reached at: YourInputAppreciated@gmail.com

<title>Tom Lubnau:  In Defense Of The Well-Crafted Insult | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Columnist Tom Lubnau writes, "When a party to an argument resorts to name-calling, it is usually a sign they have misplaced the facts somewhere between outrage and the send button."

Tom Lubnau:  In Defense Of The Well-Crafted Insult

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

Andrew Rossi

Outdoors

Wildlife

Anyone enjoying an adventure in Yellowstone National Park might notice a bull bison lying in a lush meadow near Canyon Junction. If they see him stand up, they'll notice that he doesn't walk, but hops on three legs while keeping the fourth tucked up close to his body. 

That’s Tiny Tim, a well-known and easily identifiable bison that has been a cause of concern for many, but people who've followed his story of survival for the past two winters believe this bum-leg bison has been doing just fine for himself.

Instead of walking, Tiny Tim literally hops through his meadow to find food and shelter. He's a little skinny, but seems to be healthy, and the majority opinion is that he should be allowed to live on his own terms. 

“You can tell right before he's getting ready to hop, because he's having to really shift everything to get that hop done,” wildlife photographer April Holm told Cowboy State Daily. “It takes him a while to get anywhere, but he always gets there.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Poor Wretch"}]

Holm and her family were on one of their weekly trips to Yellowstone last month when they had their first encounter with Tiny Tim. He was lying down in his field near Canyon Junction, close enough for a great photograph.

“We just thought it was really cool that he was lying there,” Holm said. “It looked like he was just tired and resting. Then my daughter said, ‘Mommy, it looks like he’s dying. Look at his breathing.’”

Holm looked more closely. The bison’s breathing seemed labored, and his eyes looked like they were “rolled back into his head.”

When the bull bison finally stood up, Holm noticed his left front leg was “just hanging there.” 

He was clearly keeping it off the ground as he hopped around the field looking for fresh grass to graze on.

“He hopped around on three legs, and then he lay back down,” she said. “His leg doesn’t have any cuts or anything that we can see, but he was shifting all his weight and licking that front hoof.”

Sharing some sympathy for the bison’s predicament, the Holms got their photos and moved on.

Two weeks later, they were passing by the same spot and decided to see if the bull bison was still there.

[{"type":"text","text":"Remarkably, he was."}]

“He was lying there in the field again, not getting up and flopping his head up and down,” Holm said. “Then, we saw him get up and start eating.”

Three weeks after their first encounter with the bull, he’s in the same field.

“He hasn't moved more than 30 or 40 feet total that we've seen, or anybody else that we've talked to has seen,” Holm said.

Holm was concerned about Tiny Tim thinking he was living on borrowed time. While that may be true, Tiny Tim has borrowed a lot of time and doesn’t seem to be facing an imminent demise.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Village Grump"}]

After Holm posted several videos of Tiny Tim hobbling in his field, expressing concern about his condition and well-being, dozens of people have reached out with their own concerns for the bison.

One of those people was a year-round Yellowstone employee at Canyon Village who wanted to set the record straight.

“She said she was very familiar with the animal,” Holm said. “He first showed up sometime during the summer before last, so he has survived one full summer and two winters, at least.”

Many Canyon Village residents keep tabs on Tiny Tim. Everyone calls him Tiny Tim because he hobbles around, even though he's a fully-grown adult with a bad temperament. 

“Apparently, he gets quite defensive and grumpy if you get too close,” Holm said. 

During the winter, Tiny Tim left his field and moved into the employee housing area at Canyon. He was a stubborn, surviving roadblock for the entire season. 

"He’s blocked the road for days at a time, and that’s caused some trouble," Holm said. "You can’t just go around him in the winter.”

As for his condition, there’s something clearly wrong with Tiny Tim’s left front leg, but nobody can determine exactly what that is.

“His leg doesn’t have any cuts or anything that we can see,” Holm said. “Nobody has seen anything wrong with it, other than it looks swollen.”

Tiny Tim avoids putting any weight on that leg, but that hasn’t stopped him from finding enough to eat. Holm said he looks a little skinny, but seems “otherwise healthy.”

Furthermore, Tiny Tim seems to know he’s safe where he is. He’s not very mobile, but doesn’t seem eager to move out of the Canyon Village area.

“People who’ve watched him for a while say he never goes far,” Holm said. “He’s just that resilient.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Natural Environment"}]

Amidst the massive parking lots, snack-stocked general stores, and throngs of thousands, people can forget that Yellowstone is a natural ecosystem that’s mostly allowed to exist without interference.

Yellowstone’s bison aren’t commercial cattle or zoo attractions. They naturally move through the park and live as they have in the wild for millennia, which means enduring or succumbing to any injury and malady that afflicts them.

Regular Yellowstone visitors, like the Holms, are used to seeing the spectacular sagas of nature play out in the park. That’s why Tiny Tim’s survival is so surprising.

“I would’ve thought the wolves would’ve got him by now,” Holm said. “I’ve seen how wolves hunt bison, hanging off them and trying to rip their flesh apart. I wouldn’t think he’d be able to defend himself against wolves.”

Given his obvious point of weakness, Tiny Tim probably wouldn’t survive a wolf attack. The fact that he’s survived two full winters when wolves more actively target and bring down bison is nothing short of a Christmas miracle.

Nobody wants to see an animal suffer. A Scrooge would say that if Tiny Tim were going to die, he’d better do it and decrease the surplus population.

While the bison doesn’t appear to be suffering, sometimes an animal’s natural plight prompts an unnatural end to its life.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"When To Humanely Euthanize"}]

Holm has posted multiple videos of Tiny Tim since mid-May, garnering hundreds of thousands of views and a flood of comments and messages concerned about the bison’s ongoing plight.

“Every time I post a video, I have so many people reaching out to me asking what they’ve done about him,” she said.

“They” meaning Yellowstone rangers and park biologists. Holm knows that they are aware of Tiny Tim and have declined to do anything about it.

“I spoke to somebody who actually works in the park and knows all the rangers,” she said. “She told them that he doesn’t look good, and they told her that if he’s up and feeding himself, they won't do anything.”

Rangers and biologists rarely intercede in Yellowstone’s daily life-and-death struggles, unless it's an animal that poses a direct threat to humans. That's usually bears, not bison, but there are occasional instances where rangers decided to end an animal's suffering.

 in the muddy “No Moose Pond” last September, Yellowstone rangers humanely euthanized it after 24 hours of observation.

In that instance, the rangers determined the elk had no chance of escaping the muddy pond. Euthanizing the elk spared it from a long, agonizing death.

“I 100% support how they handled that situation,” wildlife photographer Jule Argyle told Cowboy State Daily. “I don't like to see anything suffer, and most of the time, (the rangers) won't interfere. I think this was one of those unique situations where you know that animal was suffering severely, and it needed to happen.”

Argyle, who’s the postmaster at Lake Village, is familiar with Tiny Tim. In her opinion, his story of survival is enough to justify leaving him alone.

“He’s been surviving on his terms,” she said. “He’s a fighter, and nature should be allowed to take its course. Stepping in would be going against the odds, and it’s unfair to the bison.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Doesn’t Need A Crutch"}]

When Holm first saw Tiny Tim, she didn’t know whether he had been injured recently. If he was slowly wasting away from a fresh injury, she hoped that might be enough to prompt a human intervention.

“I assumed the wolves were going to get him before it’s all over, and there'd be nothing he could do about it,” she said. “I’d thought it was better to let the old guy go out with dignity rather than be eaten alive.”

Now that she’s learned more about Tiny Tim’s story, Holm is firmly on the opposite side of that argument. She wants to let nature take its course, as Tiny Tim seems to be doing OK.

“I’m glad (the rangers) haven’t and aren’t going to put him down,” she said. “He's survived and is doing a good job surviving.”

There’s no denying that Tiny Tim will remain an obvious target for any predator daring enough to take on a bull bison. Bulls are solitary by nature, so there’s no herd near Canyon Junction that’s going to defend Tiny Tim if he’s threatened.

Whenever Tiny Tim’s story ends, it’ll be of natural causes in an environment like Yellowstone. It can be sad and tragic in some people’s view, but that’s nature.

“Things like this happen all the time,” Argyle said. “This time, it just happens to be a bison near the road where people can see it. These types of things are what make Yellowstone wild.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"God Bless Us, Everyone!"}]

When a sudden snowstorm swept through Yellowstone on Tuesday, Holm circled back to Canyon Junction to visit Tiny Tim. The bison had managed to hop around 100 yards out of his meadow and found shelter in a nearby forest of lodgepole pines.

For someone who’d only seen Tiny Tim hop an inch at a time, seeing the bison keep himself safe from the snow convinced Holm that she doesn’t have to worry.

“If he’s made it this long, I’m guessing he will continue to make it even though it is a challenge,” she said. “Yes, it’s a sad situation, but nature is unfair and cruel a lot of the time. 

"But at the same time, it’s amazing to watch him. He’s survived this long, and that takes resilience and tenacity.”

Holm finds Tiny Tim as inspiring and heartwarming as his Dickensian namesake, and that’s worth something to everybody.

“I think we need hope in this world, and (Tiny Tim) is an uplifting story of survival,” she said.

Tiny Tim three legged bison 6 10 26

<title>Meet Tiny Tim, The Yellowstone Bison That's Survived Two Winters On Three Legs | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Tiny Tim is a full-grown bull bison who has survived two winters in Yellowstone despite having one unusable leg. “It takes him a while to get anywhere, but he always gets there,” said one wildlife photographer who’s following Tiny Tim.

Meet Tiny Tim, The Yellowstone Bison That's Survived Two Winters On Three Legs

Mac Watson

Daily Video News

It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Tuesday, June 9th.  I’m Mac Watson

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

Before the Carbon County emergency services scanner went dark on Monday afternoon, law enforcement personnel described an active shooter incident and manhunt in Baggs. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports at least one law enforcement officer was injured and a trooper’s car was “shot up.”

“The man had emerged from a home in Baggs had fired a shot, and was trying to get into another apartment room in an apartment complex, and then he left that scene in a black truck. A trooper, a deputy, other law enforcement potentially started to converge. One officer reported that he was doing a traffic stop on the truck, and then we hear ‘Shots fired, shots fired!’ One deputy was taken to care after residents performed first aid, and then Trooper 132 as he was called on scanner traffic, said that his truck had been shot up.”

The public learned of the incident when Carbon County emergency services called for a shelter in place due to an active shooter situation.  As of Monday night, the status of the shooter was unconfirmed.

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

A downed power line is believed responsible for the Raven Creek Fire which has burned 3,900 acres of land in northeast Wyoming. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that Weston County Fire Warden Daniel Tysdal said they're experiencing “late-summer fire weather conditions and fire behavior.”

“Fire Warden Tisdale said that the fire itself is not a major concern, it's just a warning for what's to come. They're dealing with severe drought conditions, and they're seeing late summer fire patterns, and it's just the beginning of June. As of Monday afternoon, the fire is 100% contained. It burned about 3800 acres. I did talk to a local rancher family, and I could just say that their ranch family was hit by it. No livestock were injured, just a lot of fence was burned, and they are praying for rain.”

The blaze was started just days after the nearby Shipwheel Fire was started by lightning and burned 456 acres in the same corner of the county.

At a panel discussion on Saturday, Cheyenne leaders and industry officials said data centers are already helping stabilize electric rates and are opening new land for housing. But Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that skeptics still aren’t buying it.

“This has actually happened here in Cheyenne. Meta paid like a million bucks to run three miles of water and sewer lines to its center, so that they can, you know, provide the domestic water. They're on a closed loop system, but they still have restrooms for the employees and water for the break rooms and that kind of thing, and so they spent a million bucks to bring that three miles to their data center. Well, where housing developments in that area were economically unfeasible. So, you've kind of opened up this whole new place where development can come in, like housing or shopping, whatever, retail businesses, and that kind of thing.”

Cheyenne LEADS Executive Director Betsey Hale tells Cowboy State Daily that Cheyenne has 10 data centers already operating, five under construction, and nine more announced or in planning stages. Another 36 data center companies or site selectors have expressed some level of interest in Cheyenne or Laramie County,

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}],"text":"–  "}]

Big Horn County Search and Rescue had to rescue two German tourists after Google Maps got their rented Jeep stuck on a backcountry road. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that a Wyoming tow truck driver put it bluntly, “If you're going to be in the Bighorns, don't trust Google.”

“In Wyoming, a Google Maps directive can lead you down a dirt track road or to a road that's closed or that's only seasonally, seasonably open or seasonally open, and that's what these German tourists found out. The tourists were visiting Medicine Wheel, and Google Maps gave them a shortcut to get the shell, and as they're going down that shortcut, they realized that their vehicle was not the kind that they would want for that particular road. They turned around, they tried to get back to where they started, and then they lost two of the tires because of a sharp rock. They didn't go there by accident. Google Maps told them that that was a viable route, and they trusted Google Maps to get them from point A to point B.”

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