It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Wednesday, October 30th. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - brought to you by 4 Wyoming Pack. 4 Wyoming Pack says, “This November, Wyoming will vote to allow residential homes to be taxed at a lower, fairer rate, even the playing field, and give families a much-needed break.” 4 Wyoming Pack wants you to Vote Yes on Amendment A.
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A controversial marching band performance that included acting out a sacrificial stabbing on an altar was the target of praise and outrage from local parents at a Monday meeting of the Natrona County School District Board of Education.
The performance by the Kelly Walsh High School marching band at the Oct. 19 state competition was titled “The Offering,” and included a dramatic reenactment of someone on an altar being sacrificed.
Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports that three members of the public spoke out at the school board meeting and there were comments, both pro and con, posted to a YouTube video of the performance.
“Their program involved a … human sacrifice program, where a band member goes on to an altar that has an eclipse on it, and then that band member is stabbed by another band member. And there were some people in the community that were concerned about that, but there was also a lot of people supporting the band, saying this was just acting, and they showed off their skills marching and their skills playing.”
A description of the program online said it’s a “tribal-themed” show that “presents a ceremony of sacrifice to the sun with primal rhythms and fiery visuals igniting the field.”
Read the full story HERE.
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Since Wyoming’s famed Grizzly 399 was struck and killed by a vehicle, there have been calls for lower speed limits, more wildlife safety fences near highways - and questions over whether her death was somehow preventable.
Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that the short answer seems to be that one animal’s death, even an animal as beloved as 399 was, won’t lead to any immediate changes.
“There are several projects in the whole area, as well as on that particular highway, that you know, they're continuing to try to make the road safer, you know, trying to put in more wildlife crossings and more fences and things like that. But it still comes back to driver caution… Grizzly 399’s death definitely does, you know, raise back up that overall concern about how we manage our highways and how we put in wildlife crossings. But there's nothing really specific to that one particular incident. It's still more of just a general idea of, let's keep doing what we can.”
The speed limit is 55 mph where Grizzly 399 was hit. The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office reported that the driver of the vehicle that struck there wasn’t speeding, distracted or doing anything wrong.
Read the full story HERE.
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A national database released this month by Do No Harm, a group of medical professionals that opposes administering transgender-related treatments to kids, shows that the number of transgender-related treatments given to kids in Wyoming from 2019 to 2023 is less than any other state in the U.S.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that the database compiles information from insurance records and other open sourced resources to come up with their findings. But she says Wyoming senator Anthony Bouchard, who this year proposed Senate File 99, a ban on child sex-change treatments that went into effect July 1st, isn’t buying the results.
“He said there is no way the data is that low. He just, he cited, you know, anecdotal things that he heard on the ground, opposition while proposing and carrying this law through the legislature, and said, No, I don't buy it.”
The records show that more treatments are coming out of a Jackson-based hospital than all other hospitals in the state combined.
Read the full story HERE.
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Oil wells today still leave most of their resources trapped in the ground. Anywhere from 85% to 95% of the resource remains in tight oil rocks that won’t let go of their black gold.
Cracking the code to squeezing even 1% more from those rocks is worth billions of dollars to the oil and gas sector, and Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that it’s an area where Wyoming has been quietly taking a worldwide lead.
“ThermoFisher, they're a fortune 500 company. They have partnerships around the world… they're always looking for those leaders in various areas who can help innovate and advance the science to the next level. And so that's what's happening here, is they feel that they've found that here in Wyoming, at the High Bay research facility, which is led by Dr Mohammed Piri.”
Jean reports that Dr. Piri’s work centers on extracting oil that is trapped in microscopic pores in underground rocks. The results of this ongoing work won’t just be a game changer for Wyoming oil and gas companies. It will be game-changing for the world.
Read the full story HERE.
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A committee of the Wyoming Legislature has rejected two bills that would have restricted the use of eminent domain to acquire land for carbon capture, wind and solar projects.
Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson reports that carbon capture has become a somewhat controversial topic in Wyoming as of late.
“The reason this bill was brought was primarily to make it so that carbon capture projects have a little bit of a more difficult road to pursue for their future approval process, and so that private landowners can't be strong-armed by some of these companies. But at the end of the day, the committee sided with the oil and gas industry that was really imploring them to reject this bill.”
Pete Obermueller, executive director of Wyoming Petroleum Association, called the proposed bill “a significant threat” to enhanced oil recovery in Wyoming, as eminent domain is used for this process on rare occasions.
Read the full story HERE.
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Trick-or-treaters will be out in force Thursday evening as Wyomingites celebrate Halloween with spooky strolls through their communities. But is there anything to be scared of in the forecast?
According to the National Weather Service, the hordes of minions and Beetlejuice characters roaming the streets will want to dress accordingly. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that if there’s any shivering that evening, it’ll be from the cold rather than the scares.
“If you're planning to go trick or treating that evening, it's going to be bone chillingly cold. We're talking about lows in the 30s and the 20s and even into the teens in some places overnight. So once the sun sets around 5:57pm on Halloween, it's going to get cold real fast.”
Several inches of snow could still cover the ground by Thursday. Meteorologist Don Day said it’s become cold enough for snow to accumulate, even in lower elevation areas in central Wyoming.
Read the full story HERE.
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A federal judge ruled this month that Sheridan County School District No. 2 board leadership unconstitutionally restricted a local man’s speech rights.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that during a February 2022 Sheridan County School District 2 board meeting, school board officials used the board’s “personnel policy” to keep county resident Harry Pollak from referring to an individual staffer by name, in a complaint regarding the school’s mask mandates. But U.S. District Court Judge Alan B. Johnson ruled Friday that was unconstitutional.
“School cannot use it just to forbid people from talking about staffers… It was applied unconstitutionally to him because people who went in there wanting to praise staffers were allowed to do so, but him wanting to criticize staffers, he wasn't allowed to do so. That's what courts in First Amendment cases call viewpoint discrimination.”
The policy doesn’t inherently discriminate against speakers on the basis of their viewpoint. But the judge ruled that the way the school board member applied it to Pollak did.
Read the full story HERE.
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Built in the 1870s, the Laramie Plains Civic Center is one of Wyoming’s oldest buildings, and it exudes energy.
Whether the huge 167,000-square-foot former school is haunted is a matter of belief. Some say definitely yes, while others - including Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz - aren’t convinced. Heinz went with Cowboy State Daily videographer Reilly Strand, and a group of paranormal investigators, to the allegedly haunted building.
“We went in with some ghost hunters and spent several hours after dark, late into the night there in the civic center. You know, there were a couple things, a couple times when lights went off on the devices, or maybe voice messages came across the spirit box that kind of, you know, made me raise my eyebrows… the ghost hunters said they think that there's something there. Whatever's there is apparently friendly there. There's there aren't any mean spirits there. If there are.”
There were a couple of occasions during the hunt when lights seemed to turn on with no plausible explanation. And even the building manager, a skeptic himself, said he’d like the ghost hunters to come back and see what else they might find.
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! And don’t forget to drop in on the Cowboy State Daily morning show with Jake Nichols, Monday through Friday from 6 to 10 a.m.! Thanks for tuning in - I’m Wendy Corr, for Cowboy State Daily.
