It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Thursday, November 21st. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - brought to you by the Cowboy State Daily Morning Show with Jake. From 6 a.m. to 10 a.m., Monday through Friday, Cowboy State Daily’s Jake Nichols takes you deeper into the stories that matter - and keeps up with the news, weather and sports in your part of Wyoming. Just tune into Cowboy State Daily Dot Com and join the conversation.
The Joint Revenue Committee advanced draft legislation at its meeting on Monday that, if passed into law, would cut property taxes by 25% for single-family residential home values of $2 million or less.
Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson reports that the bill is almost identical to the legislation Governor Mark Gordon already vetoed earlier this year.
“The bill itself reduces property taxes by 25% for home values up to 2 million, and also includes not only single family residential structures, but also now associated land as well. The interesting thing about this is that Gordon obviously vetoed this bill, but the legislature does have the numbers at this point to overturn his veto. It could have actually done So earlier this year, but the governor took so long to veto the bill that this would have required the calling of a special session to overturn the governor's veto.”
The committee passed the bill on an 11-3 vote on Monday. If passed into law, it would go into effect for the upcoming tax year and expire in June 2027.
Read the full story HERE.
For the past 14 years, eleven 240-feet high, 450,000-pound wind turbines have loomed over the landscape of northeastern Casper, once the symbol of the county’s first step into green energy. But for the last three years, they’ve been idle.
Casper resident Terry Wingerter was one of the Natrona County commissioners who approved the initial project in 2009. He told Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck that he wishes now he would have voted differently on the wind farm, which was to be operated by Chevron.
“It didn't turn out the way he thought it was going to turn out. It only operated for a few years, then stopped… and he just feels like it hasn't been the asset to the county or to green energy or anything like that that he thought it was going to be… The Natrona County Attorney's Office has received a letter from Chevron stating that they are going to try and make them operational by the end of the year. Whether that happens or not is yet to be determined.”
State Rep. Forrest Chadwick from House District 62, which includes the wind farm, said he has not heard complaints from constituents on the issue, but believes the company needs to do something other than allow the wind turbines to sit idle in the wind.
Read the full story HERE.
Twelve women, including one associate coach and two former and nine current collegiate volleyball players, last week sued the Mountain West Conference, San Jose State University and others over the inclusion of a transgender member on SJSU’s team.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that on Tuesday, the conference says the women manufactured their own emergency to force the court into acting just days before the tournament, when they could have sued as early as late September.
“The women want the court to basically say that Blair Fleming cannot compete in the Mountain West volleyball tournament in this conference. And so they're saying, you know, hurry up and do this for us, since the tournament starts November 27. And so the Mountain West Conference comes back and says, whoa, you guys have known about the forfeiture policy since September 27 at least… if this was such an emergency as it presented now, then they would have come to you with it in September or October, not in November, right before the tournament.”
One of the women’s main arguments is that the Mountain West Conference stealth-edited or contrived its transgender participation policy on Sept. 27 of this year, just as universities were starting to boycott games against San Jose. The MWC says its policy is nothing new and was passed by athletic directors in August 2022.
Read the full story HERE.
With a yearslong steady decline of Wyoming coal production setting up 2024 to come in less than 200 million tons for the first time in 32 years, the workforce mining that coal also continues to shrink.
Through the third quarter of this year, employment at Wyoming coal mines is down almost 8% from the end of 2023, according to Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson.
“Coal employment is down about 7.7% this year so far compared to the end of last year. But looking back, it's down 25% from 2017… so you know, the natural correlation is, as productionwanes, fewer people are needed to produce less coal. So those jobs are are leaving. Now that doesn't mean… that those people aren't using the skills those skills do transfer to other industries, the trona mines, to the oil fields. But you know those coal jobs there, there's some of the highest paying jobs in Wyoming.”
But there’s a trickle-down effect the coal mines have on other businesses that service them. Less production and fewer workers also means less business for local welders, electricians, well service companies and others that contract with the mines and employ more of the local workforce.
Read the full story HERE.
Wyoming’s prospective new gold mine has just cleared state regulatory hurdles and is moving ahead with a feasibility study, one stop closer to actually pulling gold out of the ground.
Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that there really is gold “in them thar hills” — that is, the CK Gold Project that US Gold is developing about 20 miles west of Cheyenne.
“This company, US Gold… have just made it through all of their state regulatory hurdles. They've cleared all their permits, and now they're doing the final feasibility study that's going to determine if they can get financing for this project. If they get financing for this project, Wyoming will have its first and only gold mine. It's set to operate for 10 years. ”
The company won’t start hiring in earnest until it has financing in place, although it does now have a link on its site for interested vendors and prospective employees.
Read the full story HERE.
Wyoming’s only member of the U.S. House of Representatives voiced support Wednesday for a new House rule banning males from the women’s bathrooms and locker rooms throughout the U.S. Capitol complex.
Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina introduced a resolution to that effect Monday, weeks after Delaware Democrat Sarah McBride was elected as the first openly transgender member of Congress.
Rep. Harriet Hageman voiced support for the new rule in a Wednesday email to Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland.
“The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, basically enacted it Wednesday, saying, you know,we're gonna do men in men's bathrooms and changing rooms, women in women's bathrooms and changing rooms. But the statement notes that there's lots of unisex bathrooms throughout the facility.”
McBride issued a Wednesday statement to X (formerly Twitter) calling the bathroom movement a distraction from real issues.
Read the full story HERE.
A dispute over state-owned land has been causing an uproar in the Sundance area.
The state has refused to put fencing around a 4,714-acre parcel of scenic canyon lands bought by the state of Wyoming in 2020. This has led to cattle from neighboring land users drifting onto the parcel and frustrating ranchers.
Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson reports that Crook County Sheriff Jeff Hodge has refused to write tickets for trespassing, and has been petitioning the office of State Lands and Investments to change its stance.
“The issue has resulted in cattle crossing over from slow its land into the new leaser’s land, creating a very high-tension filled dispute over cattle trespassing on the new leasers land… state legislators like representative Chip Neiman have also petitioned the state to give the land for leasing back to the previous renter, Schloredt Inc., the issue has become quite contentious.”
The biggest problem with the land predicament is deciding who should pay for fencing to separate the state and private parcels, a cost Hodge has estimated would run as much as $380,000.
Read the full story HERE.
As Colorado prepares to reintroduce more wolves, increased worry over them being shot has prompted a conservation group to set up a $50,000 reward fund for wolf poaching tips.
The reward has been in the works for months, but the timing of its announcement Thursday was prompted by a bullet wound recently found in a Colorado wolf carcass. That’s what members of the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project told outdoors reporter Mark Heinz.
“Now the bullet was not what killed the wolf, but… they never have been able to determine whether that wolf suffered that wound in Colorado or whether it had been shot previously when it came from Oregon... that did raise their concern when that bullet wound was found that, you know, are people going to try to start to, you know, poach wolves in Colorado?”
Some Colorado ranchers have expressed increasing frustration with wolves in that state. One family near the Wyoming state line said their ranch had become, quote, “a grocery store for wolves.”
Read the full story HERE.
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.
