It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Wednesday, February 5th. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - Brought to you by the Wyoming Senior Olympics! Experience the excitement of the Winter Games, February 20–22 in Pinedale, and support the SAFE Initiative. For event details and the full schedule, visit wyoming senior olympics dot com.
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Count Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder a fan of the U.S. Dept of Education getting abolished.
President Trump is outlining his plan to get rid of the department - and Degenfelder told Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland on Tuesday that the best-case scenario for Wyoming is for federal school funding to go directly to the states.
“There's all these reports that Trump is getting ready to push for the elimination of the US Department of Education and Wyoming's education head Megan Degenfelder the superintendent said, Well, I haven't gotten confirmation from Trump's administration yet. I was hoping he would do this, but I also hope that all those federal federal dollars will instead go directly to the states for them to establish their own criteria, how to administer them, rather than always deferring to this big agency with its own rules.”
Degenfelder said it’s her hope that the rules and “red tape” the federal Department of Education has affixed to federal funding will vanish, but the money will be allocated in a block-grant model directly to states.
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The Wyoming Senate has passed what its leadership calls the largest property tax cut in Wyoming history.
Senate File 69 as passed on third reading Tuesday would slash taxes by 50% and offer no backfill money for local schools and governments. Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson reports that the bill passed on a 23-8 vote and now moves on to the House, which already passed its own version of this bill on Jan. 23.
“The bill received significant debate in the Senate. On Tuesday, it passed on a 23 to eight vote, but many legislators, like senators Stacy Jones and John Cole of Rock Springs expressed concern about what it will do to their local coffers in their local county government… But others, like Senator Tara Nethercott, who supported the 50% said that the legislature can address these issues in the coming years, and that she believes it's an issue that certainly won't be leading to a sky falling type scenario for these local entities.”
There are a handful of other property tax bills still remaining, such as a bill to make property taxes in Wyoming based on acquisition value, which passed on first reading in the House on Tuesday afternoon.
Read the full story HERE.
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Efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development have been met with approval by most Republicans, including Wyoming’s congressional representative, Harriet Hageman.
The organization’s stated purpose is to strengthen U.S. influence abroad by providing money for humanitarian and economic purposes as well as for combating repressive regimes.
But Cowboy State Daily’s Sean Barry spoke to Hageman Tuesday, who said that she believes that USAID is, quote, “an insidious organization that needed to be reined in, if not eliminated altogether.”
“Rep. Hageman’s concern is that the US Agency for International Development, USAID, which is an independent agency, as she noted, it was not authorized by Congress and is not overseen by Congress, has never been overseen by Congress in its entirety since it was founded in the 1960s… She thinks that it's lost its way in many respects… Many people just point to wasteful spending, generally woke spending, spending on things that have nothing to do with humanitarian assistance, nothing to do with combating repressive regimes anywhere in the world… And I think most alarmingly, Rep. Hageman has pointed to examples where she thinks that USAID has actually funded Hamas. She thinks that they funded the Taliban. And she also thinks that there is money, USAID, money that went into the anti semitic riots on US college campuses last year.”
Hageman said she agrees with Trump’s crackdown on the agency, carried out mainly by Elon Musk, which has included stop-work orders, firings, removal of computers and even a shutdown of the agency’s website.
Read the full story HERE.
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Kemmerer is home to the “mother” JCPenney store, and will soon be home to the “mother” TerraPower nuclear plant as well.
The synergy of that isn’t lost on TerraPower, which has designed a 35,000-square-foot training center with that very idea of a “mother” ship in mind - even calling Kemmerer’s nuclear plant “Unit One,” according to business reporter Renee Jean.
“They're hoping that it encourages tourism in Kemmerer - for one that visitors may want to come just like they do come to the mother JC Penney store, that they might want to come to the mother TerraPower plant and learn about nuclear energy. It's also, though, going to be the training center for all new terra power employees. So terra power employees will go to Kemmerer regardless of what country they're from… They will live there for a temporary amount of time. They will fill up hotels. They will eat at restaurants. They will shop in local stores. And, you know, I talked with the mayor, and he's hoping that that leaves a good impression with those visitors that they'll want to come back to experience more of what Kemmerer has to offer.”
Construction on the huge training center should start sometime late this year.
Read the full story HERE.
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Winter weather gave way to strong winds across most of Wyoming on Tuesday. The National Weather Service issued High Wind Warnings for most of southeast Wyoming and the Cody Foothills, with winds gusting up to 70 mph.
But Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that that’s a gentle breeze compared to the strongest gust recorded the last week in Wyoming. That was 120 mph on Mount Coffin in the mountains of Lincoln County in Western Wyoming.
“When you get up into the highest elevations, it's like lightning. The highest points attract the strongest winds, and when 120 miles per hour, a person can be blown over by a wind of up to 60 to 70 miles per hour. So 120 miles per hour, that's enough to blow someone up and off of a mountain with probably fatal results waiting for them once they land. So it's nothing to scoff at.”
While winds have been measured at more than 100 mph in the Cowboy State before, it’s not usual. And 120 mph is just a breath away from the strongest wind gust ever recorded in Wyoming. That was 128 mph measured in Clark in 2022.
Read the full story HERE.
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The Wyoming Game and Fish Department is eager to take over management of grizzly bears if they’re delisted from federal protection, and Congress might finally make that happen.
Angi Bruce, the agency’s director, said Wyoming’s congressional delegation is pushing to have grizzlies delisted, and President Donald Trump’s administration also seems to favor delisting. That’s according to outdoors reporter Mark Heinz.
“She's all in, she wants Grizzlies delisted. She has full confidence and her department’s ready to take over full management of them. She's putting a lot of stock in Wyoming’s US congressional delegation to introduce some legislation. And pretty much everybody there seems to agree that if this is going to happen, it's going to have to happen through Congress.”
Delisting suffered a setback Jan. 8, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it had rejected petitions from Wyoming and Montana to delist grizzlies. However, Trump’s newly appointed Secretary of the Interior has openly stated that he supports delisting grizzlies.
Read the full story HERE.
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The Wyoming Senate is considering a bill criminalizing drone operators from loitering over and taking photos of over critical infrastructure.
Senate File 132 would let local law enforcement open cases against some drone operators, or disable drones, and would let the governor send the Wyoming National Guard to fight or “take” suspicious drones as well. That’s according to Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland.
“Senator Stacy Jones heard from her people, her sheriff's office there in Sweetwater County, like we never found the operator of the mystery drones that we've been seeing for several weeks. But if we did find the operator, we'd like the legal teeth to tell them to knock it off or to initiate an action if things got serious enough. And so that's what they asked her for, and that's what was debated in committee. But the problem is always, you get an airspace and you're getting into federally regulated things.”
The bill would make drone operators face a misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in jail and $2,500 in fines the first time they intentionally loiter, photograph, or commit other criminal activity with drones over critical infrastructures. A second offense would be a felony, punishable by up to two years in prison and $5,000 in fines.
Read the full story HERE.
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A bill that seeks to streamline the process of issuing license plates for vehicles has passed the House Transportation Committee.
House Bill 237 would charge the Wyoming Department of Transportation with issuing license plates rather than county treasurers.
But Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that the bill is getting the opposite reaction from some Cowboy State voters online, who are questioning the idea of relying on the U.S. Postal Service for delivery of their plates.
“This bill would mean you're no longer picking your license plate up from the county treasurer. Instead, you go to the county treasurer to file your registration, and then WYDOT will mail it to you within 30 days, and so you'll have like, a 30 day grace period from the time your license plate is due to receive your plates… There are a lot of questions about this bill, and people online are panning it… Some of the comments are like, This is so dumb, so now we have to wait for it to come in the mail and the mail sucks. It takes so long to get your mail.”
The bill’s sponsor, Representative Cody Wylie, said his bill has several features that would lower the costs of making plates in the state, among them the fact that new plate designs would no longer be made every eight years. In other words, people who don’t like the latest, new design would be stuck with it.
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.
