It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Thursday, February 20th. 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, today through Friday in Pinedale, and support the SAFE Initiative. For event details and the full schedule, visit wyoming senior olympics dot com.
–After 21 amendments and more than five hours of debate, the Wyoming House finally passed Senate File 69, a bill that, as changed on Wednesday, will provide a 50% property tax cut in Wyoming.
Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson reports that the bill also offers a 50% backfill for local governments, schools and other special district entities.
“Both sides are very passionate for and against this bill, people like Representative Steve Harshman and Representative Julie Jarvis, really castigated the bill, saying it's really, really going to be harmful for Wyoming moving forward and funding the state's needs while there's like Representative John Bear and Representative Tony Locke said it is the tax relief that the voters are asking for and need and that they believe they're fully entitled to receive.”
The bill will now head over to the Senate for concurrence. The major difference between the House and Senate’s property tax relief proposals are that the Senate did not pass it with a backfill. That could send the bill to a joint conference committee to hammer out a solution in the remaining two weeks of the legislative session.
Read the full story HERE.
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The Thermopolis Police Department and Hot Springs County Sheriff’s Office released video Tuesday of a September officer- and deputy-involved shooting in which a local man who chased agents with a metal baseball bat was shot and killed.
41-year-old Jared Gottula died outside his home Sept. 9, 2024, after he charged a Thermopolis Police Officer and Hot Springs County Sheriff’s Deputy with a bat, and they both shot him. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that a Special prosecutor for the Fremont County Attorney’s office deemed the agents’ actions legally justified.
“Once the prosecutor LeBron was like, Oh, this is justified under Wyoming law, all the public records requests start pouring in. We all wanted to see the body camera footage, dash camera footage, home camera footage, were also involved, as it turns out… the hot springs County Sheriff's … office, and the Thermopolis Police Department both had agents that fired. They both were involved in the officer involved shooting. So they worked together to stitch a compilation, a video compilation, which they then released Tuesday night and and so that shows a series of interactions.”
In his decision letter, the prosecutor said the deputy and officer were focused on stopping Gottula’s behavior in the least violent manner possible, but Gottula showed focus and determination to hurt the officer and deputy and never once indicated he intended to surrender, despite being given ample opportunity.
Read the full story HERE.
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Roughly a year after the torture and killing of a wolf put a worldwide spotlight on Sublette County in southwest Wyoming, a county resident said she’s getting death threats over a coyote hunting contest she’s helping to organize.
The Song Dog Shootout, scheduled for Saturday and Sunday in Sublette County, has nothing to do with the torture and killing of a wolf last year in the local town of Daniel. That’s what Amy Busselle told outdoors reporter Mark Heinz on Wednesday.
“She told me absolutely positively, no connection whatsoever. It's just late February. Is a good time to hunt coyotes. They've have a coyote boom in their area right now. She said, coyotes are killing chickens, pets. Ranchers are worried about… coyotes getting into their calves and so in this is not, this is not everybody get out and go on your snowmobile and run over coyotes. This is go out and hunt coyotes with rifles for a couple days, and that's how they're framing it…. apparently, some very different perspectives on this thing. The lady who is organizing this thing told me that, I mean, it's blown up over the past few days, they've gotten, been flooded with calls, and even up to the point of getting death threats, which everybody on on both sides in are saying, Look, that's not acceptable. Let's not do that.”
Busselle said coyote hunting contests are common in Wyoming and across the West this time of year, and if any of the hunters are caught doing anything deliberately cruel to coyotes, she said they will be disqualified.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming often sends its commodities out to other states, losing all or substantially all of the items’ value before getting those finished products back at much higher costs.
But that might not be entirely so for nuclear.
Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that the abundance of Wyoming’s uranium reserves has at least one company seriously considering a uranium fuel manufacturing plant.
“BWX technologies. They're a Virginia based company, and right now they have a plant there in Virginia that makes their fuel, but they've got enough demand here in Wyoming, and there's enough Uranium reserves here in Wyoming that they think they might want to just build a plant to manufacture that fuel here… And so if we're we're doing that here, we're getting all of that value, we're getting all of those jobs. It's a huge, could be a huge economic boost.”
Miller said BWXT has not yet made a decision on whether to locate its fuel manufacturing plant here, but it is among things the company is in the midst of “battle testing,” with the help of various Wyoming vendors, including L&H Industrial out of Gillette.
Read the full story HERE.
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Sheridan residents woke up to a new temperature record on Wednesday: minus 27 degrees, breaking the previous record for Feb. 19 set in 1929.
Other places in Wyoming that aren't breaking record-low temperatures got unbelievable amounts of snow, according to Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi. The Snowy Range and Sierra Madres have received over 80 inches since Valentine’s Day, with more on the horizon.
“This past week might have been the worst of the cold weather for the winter. That doesn't mean that we're not going to have more sub zero days, but… the chances that we're going to have extended periods of days where it's below freezing or below zero are reduced the further we get into the year… on the other hand, we still have plenty of snow to go because it's been above average for precipitation in January and February for most of Wyoming, and there's still the wettest months of the year to come, and that's April, March, April and May.”
The National Weather Service is monitoring an incoming weather system that will significantly increase air temperatures. Meteorologist Don Day said that will be a slight reprieve, but not as much of one as many Wyomingites might want.
Read the full story HERE.
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A bill meant to bolster enforcement against home squatters cleared both chambers of the Wyoming Legislature on Wednesday and, if there’s no need to compromise on its amendments, will soon go to the governor’s desk.
If it becomes law, Senate File 6 will let a homeowner ask law enforcement agents to remove a squatter from her home - with some strict guidelines, though, according to Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland.
“When you call police now, you say someone's squatting in my home, it can be difficult for them to just oust that person forcibly, because there's questions like… What if it's hard to verify when someone has a right to be there or someone doesn't, so that's something that police actually don't like to monkey with. So this bill puts in some accountability checks. So on the one hand, if the homeowner is willing to swear, to attest like, this is not a tenant. This is not my boyfriend. This is not we're not in ongoing litigation over this home, things like that, then police will take that person out under this bill… if you're found attesting things falsely, there can be consequences for that.”
A similar bill is now pending in the House. Its focus isn't on squatters, but on fake landlords. If it becomes law, Senate File 11 will add a new felony to Wyoming’s fraud laws so that a person who intentionally uses a false document to gain property or a right to that property could face up to 10 years in prison and $10,000 in fines.
Read the full story HERE.
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A California company said it might want to put a factory in Natrona County to build tiny nuclear power plants, but says it needs to store its radioactive spent fuel.
However, a Wyoming House committee voted down a bill Wednesday that would have allowed for that storage. That’s according to Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison.
“Think of them as like the generator that you hook up to your RV, except it runs on atomic fuel and can generate a megawatt, which is enough to power 750 homes… the company is still trying to make a decision on where it wants to build this factory. But here's the catch, in order to build this factory and be regulated under federal law, they've got to be able to take the reactors back when the fuel is exhausted and then store the fuel on site at the factory. So in order for Wyoming to roll out the red carpet for this new employer that could bring 250 good jobs to Wyoming… The state needs to pass some legislation allowing the storage of spent nuclear fuel. And that was up for debate today in the minerals committee in Cheyenne, and it was voted down five to three.”
Radiant Industries is looking at Natrona County and potential locations in other states. By constructing new mini reactors, refueling them and storing spent fuel at a single location, the company’s CEO said Radiant could build a strong manufacturing business in Wyoming.
Read the full story HERE.
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Homeschool parents in Wyoming are closer to having more autonomy over what they teach their kids.
House Bill 46, also known as the Homeschool Freedom Act, is sailing through the state Legislature. Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports that the bill advanced Wednesday to the Senate floor with a recommendation that it pass.
“The homeschool Freedom Act allows parents to just bypass contacting the school district… if they're in Wyoming and they're going to homeschool their child as a kindergartner, they don't have to contact the school district at all. If they have someone in the school district, there would still be a notification involved, but there's there would be no longer a requirement to submit a curriculum each year.”
The Wyoming Senate Education Committee voted 4-0 to move House Bill 46 out of committee without any amendments.
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 did you know, we’re also a podcast? Search for us on iTunes, Spotify, and all other major platforms. And remember 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.
