It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Thursday, March 5th. I’m Mac Watson.
–
A committee charged with investigating the so-called CheckGate controversy over handing out checks on the Wyoming House floor said Wednesday it found no bribery or wrongdoing. But Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that the incident warrants a rules review, extra signage, and more training for legislators.
“There was no bribery or misconduct. According to the special committee's findings, they treated it as a learning opportunity, saying we should develop a lesson on the institution of this house, avoiding the appearance of impropriety. Management Council should consider putting more signage at the entrance to the chamber, and this is a good time for a rules review. The highlight was actually a kind of a connection moment between Representative Steve Harshman of Casper and Representative Darren McCann, who's involved in the controversy, received a check. All of this kind of blew up. So Darren McCann said, ‘I mean, a lot of you get to move on, but forever, when you Google my name, this will come up.’ And Representative Steve Harshman, who has had rather an explosive controversy himself that he ended up apologizing for cursing another member said, ‘Hey, I've been there. We're in this. You know, there's social media trolls, and we deal with this, but we do heal, and we can't move on.’”
Special Investigative Committee Chair Art Washut, from Casper, read aloud to the House on Wednesday from a special report all seven committee members signed. “Taken together…the committee recognizes that the conduct that occurred on the House floor was undesirable and must never occur again.”
Read the full story HERE.
–
TerraPower was approved Wednesday for a construction permit to build a first-of-its-kind nuclear power plant near Kemmerer, Wyoming. Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson reports this is the first such approval in 10 years.
“It's the first nuclear construction permit that the federal government has issued in about 10 years. But it's also for this very new one of a kind type of plant that nobody's ever built before. So in a lot of ways, it's breaking a lot of ground, literally in Kemmerer, and figuratively in the industry. And so today's announcement that that construction permit has been approved means that Terra power can actually start building the actual reactor part of their facility.”
The National Regulatory Commission announced the approval of the project’s construction permit which will allow the Bill Gates-backed company to start work on building the actual reactor at its site about four miles outside Kemmerer. In a statement, the company calls it “a historic day for the United States’ nuclear industry.”
Read the full story HERE.
–
A head-on crash on Sunday evening has left a Torrington family of three without a father and a Buffalo father of four in the hospital. Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports that authorities say no cause has yet been determined.
“Cody Thomas of Torrington was headed to Gillette and Andrew Walter was going to the Wyoming police academy. He'd been there since early January on his way to becoming a Buffalo Police Officer, when their cars collided. Andrew Walter died at the scene, and Cody Thomas was air flighted to Casper’s Banner Wyoming Medical Center for treatment. What we know now is that he's out of the hospital and he's recovering at home, and that the family of Andrew winter is just reeling because his three children and his wife now don't have the main provider in the house.”
Wyoming Highway Patrol spokesman Aaron Brown says a crash report for the incident on Highway 59 between Gillette and Douglas has not yet been completed. The head-on crash was called into the department at 8:42 p.m. and no cause has yet been determined, Brown added.
Read the full story HERE.
–
I’ll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.
Cowboy State Daily news continues now…
–
The Wyoming Department of Education has completed a weeklong review of a Rock Springs special education program. Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports that this comes after complaints of staffing and supervision of special education children as well as responsiveness and transparency concerns.
“The Wyoming Department of Education is not saying a whole lot about the special monitoring that happened last week, because they still have a report to do. They said a written report is going to be available within 60 days. Dickie Shaner, who is the Department of Education's Chief of Staff, said that his monitoring team encountered a caring and concerned group of teachers, parents and staff during their visit.”
School District Superintendent Joseph Libby told Cowboy State Daily in an email that the district’s staff and faculty were professional and cooperative throughout the monitoring process. However, he criticized multiple aspects of the process, citing “operational challenges due to repeated, unilateral schedule changes made by WDE monitors without notice to the district.”
Read the full story HERE.
–
Hunters and law enforcement tell Cowboy State Daily that the failure to pass a corner crossing bill really doesn’t make any difference. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz reports that House Bill 19 died in the Wyoming Senate on Monday.
“That bill died in the Senate, but some people are saying that it doesn't make any difference, because that 10th Circuit Court decision came down that, you know, more or less, said it's legal, at least on federal land. And a lot of people are saying, You know what, that's good enough. Folks are going to do it anyway. And I did talk to the executive director of Wyoming association of sheriffs and chiefs of police, and he said looking at a statewide perspective, sheriff's departments just are not getting a lot of complaints about corner crossing trespassing anyway.”
If the bill had passed, it would have clarified in Wyoming Statute what many argue that a federal court already established; that crossing corners between parcels of public land adjacent to private property isn’t trespassing.
Read the full story HERE.
–
Sen. Troy McKeown tried and failed Wednesday to resurrect a bill that sought to pull sexually-explicit books from children’s sections in libraries, after the Senate let it die. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that the effort failed.
“Senator Troy McKeown brought a motion to suspend the rules and resurrect House Bill 10. That's a bill that would implement a statewide book challenge process for sexually explicit books and children's sections of libraries, and if libraries refuse to follow that process, they could be sued. So McEwen brought it to kind of a late session, suspend the rules, resurrect this thing, vote and the Senate rejected that 13 to 18.”
To resurrect House Bill 10, the Senate would have needed to secure a two-thirds vote to suspend the rules.
Read the full story HERE.
–
The Laramie County Sheriff’s Office’s three-day “Truck Around and Find Out” sweep of commercial trucks last week saw deputies make 177 stops, write 51 tickets, and nab 32 drivers who were in the country illegally, so says Sheriff Brian Kozak. Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson reports that support from truck drivers and industry groups flooding in from across the U.S.
“A lot of them are responding with things like, ‘Hell, yeah, go! Go for it! Keep it up!’ And it's coming from truckers. It's not political, that’s not the political side of it. It's the trucker side of it. It's because of safety, not because of Border Patrol or Immigration. And Kozak, he said, he's getting a lot of support from around the country. People have been emailing him. He says the number one question he gets about it is, how they can get one of his hats in his video.”
The operation, according to Sheriff Kozak, was a joint effort with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, saw deputies make 177 stops, write 51 tickets, and nab 32 drivers who were in the country illegally.
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, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for watching - I’m Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.
