It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Tuesday, March 10th. I’m Mac Watson.
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A disturbing video has surfaced of a man on his knees, repeatedly saying he did something wrong while begging a Cheyenne junior high school girl for her name after a physical altercation last week. Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson reports that school officials are saying “no comment,” while parents are demanding answers.
“He continues to ask for her name because he says he wants to report himself for his behavior. Parents are really upset, not so much that something happened, but what they're upset about is that the school in the school district haven't contacted the parents to tell them, ‘Hey, something happened and we're dealing with it.’ And so of course, people start speculating, ‘Oh, they're trying to cover it up. Why didn't they say anything about that?’”
The short video appears to have been taken by another student outside McCormick Junior High School in north Cheyenne last week. The man in the video can be seen with credentials on a lanyard around his neck — similar to ones worn by school employees, but it’s not known if he works at the junior high school.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon on Monday let the state’s new $3.9 billion K-12 education plan become law without his signature. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that the governor says his biggest issue is the Legislature cordoning off instructional funding so it can't help if a “school loses a roof.”
“Governor Gordon allowed it to go into law without his signature. So, it's him saying, ‘I don't love it enough to sign it. I don't hate it enough to veto it. It's just going to become law.’ The teacher, teachers aid, paraprofessional money is all going into this part of the block grant that the districts aren't allowed to pull from. And Gordon's point was, ‘What if the roof falls off and they're not allowed to touch this money? You know, you rob them of this flexibility, and I don't like that.’ The legislature is under some court pressure to recalibrate, or, you know, recalculate what education costs and issue that amount of funding to the school districts.”
Although the governor didn’t sign the education bill into law, he lauded the work of the legislative Select Recalibration on School Finance, which met multiple times last year and this January to tailor the state’s K-12 spending plan to the educational needs of the current era.
Read the full story HERE.
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TerraPower officially received a construction permit Monday for its first-of-a-kind Natrium reactor in Kemmerer. Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison reports the CEO of the Bill Gates-backed project says, “This demonstrates advanced nuclear technology is moving from concept to commercialization.”
“There was a historic ceremony today in Rockville, Maryland, at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They gave Terra Power its construction permit. It was a formal signing of the permit. The CEO of the company was there saying, ‘Hey, we've gotten the seal of approval from the NRC. That's the gold standard globally. And so we're going to use Kemmerer, the natrium reactor project they're going to start building now with this permit as our showpiece.’”
Five years of engineering, a million staff hours of preparation and 18 months of federal safety reviews culminated Monday in a formal ceremony at Nuclear Regulatory Commission headquarters, where officials signed and handed TerraPower its construction permit for the Kemmerer Unit 1 Natrium reactor.
Read the full story HERE.
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An Iranian blockade sent crude oil above $100 a barrel on Monday, boosting producer profits and state revenues. But Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that Wyoming’s oil patches aren’t likely to see that spur production, as economists predict the blockade will boost inflation and tank demand.
“There's a little bit of a balancing act with oil prices, right? There's kind of a balancing act, a sweet spot, if you will, where you're producing a barrel of oil profitably and not dragging the economy down into the tank. Right now for Wyoming, that price is around $80 a barrel. So $80 oil in a sustained structure. What's happened here is oil prices have spiked to almost $120 a barrel. That is a very significant amount. It starts to have immediate impacts at the gas pump.”
Iran has blocked the Strait of Hormuz, which is a strategic choke point which provides the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean.
Read the full story HERE.
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I’ll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.
Cowboy State Daily news continues now…
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The World Championship Snowmobile Hill Climb in Jackson Hole has been canceled because of a lack of snow for just the third time in its 50-plus-year history. Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports that Mother Nature hasn’t cooperated this year.
“Conditions in Jackson have been great for skiing. So the question is, what's the difference? Why can skiers still ski Snow King mountain, where the hill climb is held, and why can't snowmobiles race up the mountain in their world competition? So Snow King Mountain is prepped right now for ski racing because of the snow conditions around Jackson Hole. Therefore the mountain right now is prepped for ski racing, and so to have these snowmobilers come and ride up and down the mountain, and have all these people there, could actually really put the ski race the following weekend in jeopardy.”
The event began as a friendly contest between local riders in Jackson Hole in 1975 and has since grown into a worldwide competition that draws thousands of people each year.
Read the full story HERE.
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Gov. Mark Gordon signed Wyoming’s Human Heartbeat Act on Monday, banning most abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be heard. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that the state's only abortion clinic says it is an “attack on Wyomingites’ constitutional freedom.”
“The interesting thing about this ban is it says it has a safety net. So it says that if the court blocks the provision banning of abortions after the point a heartbeat can be heard, then a viability standard would spring into place. And so Gordon signed that saying, ‘Yeah, I value life, but this looks like just another band aid where we've had court, court litigation over this for nearly four years now.’ And this looks like just more of that he had during his February, 9 State of the State address to lawmakers, asking them to advance a change to the Constitution for the voters to decide the issue in November, and the legislature did not do that.”
The law has exemptions for dire health circumstances of pregnant mothers, but not for rape or incest, which Gordon called a flaw.
Read the full story HERE.
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Insurance rates have soared for rural and vacation properties across Wyoming due to wildfire risk designations. Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison reports that some insurance rates skyrocketed.
“What we've seen is the two and 300% increase over the last few years that's driven by increased wildlife danger. Basically, the further away you get from a fire station, the more expensive your insurance is going to be. And if you're paying a mortgage, that gets packed onto the mortgage so your mortgage payment balloons. It's an unfortunate symptom of the increased wildfire danger, and not only wildfires like the one up around Dayton and Ranchester a few years ago, the Elk Fire. It's not just that. It's the ones you've read about in California and other parts of the West.”
Senator Taft Love of Cheyenne tells Cowboy State Daily that he’s seen his insurance rates triple from one year to the next because they changed the fire rating.
Read the full story HERE.
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Echinus Geyser suddenly burst back to life in Yellowstone National Park last month after being dormant for five years. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports it’s the world’s largest acidic geyser.
“So Echinus Geyser erupted on February 6, and then erupted 60 times between the sixth and the 24th and I just checked, it has not erupted since then. So it had this very brief period of intense activity, and that's kind of what it's been doing for the last several decades. It was once one of the most reliable geysers in Yellowstone. In fact, if you go there today, you'll actually see a bunch of seating around it, because it used to erupt so frequently, then it petered off. So it has these brief periods of frequent eruptions, and then it goes dormant again.”
Echinus Geyser, named in 1878 by mineralogist A.C. Peale, was one of the premier attractions in the Norris Geyser Basin since Yellowstone’s inception, even called a “star performer” by some in its heyday.
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, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for watching - I’m Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.
