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[{"type":"text","text":"Practicing to be an old man starts early....."}]

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Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Today In Age: Saturday, May 23, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Practicing to be an old man starts early.....

Today In Age: Saturday, May 23, 2026

 Practicing to be an old man starts early.....

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

Government & Politics

Politics

counties on Thursday that a 4% cap on yearly increases in residential property taxes is unconstitutional, and the counties shouldn’t let taxpayers have that exemption.

The State Equalization Board will refuse to certify this year’s property tax assessment figures if counties keep that cap on them, the report says.

The board’s two-person majority — Chair Jayne Mockler and Vice-Chair Marty Hardscog — wrote in the Thursday report that the 4% increase cap for residential property taxes has arbitrary impacts across the state. 

It also disproportionately insulates high-end homes, and disfavors homeowners in more sluggish market areas, the report asserts.

But the report’s main point, and conclusion from the past two years’ tax data, is that the 4% cap violates the Wyoming Constitution’s call for equal and uniform property taxes within each class of property.

The board hasn’t yet issued an order requiring Wyoming’s county assessors to rework their pending tax bills without the cap.

But it expects to do so in the coming weeks after working with counties, Mockler told Cowboy State Daily in a Thursday phone interview.

“We issued this report today that says if that cap doesn’t come off, Marty and I can’t vote to certify residential property taxes. Because they’re not uniform,” said Mockler. “It’ll be followed with an order ... (and) our goal is ultimately to remove the cap.”  

Mockler noted that the board isn’t targeting the other, narrower exemptions with this report — like the 25% property tax cut passed in 2025 or the long-term homeowner exemption.

More than half of the state’s residential property tax values fall under the 4% increase cap, the report says.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"But We Don’t Get A Tax Free Year"}]

This kind of push from the state board is unprecedented, Converse County Assessor Dixie Huxtable told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday.

But Wyomingites shouldn’t expect a tax-free year over the maneuver, she said.

“Everyone’s in agreement there will be residential property taxes for 2026,” she said. “This … is just a step in the process of getting different values the board feels is appropriate.”

The pending mandate leaves Wyoming counties somewhere between following the 4% cap requirement in state law and following another state law that tells assessors to obey the state board, she said.  

“You’re asking us to go against the law? Under the law we have to apply the 4% cap and you’re saying we can’t,” she reflected from the report.

[{"type":"text","text":"“It’s so bizarre it’s funny,” Huxtable added. "}]

She said she was digesting the report Thursday afternoon, and had just been to a phone meeting with the board officials, assessors, and county attorneys.

Two days earlier on Tuesday, Huxtable had just urged the Legislature’s Joint Revenue Committee to approach more changes to the state’s property tax law with caution, because assessors are always trying to keep up with the many changes lawmakers have brought in recent years.

Assessors are at the mercy of state law and are working hard to follow it, she’d said.  

Reflecting on the board’s Thursday report, Huxtable told Cowboy State Daily that assessors are now trying to gain clarification on what to do in the coming weeks.

“We’re on standby,” she said, adding that from her meeting with the board, her impression is, “They’d be tickled pink to go to court” on this issue.

Wyoming Attorney General Keith Kautz said Thursday that he doesn’t know of any litigation on this currently, “but if there is a challenge, we will support what the Legislature did.”

Rep. Barry Crago, R-Buffalo, who has since become a state senator, was the sponsor on the main bill the board’s Thursday report derides as unconstitutional.

Crago did not return a Thursday afternoon voicemail request for comment by publication.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Different Homes, Different Taxes"}]

The board’s report points to inconsistencies across the Wyoming property tax structure.

People who upgrade their homes by changing the footprint of those homes lose the cap exemption to a reset that year, while people who upgrade only the interior do not, says the report.

It says some homes have had their tax bills so thoroughly capped, they’re paying less than half of the state-mandated property tax rate.

“The caps, by design, generate highly disparate tax consequences for 

It accuses the law of discriminating arbitrarily between different homeowners across Wyoming.

“The demarcation between taxpayers receiving a tax windfall, versus those who do not, serves no rational basis,” the document adds.

Rep. Liz Storer, D-Jackson, told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday that she had voted for the 4% tax cap during the tax hikes of 2024. But she views the law as more of a short-term fix. 

"It was a tourniquet; it was a short-term fix," she said. "Butif you leave the tourniquet on, you damage the body." 

Storer's home region of Teton County accounts for huge property tax revenues in Wyoming. She has tried over the years to get lawmakers to stop applying property tax breaks to people's secondary homes. 

Of the $860.2 million in exemptions the 4% cap is expected to cause this year, Teton County accounts for $507.9 million, says a Department of Revenue memo Storer sent to Cowboy State Daily. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Lawsuit That Wasn’t"}]

The board warned lawmakers before the 4% cap bill’s passage that board members believed it’s unconstitutional.

 “the die was cast,” says the report.

The board examined the residential assessment values and looked for inverted valuations, that is where higher-valued properties were assessed at lower taxable values than other, similarly situated properties.

The board during the 2025 tax calculation process had just two members, Mockler and Hardscog. They voted that year to certify the tax values, but said that those values were probably invalid. Still, they wanted to gather one more year of data to be sure, the report says.

They also planned to release a Nov. 13, 2025, order requiring assessors to stop giving the exemption.

Gov. Mark Gordon’s office asked the board not to issue that order, the report says.

In November and early December, the governor’s office and Wyoming Attorney General’s Office met with Hardscog and Mockler to talk about filing an action asking a court to judge the issue.

The governor’s office and AG’s office agreed the state board should file that court action, the report says.

The litigation was slated to be filed Jan. 20. Gordon’s office asked for multiple delays, at first to communicate the lawsuit with legislative leaders. 

When Gordon’s office asked for another delay two days later, Hardscog and Mockler said they wouldn’t certify the property tax values after the June tax calculation process, “without a working resolution of their constitutional concerns,” says the report.

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<title>Wyoming Tax Board Says 4% Cap On Property Tax Is Unconstitutional, Won't Accept It | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Wyoming’s state-level property tax board told counties on Thursday that a 4% cap on yearly increases in residential property taxes is unconstitutional and it will refuse to certify this year's property tax assessment figures if the cap remains.

Wyoming Tax Board Says 4% Cap On Property Tax Is Unconstitutional, Won't Accept It

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Outdoors

Public Lands

A 41-year-old Denver man was found dead near a capsized kayak on Yellowstone Lake, a body of water that veteran guides say can turn from picture-perfect to perilous in a matter of minutes, Yellowstone National Park officials reported Thursday.

Occupants of another vessel on the lake discovered the body of Brandon Rhea on Monday floating near Rock Point on the lake's northwest shore near Bridge Bay, according to Yellowstone National Park officials.

National Park Service rangers recovered Rhea's body along with a capsized kayak and personal belongings. The incident remains under investigation, and park officials have released few additional details.

For those who spend their summers on Yellowstone Lake, the discovery is a reminder that one of Wyoming's most iconic destinations can also be one of its most unforgiving.

Park officials have released few details about the incident and did not respond to additional questions before publication.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Little Margin For Error"}]

For retired Yellowstone ranger Tara Ross, the reputation of Yellowstone Lake being potentially dangerous is justified.

"What makes it so dangerous is the extreme cold and wild winds," Ross said.

Ross spent several years assigned to Yellowstone Lake boat patrol while stationed in the Grant Village area. She said the lake conditions can overwhelm paddlers long before rescuers have an opportunity to reach them.

"The water is extremely cold," Ross said. “You may only have 10 minutes to survive it."

That reality creates one of the greatest challenges for emergency responders.

"By the time somebody from offshore notices — if the person can't self-rescue … that person is probably not going to make it," she added.

The lake often remains ice-covered well into spring, a reminder that Yellowstone's waters stay cold long after visitors begin arriving for the summer season, said Ross. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Lake Changes Fast"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Dylan Schneider has spent the past 15 summers on Yellowstone Lake."}]

He began working aboard boats on the lake and has spent the last six summers guiding kayakers through its bays and shorelines for Prismatic Tours. 

The biggest lesson he tries to teach visitors is not to trust what they see.

"It looks calm, but in 10 minutes it could be totally different," Schneider told Cowboy State Daily about Yellowstone Lake.

Surface water temperatures typically range between 40 and 50 degrees, even during the summer, he said.

"They say you have about 20 minutes before hypothermia sets in if you find yourself in the water," Schneider said, adding that the danger isn't limited to cold water.

Schneider said some of the most challenging conditions develop on warm, sunny days when visitors least expect trouble.

"Especially on those deceivingly nice days, the wind can pick up with very little warning," he said.

Large bays can become hazardous when winds build, and natural features around the lake can create wind tunnels that funnel gusts toward paddlers who may suddenly find themselves much farther from shore than they intended.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Respect The Lake"}]

Yellowstone Lake spans more than 130 square miles and sits at nearly 8,000 feet above sea level.

Ross said that prevailing southwest winds routinely sweep across the lake, while shifting weather patterns can create unexpected waves and rough conditions.

[{"type":"text","text":"Those conditions are familiar to people who work on the water."}]

Schneider said visitors often arrive expecting a leisurely paddle across one of the nation's most scenic lakes. Most leave with a newfound respect for how quickly the environment can change.

For those who know Yellowstone Lake best, its beauty and its danger are inseparable.

The circumstances surrounding Rhea's death remain under investigation, but Schneider's warning is one he gives paddlers every season.

"It looks calm," he said. "But in 10 minutes it could be totally different."

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<title>Floating Body Of Denver Man Recovered From Yellowstone Lake Near Capsized Kayak | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Denver man was found dead near a capsized kayak on Yellowstone Lake, park officials announced Thursday. Former ranger Tara Ross, who patrolled the lake said extreme cold and "wild winds" make it dangerous. "You may have 10 minutes to survive," she said.

Floating Body Of Denver Man Recovered From Yellowstone Lake Near Capsized Kayak

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

Business

CHEYENNE — There was a seismic shift months ago behind the scenes with Wyoming’s largest data center development, Project Jade. 

Crusoe, the company that was constructing the buildings for the massive 2.7-gigawatt data center, packed up its stuff and left.

The exit happened quickly and quietly, without the fanfare of press releases and company statements that had preceded the project, which at buildout would use nearly triple the power consumption of the entire state of Wyoming. 

Crusoe’s about face was so quiet, in fact, that few people outside the project even realized anything had happened at all.

That was until Tuesday, when the company was quoted in passing in a Bloomberg article saying that its data center client had asked Crusoe to pause construction of Project Jade, even as the company announced another 5 gigawatts worth of data center infrastructure for Crusoe Cloud. 

Crusoe’s statement made it seem as though Project Jade itself might be on hold or looking for a new partner, but nothing could be further from reality, officials for partner Tallgrass Energy told Cowboy State Daily on background. 

Work on Project Jade never stopped — not even for a minute — following Crusoe’s exit roughly two months ago, Cowboy State Daily was told Wednesday morning. 

Tallgrass officials are now working directly with the data center client and have been “full steam ahead” since Crusoe’s exit.

Black Hills Corp., the parent company of Black Hills Energy, meanwhile released a statement to the same effect, saying that the data center project has not been on pause.

“We remain committed to supporting the project’s data center customer and delivering the infrastructure necessary to meet their long-term energy needs,” President and CEO Linn Evans said. “The project has not been paused and continues to represent a significant opportunity for the company. Our efforts remain fully directed toward successfully delivering the project.”

Black Hills Corp’s statement added that its Wyoming subsidiary, Black Hills Energy, agreed in April to procure long lead-time generation equipment with the prospective customer to support the project, which will be served under Wyoming’s large-load tariff. 

“The customer has provided over $200 million in refundable contributions in aid of construction to date in support of milestone payments to secure generation equipment,” the statement says. “Additionally, the company executed a substation agreement with the large-load customer, and filed a CPCN (Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity) for a substation to support the project in January 2026.”

Project Jade, located in the Switchgrass Industrial Park along Highway 85 south of Cheyenne, is the largest data center yet announced in Wyoming and has received widespread attention because of that. 

Initially, the data center was announced as a 1.8-gigawatt facility. Later, during a Laramie County Commission meeting, company officials said the 

 — almost three times what the entire state of Wyoming uses when it comes to power. 

The facility can ultimately scale to 10 gigawatts of capacity.

Project Jade has always planned to build its own power, which company officials said avoids burdening the local power grid. It will also use a closed-loop system to cool its servers to minimize water use.

The closed-loop system will take an initial 20 households worth of water to fill, company officials have told Laramie County commissioners, and will come from aquifers far below those that supply water to residents of Laramie County and Cheyenne. 

Annual water use will be around three households, once the closed-loop system is filled.

Project plans show five buildings of up to 800,000 square feet. These will have their own onsite wastewater treatment and septic systems.

The company’s efforts to mitigate impact to the community do not stop at water and power. It also included building new roads into its facility to relieve pressure on existing routes, as well as a $2.9 million commitment to help the city of Cheyenne build affordable housing.

The company doesn’t plan to use man camps to house construction workers. Instead, it plans to use a range of local housing, including long- and short-term rentals, hotels and motels, RV accommodations, and other solutions. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Three Projects In One"}]

What the public has been calling Project Jade has actually always been three distinct but intertwined projects, Tallgrass officials said.

There was the power plant itself, a natural-gas-fired facility that includes large turbine generators and fuel-cell systems, which is what Tallgrass is developing. 

That is now being referred to by the company as the Cheyenne Power Hub. 

There are the data center buildings, which are essentially warehouse-like shells that will one day hold the racks of computing power for the unnamed data center client. 

That was in Crusoe’s court as the data center client who will eventually use all the computing capacity that’s built out in the data center.

Crusoe’s exit, which happened early this year, changes just one thing in all of that, Tallgrass officials said — the eventual sign on the buildings.

Everything else has stayed functionally the same, including the client. 

Dirt work at the site has already begun, Tallgrass officials say, leading up to construction of the power plant itself, which is the longest lead-time item. 

Work on the power generators is expected to ramp up this summer and will be brought on in phases. The first available phase is expected to begin operating sometime in 2027.

Service to the data center client is targeted for early 2028, after which the project is expected to create more than 100 permanent jobs.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Who Is Tallgrass"}]

Tallgrass has long operated large-scale, multi-commodity infrastructure, including more than 10,000 miles of pipeline and energy-related assets across 14 states.

The company has been in Wyoming for the past 10 years, where it has its third largest employee base at more than 200 existing employees. It operates more than 3,000 miles of natural gas, crude oil, water, and carbon dioxide pipelines.

Some of its infrastructure includes carbon dioxide wells for carbon capture, including some assets that are in the vicinity of Project Jade. The carbon capture capabilities have been touted as a vital element of building out the data center.

In the last three years, Tallgrass has invested almost a billion dollars into Wyoming’s economy. Its investment on Project Jade dwarfs that at $7 billion.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Crusoe Still Busy"}]

No one is saying publicly why Crusoe left the project, or whether the data center client is the one who asked them to leave.

Crusoe did not respond to Cowboy State Daily inquiries about its exit, and Tallgrass officials said they learned of Crusoe’s public statements the same way everyone else did — by reading about it in Bloomberg’s article.

While the reasons Crusoe exited the project remain unclear, one thing that isn’t unclear is just how busy Crusoe is right now.

Even after stepping away from Project Jade, Crusoe has more than 40 gigawatts worth of projects either in its total development pipeline or under active negotiation, according to its website. 

Its Bloomberg comments, meanwhile, came with an announcement of 5 more gigawatts for the Crusoe Cloud.

The company is widely expected by industry experts to go public and has been actively working on a pre-IPO funding round north of $10 billion.

Carson Kearl, a data center analyst for energy data analyst Enverus, said more dance steps are ahead for the data center space.

“There are a bunch of these Crusoe-like developers across the Lower 48 with announced projects of significant scale and capacity,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “I would say a majority of them do not have a publicly disclosed tenant or an off taker. 

"Our view is the reason they don’t have those disclosed is because they don’t have them, period.”

Kearl has been tracking data center capacity in various stages of discussion across the nation and said he expects as much as 80% to 85% of the projects to get canceled purely as a function of "supply chain constraints on the data center side of things, like how many chips are actually available between now and about 2030.”

Wyoming, as a state with lots of wide-open space and abundant energy, meanwhile, is well-positioned, to capture the real projects, Kearl added. 

In the race to build out data centers and capture market share first, Wyoming offers exactly what these companies want. 

“The ability to do behind-the-meter projects in an area where you would have faster interconnection times or power timelines … is super attractive,” Kearl said. “Everyone’s kind of working to try and make that faster, to level the playing field.”

Building your own power is not an inexpensive tactic, however.

“You’ll be well into the $100-plus-a-megawatt-hour range,” he said. “And then if you layer in the CCS (carbon capture and sequestration), it would probably be even higher, into the mid-$100 range.”

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<title>Partner Pulling Out Doesn’t Slow Huge 2.7GW Cheyenne Project Jade Data Center | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Crusoe, a founding partner in the huge 2.7-gigawatt Project Jade data center near Cheyenne, quietly pulled out months ago. That hasn’t slowed the project, which is going “full steam ahead,” remaining partner Tallgrass Energy told Cowboy State Daily.

Partner Pulling Out Doesn’t Slow Huge 2.7GW Cheyenne Project Jade Data Center

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Executive

In a move indicating that concerns over the dwindling Colorado River have reached a new level, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon and U.S. Sens. John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis joined other Western elected officials met for discussion and negotiations in Washington, D.C.

Gordon, Barrasso and Lummis met Tuesday with Utah Gov. Spencer Cox Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Mike Lee, R-Utah, Sen. John Curtis R-Utah.

On Wednesday, Barrasso invited Pinedale rancher Mike Vickrey to testify about the Colorado River negotiations before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

 said that in Wyoming and other Upper Colorado River Basin states, “our expectations of how much water we will have to irrigate with are based on Mother Nature,” according to a statement from Barrasso’s office.

Vickrey told the Senate committee that as he sees it, he and other Upper Basin farmers and ranchers have gone above and beyond to conserve water.

Meanwhile, downstream states benefit from greater “security” offered by large reservoirs at Lake Powell and Lake Mead, 

Parts of two of Wyoming’s reservoirs along the Green River, a major tributary of the Colorado River, are in Sweetwater County. Those include Fontenelle Reservoir and Flaming Gorge Reservoir.

That means the area has a huge stake in what happens along the Colorado River, Sweetwater County Commissioner Taylor Jones told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday.

“I think our concerns are the water levels, and our lack of say,” in Colorado River policy, he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Barrasso Takes Lead"}]

Officials offered few details of what the D.C. meetings might mean going forward for Wyoming and the other Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah and New Mexico.

Barrasso is “taking the lead” in the matter, according to a text message from Gordon’s office to Cowboy State Daily.

“Any management plan must address shortages from emergency withdrawals and drought, especially from Wyoming’s Flaming Gorge Reservoir,” Barrasso said in a statement following Tuesday’s meeting. "Wyoming and Utah will continue to fight for a seven-basin-state solution that treats our Upper Basin fairly,” 

More details should be forthcoming, Barrasso’s Communications Director Laura Mengelkamp told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday.

“This week’s meeting was a great first step in developing an agreement that will treat the upper basin states fairly. The governors and senators did discuss several possible solutions and we will have more to say on that in the future,” she stated.

Wyoming State Engineer Brandon Gebhart represents Wyoming on the Upper Colorado River Commission. 

In an email response to questions from Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday, he said that he had no comments beyond what Gordon had already stated.

In a Tuesday statement, Gordon said the discussion between the Upper Basin elected officials had been “productive.”

“Wyoming is committed to bringing forward ideas, and leading the search for practical solutions that recognize both the realities of drought and the needs of the West,” Gordon stated.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Stark Outlook"}]

Tension has been brewing between the Upper Basin states and those in the Lower Basin, namely Nevada, California and Arizona.

All seven Colorado pact states, as well as numerous Native American tribes and Mexico, were allocated water rights from the Colorado River and its major tributaries under the 1922 Colorado River Compact, which remains binding.

Many experts say there’s far less water in the river now than there was in 1922, but demand has grown with the population.

The Upper Basin states say that most of the population growth has been in the Lower Basin, which continues to demand more water.

Water from the Upper Basin, including the Green River in Wyoming, feeds the Lower Basin’s two primary reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

It was announced this spring that roughly 1 million acre feet of water would be drawn from Flaming Gorge Reservoir to make up for a shortfall in Lake Powell.

Tony Valdez, owner of the Buckboard Marina on the Wyoming side of Flaming Gorge, previously told Cowboy State Daily that the drawdown could be 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Upper Basin Doing Its Part"}]

Jones said the reservoirs and marinas are vitally important for Sweetwater County.

“When they’re going draw the water down, it’s going to affect fishing, it’s going to affect tourism,” he said. "It’s going to affect the marinas, on both the Wyoming and Utah sides of Flaming Gorge.”

“The marinas, they’re even talking about going out of business,” he added.

The county commission hopes to meet soon with Gordon and other state officials. So far, there have been few details coming from state offices, Jones said.

“It’s been pretty quiet, which is a little frustrating,” he said.

 also said policy should be based upon how much water is actually available.

A Pinedale rancher told U.S. Senators on Wednesday that he and other Upper Basin farmers are tired of Wyoming giving up Colorado River water. Negotiations moved up a notch this week with Wyoming leaders meeting in Washington, D.C., with other states.

Today In Age: Saturday, May 23, 2026

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