It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Wednesday, October 21st. I’m Mac Watson.
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The Oklahoma-based Chickasaw Nation has bought one of the biggest horse betting operations in Wyoming, including Horse Palace locations and Sweetwater Downs. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports the sale includes “the entire operations” of Wyoming Holdings LLC, said a gaming official.
“It's unique. We've had tribes owning gaming operations in Wyoming for years, but they've been Wyoming-based tribes. The Northern Arapaho, the Eastern Shoshone have owned casinos on the reservation. Now we have an out-of-state tribe buying big gaming operations on state land, which is a little bit unique. The director of the gaming commission, Nick Larramendy, emphasized that the Chickasaw Nation has extensive experience with gaming and, in particular, horse racing.”
Global Gaming Solutions, which is a subsidiary of the Chickasaw Nation, received Gaming Commission approval late last week for its purchase of Wyoming Holdings LLC. That includes about 13 different facilities, including live horse racing, off-track betting, historic horse racing machines and live betting.
Read the full story HERE.
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After a Cheyenne daycare provider allegedly blew a .40 BAC while caring for kids — five times the legal limit — a nurse says some people are unconscious at .15 and people over .50 still can walk and talk. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore went in search of answers to the question: How drunk is really drunk?
“There is no hard and fast number. I spoke to a Wheatland nurse named Cory Meyer, who's encountered hundreds of drunk people in her career, and she said that though a BAC can tell how much alcohol is in someone's blood, there's no way to know how that number will affect a person cognitively. Meyer explains that some people have a much higher tolerance to alcohol. These are people who are usually daily drinkers, and so their body has become accustomed to processing those high levels of toxicity. The latest federal national survey on drug and health estimates that alcohol use is widespread in Wyoming.”
Most people know 0.08% as the line where it's illegal to drive. Double that, and a person can be severely impaired. WYDOT counted 622 alcohol-involved crashes in 2024: 25 of those were fatal.
Read the full story HERE.
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A Wyoming postal rep is filing a grievance because magazines, catalogs, and large envelopes that were supposed to be processed in Cheyenne are now going to Denver, adding at least a day to some Wyoming deliveries. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that Bob Jacknitsky, Wyoming’s state representative for postal workers union NPMHU Local 321, calls the move “ridiculous.”
“What he's hoping to get to is arbitration, where he feels like he'll get a fair hearing about his allegations. He's saying that taking the flats away from Wyoming violates the Postal Service's universal service obligation, and he doesn't believe that it's more efficient in saving any money. Wyoming has tens of thousands of these flats. They had three employees who were processing them. He feels that that was more efficient than sending them to Denver and then sending them back to Cheyenne.”
To document the delivery effects in Cheyenne, Jacknitsky has been mailing flats to himself, as well as documenting other examples. In one case, he says a flat mailed from Florida reached a Cheyenne address faster than one mailed within Cheyenne.
Read the full story HERE.
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Steve Harshman, the longest-serving state House member, and Republican nominee for Superintendent of Public Instruction, says he can't vote for the 50% tax cut in Prop 1. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports the legislator led a blockbuster effort to cut nearly all residential property taxes in 2024, but he says that measure had more guardrails.
“Those in politics knew Representative Steve Harshman as the champion of property tax relief measures. He was trying to get rid of nearly all property taxes with a bill that would have replaced them with sales taxes at that time. Now the measure failed after days of controversy and debate. But then he came out on the debate stage last week and said he cannot support Prop 1. I asked him about that. He said it's apples and oranges, Clair, because my measure proposed a backfill with the sales tax hike, and it had a limit of a million-dollar cap, so you couldn't get the exemption on more than a million dollars’ worth of home value.”
Property taxes fund public schools, community colleges, local governments and special districts. Firefighters are some of the most vocal opponents against plans to cut them.
Read the full story HERE.
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I’ll have more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.
Cowboy State Daily News continues now….
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Sublette County commissioners voted 4-1 Tuesday to uphold the expiration of a permit for a proposed residential trauma treatment center for girls near Pinedale. Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports the owners say they've spent years on the project and might take the fight to court.
“The Moyes family moved to Wyoming from California with the number one goal of building this sanctuary for girls ages 12 to 17. They bought property between Pinedale and Bondurant and intended to build this state-of-the art facility. Melinda Moyes told me there would be nothing like it in the country. However, county commissioners have pushed back on the project, saying that it has not met deadlines for getting certain permits, and because of that, they have failed to show reasonable progress in the four years that they've been trying to get going. And so, commissioners on Tuesday squashed the plan to move forward.”
The Sanctuary began as a deeply personal mission for the Moyes family.
In 2014, trauma from a fire at their California home left their daughter with severe mental health challenges. As the family sought help, the family tells Cowboy State Daily they repeatedly encountered a troubling reality: Finding appropriate residential treatment for adolescent girls recovering from trauma was extraordinarily difficult.
Read the full story HERE.
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The driver for a popular music artist died from a medical emergency before the tour bus he was operating crossed three lanes of Interstate 25 and rolled near Cheyenne. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports one band member said, “It was a terrifying experience for everyone on board.”
“The family of a 50-year-old tour bus driver says that David Rollingcloud Jackson suffered a medical emergency and actually died while he was behind the wheel before a rollover in Cheyenne. He was driving for the artist Sawyer Hill when the incident happened. The vehicle went into three lanes before ultimately rolling. There were nine others on the bus. Several of them were injured, and Jackson died as a result.”
WHP spokesman Aaron Brown tells Cowboy State Daily the investigation is not concluded. Brown added that Jackson was driving a 2024 Freightliner M2 and no other vehicles were involved.
Read the full story HERE.
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Activists called the raid on an Idaho mink farm “liberation” for the 1,500 minks they released. But Cowboy State Daily’s Emma Jane Jackson reports they can’t take care of themselves, says the farm’s owner, leaving many to die of heat, stress, or get run over.
“The activists say that mink are known to be able to survive in the wild, but the farm owner says that that has not been the case. The Franklin County, Idaho Sheriff's Office is investigating the incident, but no arrests have been made yet. The farm owner's son said that this is an act of terrorism, but a spokesperson for an animal rights group that I talked to said that the real terrorists are the ones keeping the animals in cages. There is a history of similar activists facing legal consequences. One of them is Joseph Budenburg. He did a similar release of mink from an Idaho farm about 10 years ago. Actually did get convicted and spent time in prison. He told me that this action, though, is still justified, saying, ‘The fur industry's days are numbered. Compassionate activists will continue to open cages and shut these places down.’”
When he spoke to Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday, farm owner Jeff Hobbs said he was still working to gather the loose minks in Franklin County. At this point, he said about 90% of the mink have been caught.
Read the full story HERE.
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When a moose calf became hopelessly tangled in wire fencing near an Idaho woman's home, sheriff's deputy Shiloh Frantz came to the rescue. Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports it wasn't easy.
“He had bolt cutters, but the handles were too short on those tools. So he knew he needed something with a longer handle. The one thing he had in his truck were tree trimmers, which didn't do a great job of cutting the wire. He did manage to do it. What it did do was keep him a safer distance from the moose.The deputy told me that he used sweet talk on the moose. He said things like, "Hey, buddy, we're going to get you out of this. I'm going to help you. He said that that helped the moose. When the moose was freed, it ran to a field and it stopped. It turned back and looked at Deputy Frantz, and he said, ‘it made my day.’”
The rescue began when a woman in her mid-70s called the Latah County, Idaho’s Sheriff's Office after discovering the calf tangled in wire fencing on her property.
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.
