A citizen effort to overturn a massive annexation in southeast Cheyenne has failed after city officials determined a petition fell more than 900 signatures short of the threshold needed to trigger a referendum.
Over the past several months, Cheyenne has annexed thousands of acres into the city to accommodate dozens of planned and operating data centers. The referendum effort sought to give voters a direct say over an annexation of 3,460 acres for a proposed Microsoft data center.
The petition, filed in August, had nearly 3,300 signatures across 227 pages. But Cheyenne City Clerk Kylie Soden told Cowboy State Daily that not all were valid.
“Upon our initial review, we were able to immediately determine that some signatures didn’t contain a street address at all or had a PO Box listed,” Soden said. “So we excluded those 61 signatures from the initial count.”
Under state law, anyone who signs a municipal referendum petition must be a registered voter who lives in Cheyenne and lists a physical street address to qualify.
After the clerk’s office set aside the signatures without a street address, Soden said the largest share of invalid signatures came from people who lived outside the city limits.
“The second would have been individuals who signed that were not on the Laramie County’s registry for registered voters,” Soden said.
Fight Isn’t Over
Even so, local organizers say the fight isn't over.
One resident championing the petition was Heather Madrid, a vocal critic of the city's fast-paced land approvals and data center growth.
Madrid told Cowboy State Daily in a text message that the process of collecting signatures was complicated by Cheyenne Frontier Days, the city's annual 10-day outdoor rodeo and western celebration, which kept many volunteers busy with festivities and unable to gather signatures.
“A lot of out of town people were here, too,” Madrid said. “That made it challenging to make sure only registered Cheyenne voters were signing, despite thoroughly explaining the parameters to people.”
Between the influx of non-resident tourists and a 20-day petition window, Madrid said the odds were stacked against organizers from the start.
“While I have very little trust in the city at this point, this outcome doesn’t surprise me,” Madrid said.
The petition drive was just one strategy in Madrid’s broader push to block the 3,460-acre expansion.
In September, she pursued a parallel legal challenge in Laramie County District Court, filing two petitions asking a judge to overturn the annexation ordinance and void the Cheyenne City Council's handling of the referendum process.
Madrid previously told Cowboy State Daily she filed the first petition because she believed the council violated Wyoming’s Open Meetings Act when it voted Aug. 10 to seek a court ruling on whether annexations could be challenged by referendum.
She said her concern was less with data centers than with how the city approved them, and that voters should get to decide whether an annexation moves forward.
Even with the petition drive falling short, Madrid said she plans to keep fighting the annexation, as well as the violations of state law she said the city committed along the way.
“It’s unlawful,” Madrid said. “That’s all I’ll say about that since it’s pending litigation.”
‘Don’t Abuse Legal Processes’
Three days after the petition was filed, the Cheyenne City Council voted 8-1 after an executive session to authorize the city attorney to seek a court ruling on whether an annexation could be challenged through a referendum, or only through an appeal in district court under a separate state law.
Mayor Patrick Collins previously told Cowboy State Daily the council was trying to clear up conflicting state statutes, one that lets residents force a referendum on city ordinances and another that sets a separate process for challenging annexations in district court.
“Our governing body wants to understand what’s the right way for somebody to object,” Collins said in September.
Days later, Secretary of State Chuck Gray, who has since won Wyoming’s U.S. House seat, sent Collins and the council a letter arguing that state law gave Cheyenne residents the right to put the annexation to a vote.
“I am deeply disturbed by the actions of the mayor and council,” Gray wrote in August.
Gray saw no conflict between the referendum law and the annexation law the city wanted clarified. He argued residents could put any city ordinance to a referendum, including an annexation, and that any other reading of the law would be “absurd.”
He advised the city to let the clerk finish verifying signatures instead of going to court.
“The People of Wyoming remain concerned about data centers,” Gray wrote. “Please don't abuse legal processes and procedures to bog down Cheyenne residents' constitutional rights under the initiative process.”
Gray did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Cowboy State Daily on the petition falling short.
Emma Jane Jackson can be reached at emma@cowboystatedaily.com.
