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Clair McFarland

Government & Politics

Politics

Gillette Fourth of July Parade participants not being allowed to hand out Bibles and copies of the U.S. Constitution has prompted a complaint to the Campbell County Commission. 

State House Appropriations Chairman John Bear, R-Gillette, asserts in 

 that community groups “were barred by Campbell County Parks & Recreation officials from handing out U.S. Constitutions and Bibles during the Independence Day 250 parade.”

Campbell County Parks officials say they were merely enforcing a rule against handing out paper products at the parade, adopted around 2021 to curb trash cleanup after the event.

Bear wrote in the same column that a few towns away, Lander’s local LGBT advocacy group handed out condoms to parade-goers and kids.

“Since when are free condoms protected by the Constitution while Bibles are not?” asked Bear in the column.

Organizers of the Lander parade’s Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) float adamantly deny handing out condoms.

Carol Smith in an open letter to Bear, which she sent to Cowboy State Daily, says she was on that float, and no one on it handed out condoms.

“We handed out candy to children and celebrated inclusion with the community, just as we have in previous years,” wrote Smith, who reiterated the point in a phone interview this week.

Sarah Reilley, who said she’s driven the float for three years but couldn’t attend the parade this year, told Cowboy State Daily she would never have handed out condoms.

“Absolutely not,” said Reilley in an interview. She wrote in a Facebook post last week that doing that would have been both expensive and “WILDLY inappropriate.”

"It's important for leaders in our state and elected representatives to do the work to fact-check for themselves, instead of taking fake images and spreading lies in order to create division," said Reilley. 

Bear told Cowboy State Daily that a “solid” witness had alerted him to the alleged Lander incident. The witness said no to being interviewed by Cowboy State Daily, said Bear.

According to Reilley and a screenshot she posted, the image Bear dispatched of two hands holding what appears to be a condom returned a Google Reverse Images result of a viral SnapChat screenshot.

Cowboy State Daily’s own Google Reverse Images search, days later, did not replicate that result. That could be because SnapChat doesn’t retain images, Reilley said.

The rest of the controversy is now a complaint that is pending before the Campbell County Commission.

[{"type":"text","text":"First, The Church"}]

Kurt Siebenaler applied for a permit to run a float on behalf of his church, Church at the Barn, in Campbell County’s Fourth of July parade, he told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday.

[{"type":"text","text":"It was a fun task before all the drama, he said."}]

“The theme was, our country was founded on Biblical principles,” he said. 

Congregants decked out the float with Bibles, a big USA sign and a liberty bell. They’d planned to hand out pocket versions of the U.S. Constitution and New Testament volumes, he added.

When Siebenaler applied to be in the parade, the application said fliers, stickers, paper products, brochures, paper handouts, and leaflets weren’t allowed in it, he recalled.

Siebenaler went to check with a Parks and Recreation staffer, Darla Cotton, and she said the volumes would not be allowed under that rule, he added.

“She said because if people don’t want them, they’re just going to throw them on the ground when they leave,” Siebenaler said. 

He countered that they weren’t going to hand them out to “a half dozen kids or whatever” but would be more targeted.

Cotton maintained her veto but said the churchgoers could sign up for a booth at the later hot dog feed at Bicentennial Park and hand out Bibles and Constitutions there, Siebenaler said, adding that the church approved that plan.

Cotton contacted Siebenaler ahead of the hot dog feed to say the department had run out of room for booths and needed to give political candidates priority to be fair across races, he recalled.

Siebenaler told the church, and “word got out to a couple (county) commissioners.”

Then Cotton reportedly told Siebenaler that if the church could find a political candidate willing to share a booth, it could hand out its volumes from there.

Ira Shober, a county commission candidate who attends the church, agreed to share, Siebenaler said.

[{"type":"text","text":"The Monday Meeting"}]

Commission Chair Bob Jordan and Commissioner Jerry Means met with Campbell County Parks and Recreation Director Dwayne Dillinger, superintendent Adam Gibson, Bear, Republican state Rep. Abby Angelos, at least one attorney representing the county and other stakeholders to discuss the issues on the Monday before July 4.

Dillinger and Angelos are both Republicans running against each other for a Gillette-based seat in the state Senate.

[{"type":"text","text":"Bear is running again for his seat in the House."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The primary election is Aug. 18."}]

In Bear’s telling, Dillinger wasn’t aware of the dustup, “but he defended it when the time came.”

“I keep telling him if you have a conflict, you can’t err on the side of trampling people’s inalienable constitutional rights,” Bear told Cowboy State Daily.

Dillinger was reticent in his interviews with Cowboy State Daily, saying he had to be careful not to campaign in a story told from his professional post because of the Hatch Act.

That federal law bars people working for agencies that receive federal money from using their positions to campaign.

He said the parade rules on which Cotton relied were implemented long before he became the director.

Bear said that county personnel said Gillette city officials didn’t want the trash, but that a later call to the city debunked that.

Cotton sent Cowboy State Daily the PDF copies of the rules for each year from 2021-2026. Those show the ban on “flyers, stickers and other types of materials” starting in 2021, with the warning that “they end up everywhere as trash rather than in the hands of the parade attendee.”

“They’re the same (rules) for everybody,” said Cotton in a Thursday interview. “We’re not restricting what they can say; just how they deliver it because of the trash issue.”

[{"type":"text","text":"In 2024, that rule expanded to all paper products."}]

Cotton said Parks and Recreation staffers have had recurring conversations with city officials about the trash problem, and main discussion driving that rule happened in 2021.

And in 2021 the streets division contact was a different person, she said. “Back then it was different people (voicing these concerns) than are there now,” said Cotton.

[{"type":"text","text":"The City Council Candidate"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Ben Decker is a Gillette City Council candidate.  "}]

Cotton is managing campaigns for two other candidates, Heidi Gross and Eric Scott. She said she’s received permission since these are nonpartisan campaigns and she works for the county, not the city.

She said she’s helped with social media work for legislative campaigns, but doesn’t manage any legislative campaign.

Decker in his own interview referenced a 

Vomhof defied the Parks and Recreation director that year and ran a float highly critical of the city’s then-mayor, whom 

 over the sudden resignation of now-mayor, then councilman Shay Lundvall.

[{"type":"text","text":"That was before Dillinger ran the Parks and Recreation department."}]

Vomhof said in a Thursday interview that both the Parks and Recreation director of the time and county commissioners tried to shut him down.

But he ran the float — which showed a jail cell and signs reading “fire the mayor” — after what he described as a conversation in which the police chief noted that running a parade float without a permit isn’t an arrestable offense.  

Decker told Cowboy State Daily that the war between some residents and “tyrannical” officials started with Vomhoff’s protest float and continues today.

Decker asserted that Cotton, who is his second cousin, has tightened the rules each year based on whatever he did the prior year.

[{"type":"text","text":"Cotton denied that assertion, pointing to the largely stagnant rules."}]

Decker said an early version of the hot dog feed rules required candidates to stay at their tables and prohibited them from handing out fliers and Bibles. 

The rules were later changed so that booth holders could hand out paper products and no longer had to stay at their booths, he said.

The rules were acceptable but their earlier, tougher version “created a chilling effect” on attendees, who “self-censored,” said Decker.

Decker ignored the rules altogether by leaving the designated area for political candidates and handing out fliers to people standing in line at the hot dog feed, he said.

Decker said the flier contained the political group Coal Country Conservatives’ list of preferred candidates for various offices. That flier included an endorsement of Bear and Angelos.

In Decker’s telling, Dillinger called the cops on him for campaigning outside the designated area. Decker calls the move unconstitutional. His complaint to the commission asserts a First Amendment rights violation. 

[{"type":"text","text":"In Dillinger’s telling, he did not call the cops on Decker."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"So The Cops Weigh In"}]

Gillette Police Department Deputy Chief Brent Wasson clarified in a Thursday interview.

Dillinger didn’t call the police department. He contacted an officer directly.

“I’m assuming he had seen (the officer) working the parade and … spoke with him about the concern at the park,” said Wasson.

Gillette officers patrolled the parade on bicycles then ride over to the park.

[{"type":"text","text":"All this happened just after midday July 4, the deputy chief said."}]

The encounter was brief. Officers told Decker they didn’t want to interfere with his campaigning, though he was outside the designated area. 

[{"type":"text","text":"“And that’s pretty much it,” said Wasson."}]

“That’s what we do when we have big events. We make sure there’s security. We bring in different security people for fireworks, and that’s what we do,” said Dillinger. “I was just doing my job. … It was a simple call: ‘Are you guys heading out to the park after you get done at the parade on your bikes?’ That’s all there was to it.”

He theorized the original fallout over the Bibles involves political fervor. "Now that I'm a candidate, it's an issue." 

[{"type":"text","text":"The Bible Ladies Venture Out Too"}]

Siebenaler wasn’t paying close attention to all that, but recalled that women from his church booth were emboldened by Decker’s move. They also verged toward the hot dog line, he said.

“They were just outside the fence and holding up Constitutions and Bibles, and asking politely, or just showing people, ‘Would you like to have one?’” Siebenaler said.

The rules seemed practical at first, Siebenaler said. But looking back on it, he’s not as sure.

“That would be in their mind or heart to what their motive was,” said Siebenaler of the involved county officials.

Campbell County Commissioner Scott Clem wasn’t involved in this situation, but knows about Decker’s complaint now pending at the county’s human resources department level, he said in a Thursday interview.

That complaint will likely be handled in executive session since it involves personnel, he noted. That’s a provision of state law.

“Something will come out of this so that we avoid problems like this in the future, and we’ll try as much as we can to correct things now,” said Clem.

Jordan, who chairs the commission, told Cowboy State Daily he's shaking his head at how the saga unfolded. 

"It’s not good optics to have yourself and your employee making it hard on somebody else," said Jordan of Parks and Recreation management. "I personally wouldn't ban Bibles and Constitutions." 

Gillette Fourth of July parade 7 23

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

<title>Unpacking The Campbell County Parade Fallout Over Bibles But Not Condoms | Cowboy State Daily</title>

When a state lawmaker asked why Campbell County parade floats couldn't hand out Bibles but a Lander float could hand out condoms, the Lander float organizers said they did no such thing. Campbell County's Bible saga is much more complicated.

Unpacking The Campbell County Parade Fallout Over Bibles But Not Condoms

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

Renée Jean

Around Wyoming

For the first time since it was homesteaded 138 years ago, the Hoback River Homestead — a legacy Wyoming ranch that brokers say has the largest privately owned stretch of the Hoback River — has hit the market.

The 2,062-acre ranch located just south of Bondurant doesn’t boast a $20 million mansion, but is still listing as one of Wyoming’s most expensive properties on the market today at $59.5 million. 

That’s because it’s one of the rarest opportunities Hall and Hall real estate broker Pete Widener says he’s ever seen.

Widener, who specializes in high-end ranch properties, says the ranch’s size and its intact nature — including the original homestead — make it almost impossible to compare to anything else on the market. The ranch’s size is particularly notable given its proximity to heavily carved-up valleys near Jackson Hole. 

“If you took a ruler and made a line and had a radius around Jackson Hole and you did 100 miles out, this would probably be the largest ranch without encumbrances on it,” he said. “It’s probably one of the larger ranches in existence without easements on it — no encumbrances — and it’s certainly the only one I know of that’s never been sold since homesteading.”

The ranch’s marquee feature is its live water. The 2-mile stretch of the Hoback River means private access to a productive cutthroat trout fishery, all surrounded on three sides by mountains and federally managed land. 

“Every corner you go around that looks like the fish will be in it — they’re in it,” Widener said. “They’re nice-size cutthroat rising to dry flies … It’s just really fun, visual fishing, with the river and the mountains in the background.”

The Hoback isn’t the only live water on the ranch, either. Fisherman’s Creek provides important irrigation diversions that support large meadows across the valley floor, which in turn supports 45 to 100 livestock.

Today the ranch runs about 45 horses for one of the owners. In earlier times, from 80 to 150 cattle grazed there. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Wildlife And Wilderness"}]

The ranch lies in a major elk migration corner, and animals have been visible on most of Widener’s visits, from calving cows to bugling bulls in the fall. 

Widener has also seen sage-grouse and sandhill cranes. Grizzly bears and wolves use the property and the surrounding national forest.

The outdoor recreation opportunities are “massive,” Widener said. They range from off-roading, hiking, mountain biking and swimming in freshwater springs to horseback riding. 

There’s also a spot where previous owners maintained a private airstrip. The old windsock is still there, fluttering in the valley breeze.

The homestead’s historic bones are still visible, Widener said. That includes the original homestead and its associated cabins. Some of those cabins still have spent cartridge casings hammered into the walls after they were used to carve the occupants’ initials. 

Widener said the family selling the ranch has chosen not to be identified, but said they are well-known locally and have decided to go in a different direction after the passing of the family’s patriarch a few years ago. 

That history includes a lightning-struck tree near the entrance.

“It looks like a limber pine, but it could be a ponderosa,” Widener said. “It’s really big and old.”

The lightning bolt came straight down, striking the tree in the 1940s, leaving it half-dead. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A 'Show Ranch' Opportunity"}]

In an era when many legacy ranches are getting chopped into smaller luxury parcels, Widener said he sees Hoback River Homestead as a “show ranch” opportunity — the kind that doesn’t come around in every generation.

Other big ranches in the region, such as the Little Jenny, which sold 8 to 10 years ago, contend with public roads slicing through their heart. The Hoback River Homestead does not have that. It sits behind a locked gate on one side, and is surrounded by national forests on the other three sides.

Widener remembers thinking when he first visited how remote the ranch felt. 

“I remember looking around thinking, ‘Man, there’s nobody here,’” he said. “We see this ranch as far more valuable due to its privacy.”

The ranch sits halfway between Jackson and Pinedale, however, and is a short drive from either community, making it convenient for last-minute dinner decisions like sushi in Jackson or steak in Pinedale.

“This is a rare deal, and it would be a shame to see someone not continue on with keeping it as a large parcel — if not making it larger,” he said. “Very few landowners are making ranches larger. A lot of them are getting split up. I’d certainly like to never see this one get split up.”

Hoback 005 7 23 26

<title>2,000-Acre Wyoming Homestead On Market For First Time Ever At $59.5 Million | Cowboy State Daily</title>

For the first time since it was homesteaded 138 years ago, the 2,000-acre Hoback River Homestead is on the market. The legacy Wyoming ranch has the largest privately owned stretch of the Hoback River and is listed at $59.5 million.

2,000-Acre Wyoming Homestead On Market For First Time Ever At $59.5 Million

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Public Safety

Skeletal human remains found in an abandoned building west of Cheyenne on Wednesday have prompted a lengthy identification process that investigators say could take months, while renewing hope and fear among families of Wyoming's missing.

Deputies with the Laramie County Sheriff's Office say a deceased individual was discovered in a building on Happy Jack Road. The remains were "essentially skeletal."

The sheriff's office, working with the Laramie County Coroner's Office, said there is no evidence of foul play or any threat to the public.

The discovery has already stirred emotions across Wyoming's missing persons community.

"You're excited because you want closure," said Desirée Tinoco, founder of Missing People of Wyoming. "You want one of those cases that, for years, has been forgotten."

Then comes the realization that every identification also brings devastating news to someone.

"You start to really sympathize and understand this is going to be terrible news also for somebody," Tinoco said. "They are going to get answers, and it's obviously not what they want to hear."

Stacy Koester, president of the Gillette-based nonprofit WyoFind Search, Rescue and Recovery of the Missing, said families across the state experience the same emotional conflict whenever unidentified remains are found.

Loved ones "are both anxious and terrified," she said. "They're hopeful that it could be their person, but they're also terrified that it's their person. They're hopeful because then they'd have answers, but they're terrified because those answers could be devastating."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Who Could It Be?"}]

Both Tinoco and Koester said the location immediately made them think of Nash Quinn, the Laramie-area man who vanished July 8, 2024.

Quinn frequently rode his bicycle in the Pilot Hill, Rogers Canyon and Happy Jack Road areas. Deputies and aerial search teams spent days combing those locations after he disappeared.

Both women, however, stressed there is no evidence connecting the newly discovered remains to Quinn.

Tinoco said that after hearing a dispatch call that the clothing found with the remains might date to the 1990s, she realized the remains could just as easily belong to someone who disappeared decades ago or even someone merely passing through Wyoming.

Before investigators had released many details, she had already received a call from a woman in Colorado whose missing friend was last seen wearing clothing similar to what early reports described.

"Could it be related? We don't know," Tinoco said. "I told her to contact the sheriff's office. That's what you always want to do."

[{"type":"text","text":"Koester likewise cautioned against speculation."}]

"Rumors tend to fly like wildfire," she said. "Nobody knows anything except for law enforcement, and everybody needs to be patient and wait for law enforcement to do what they have to do."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Long Wait Ahead"}]

Every discovery, Tinoco said, has the potential to unlock something that had long been buried.

"Getting those new tips, getting that new traction on cases, is what we want," she said. "Even if it isn't for that case, it'll get some good attention on it."

Investigators say the identification process may take several months because of the condition of the remains. No additional information will be released until authorities positively identify the deceased and notify next of kin.

Tinoco said cases like this also remind people how many Wyoming disappearances remain unsolved, some dating back decades.

She noted that many of those investigations are so old the original investigators have retired or died, leaving families and nonprofit organizations to continue pushing for answers.

For now, investigators are asking for patience while they work to determine who was found inside the abandoned building. 

Body found on Happy Jack 7 23 26

<title>Skeletal Remains Found In Abandoned Building West Of Cheyenne | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Skeletal human remains found in an abandoned building west of Cheyenne on Wednesday could take months to identify, investigators say. The discovery has renewed hope and fear among families of Wyoming's missing.

Skeletal Remains Found In Abandoned Building West Of Cheyenne

CHEYENNE — the U.S. Department of the Interior is ready to intervene in the more than 100-year-old dispute over Colorado River water if the seven Western states involved can’t come together on a realistic plan to manage the resource.

That was part of the message U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum shared during a Thursday visit to Cheyenne Frontier Days with a large number of his department heads.

Burgum also said that after multiple meetings with governors of the Colorado River upper and lower basin states, he’s confident they’ll come to a new agreement that can replace the 1922 compact now in place.

“I’ve said before … if we come up with a plan that nobody likes, we probably have the right plan,” said Burgum, who was North Dakota’s governor before tapped by President Trump to head the Department of the Interior.

“Because when you have a shortage (of Colorado River water) that’s this severe, if somebody was happy and somebody was unhappy, then it’s not the right amount of sharing the pain or shouldering the responsibility,” he continued.

A July 31 deadline to comment on his department’s plan for the Colorado is a little more than a week out, he said, adding that something has to be ready by the time the new water year starts Oct. 1.

“There has been no consensus among the seven states,” Burgum said. “There are disagreements between the upper and lower basin. When they can’t agree, then it kicks it back to the federal (level), and the federal government essentially becomes the water master.”

Even if that happens, Gov. Mark Gordon, who hosted Burgum and his staff, said Wyoming’s share of water is protected by water rights that are senior to the 1922 compact.

“The water rights prior to that are going to be unaffected,” he said. “The Bureau of Reclamation owns the water, we don’t own water in Flaming Gorge. They control that.”

But so far, he said the second Trump administration has been listening to states, farmers “and listen to the people who actually use the resource, and they’ll use their judgment as they can.

“But I want to make sure people understand that Wyoming water law is sacrosanct, and it’s not going to be affected.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Numbers Crunch"}]

A sort of perfect storm of issues is bringing the long-debated Colorado River crisis into focus.

The guidelines of the compact were set more than a century ago during a wet year with plenty of water, setting a baseline that’s just not there every year, Burgum said. Added to that is this past record dry winter and low snowpack in the upper basin.

When the water was divided up in 1922, there were 16 million acre-feet of water available from the Colorado River, he said. This year there’s only 3.5 million available, which increases pressure from lower basin states for the upper basin — which includes Wyoming — to release more water.

“This year, we think that the amount of new water coming into this thing is going to be 3.5 million,” he said. “So, there’s the idea that everybody wants their appropriated share. The water isn’t there.”

Adding to the crisis is the sheer number of people who depend on the Colorado River for drinking water, irrigation, power generation and recreation, Burgum said.

“There are 42 million people that live in an area served by this, and then we ship water out to places like Denver and Salt Lake to serve those other metro areas,” he said. “So, the number of people that are depending on the Colorado is, like, quadruple what it was.

“So, we have one-fourth the water and four times the people — and we’re going to figure it out.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"On Energy"}]

Burgum’s Thursday visit coincides with the Day of the American West at Cheyenne Frontier Days.

He and Gordon also highlighted Wyoming’s place as one of the nation’s energy-producing leaders and the need to continue developing that.

“The American West today … really powers our nation and it feeds our nation,” Burgum said. “And you can’t have national security without energy security.

“We (also) know we’re not going to have national security if we don’t have mineral security. And, of course, the West has historically been a place where we’ve had mining and management of critical minerals.”

He reassured people that his agency works for its “customers,” which he describes as people who use federal lands for a lot of different things — including grazing, minerals development and recreation.

“There has been kind of a trend the last 30 years where across these states with (large swaths) of public lands that we’re going to stop mining, we’re going to stop grazing, we’re going to stop doing timber,” Burgum said.

 “All of that effort around some false ideal that by moving those activities to other countries or other parts of the world is going to be good for the world or good for the environment,” he added.

When it comes to energy, “Wyoming really is a powerhouse,” Gordon said. “We have all kinds of energy and we’re very anxious to be able to get more of it developed and out. And we do that here in Wyoming with an incredible amount of care.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Local Control"}]

Fresh off an announcement last week that the Department of the Interior wants to hand management of 

 Burgum said Thursday that’s part of a larger philosophy of putting local control first.

“It’s a basic belief, and that's why we're moving back towards local control,” he told the small crowd of reporters and onlookers in a corner of the Old West Museum on the CFD campus.

“The people that live on the land know it best, and we should be a partner and a supporter, not a barrier to that,” he said. “And the law for most of the public lands are multiple use, and that includes grazing, recreation, energy, timber and wildlife.”

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Thursday that he'll intervene in the Colorado River crisis — if he has to. “We have one-fourth the water and four times the people,” he said during a visit to Cheyenne Frontier Days with many of his top-level staff.

CSD Staff

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