Sorted by date Results 301 - 325 of 526
CASPER — Questions about the advanced nuclear reactor planned for Kemmerer have circulated since the day TerraPower announced it would be built in Wyoming. People living near the candidate sites wanted to know where the spent fuel would go. If — and how — the electricity the plant generated would be taxed. Whether workers would be rehired from the coal plant it ended up replacing, and if the coal mine the plant relied on would survive. Wyoming, home to the vestiges of a booming uranium industry, still houses plenty of untapped uranium reser...
CASPER — Legislative leaders have asked a Senate panel to consider whether to launch a formal investigation into allegations recently brought against Sen. Anthony Bouchard, R-Burns. The request for an investigation comes days after the Senate voted to remove Bouchard from his committee assignments for a “long pattern” of misconduct, said Sen. Larry Hicks, R-Baggs. “The subcommittee must determine if the factual situation is sufficient to warrant a reasonably prudent person to believe that you committed misconduct,” Senate President Dan Docks...
SHERIDAN —Around a quarter after nine Friday evening, a loud cheer echoed through the Capitol building. “Well,” Sen. Mike Gierau, D-Jackson, said from his seat in the Senate chambers. “They must have figured out redistricting.” Indeed, after a week of negotiations, the joint conference committee for redistricting came to a compromise in the final hours of the final day of the legislative session. Within an hour of the cheer’s echo through the Capitol, the bill had been approved by both the House and Senate. It was approved on a 44-12-4 vote in...
JACKSON — Internet crimes against children, ranging from sexual abuse and trafficking to distributing pornography, are on the rise nationally and statewide. ”We are busier than we’ve ever been in the history of Wyoming,” said Chris McDonald, special agent of the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation and commander of the Internet Crimes Against Children task force since early 2019. McDonald receives and investigates all tips in Wyoming, from undercover operations to phone-in tips and all reporting that social media sites are required to sha...
CASPER — A federal judge has once again dismissed the wide-ranging vaccine mandate lawsuit originally led by Grace Smith, the Laramie high schooler arrested for trespassing in October after returning to school while suspended for refusing to wear a mask on campus. The plaintiffs in the case failed to meet a deadline to respond to seven motions to dismiss filed by defendants in the case on Feb. 10. Those include filings from five school districts, the Wyoming Department of Health and an intervenor representing Albany County families in favor o...
CHEYENNE — After significant public testimony in committee, and questions regarding its constitutionality, the Senate passed Senate File 51, “Fairness in women’s sports act,” through the Committee of the Whole Monday. The bill will face two more readings in the Senate. It is sponsored by Sen. Wendy Schuler, R-Evanston, who said in previous testimony that she introduced it in hopes of “prohibiting biological males from athletic teams and sports designated for females in public schools.” “All this legislation is about is fairness,” Sc...
LARAMIE — When Anastasiia Pereverten traveled to the University of Wyoming from Ukraine last month to study abroad, she and her parents discussed the possibility of a Russian invasion into their home country. They decided that if it were to happen, Pereverten would do her best where she was far from home and continue with her education. Now that Russian military forces are invading Ukraine, there isn’t an option to return home. For the past week, the UW cultural studies student has watched from afar as explosions erupted just a 5-minute wal...
CASPER — Former Wyoming Speaker of the House Tom Lubnau and 15 others are suing Gov. Mark Gordon, the Wyoming Republican Party, the party’s chairman and the Wyoming Republican State Central Committee over the recent state superintendent selection process. The complaint, filed Tuesday in federal court, claims that the process of selecting the superintendent spot left vacant by Jillian Balow’s resignation is unconstitutional because a political party’s central committee — which is made up of one county chairman, one county committeeman and one c...
Casper Star-Tribune Via Wyoming News Exchange CASPER — A major restructuring of academic programs at the University of Wyoming earned approval from the school’s board of trustees this week, but without layoffs and the deep budget cuts that were originally anticipated. The reorganization involves the movement and consolidation of various academic programs. It will occur in two waves, with the first round coming in July and the second scheduled for July 1, 2023, pending further revisions. School leaders first proposed major changes to Wyo...
The number of active coronavirus cases declined by more than 300 over the weekend to fall to less than 2,000 for the first time in three months. The Wyoming Department of Health’s regular coronavirus update said the state received 355 reports of new laboratory-confirmed cases between Friday and Monday, along with 129 reports of new probable cases. Also during the weekend, the number of recoveries reported among those with confirmed or probable cases grew by 797, leaving the state with 1,795 active cases, a decline of 313 from Friday. Monday m... Full story
CHEYENNE — State lawmakers are beginning to question the interpretation of the special session bill recently signed into law by Gov. Mark Gordon after the suspension of the federal vaccine mandate. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration recently halted the rollout of the Biden administration’s new rules, which would have required employers with 100 or more employees to have their entire staff vaccinated by the new year or face regular virus testing. The announcement was made after the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ordered OSHA no...
CODY — The West Park Hospital District board is taking a week to address some of the concerns raised by a series of impassioned speakers and board members before voting to approve a mandatory vaccine policy. At a much more crowded than usual meeting Monday, board members Glenn Nielson, Ty Nelson, Jen Talich and Howard Thompson voted to table the vote until next Tuesday and in the meantime form an ad hoc committee to work through some of the issues. Dr. Lenox Baker and Peggy Rohrbach voted against tabling the vote. The Centers for Medicare a...
Wyoming will see a federal oil and gas lease sale in early 2022 due to a federal court ruling that ended the Biden administration's 2021 moratorium. But the size of the lease sale will be much smaller than industry, and state leaders, hoped for. The Bureau of Land Management will defer 264 lease parcels initially considered for the sale, it said, and will instead offer a total 195 parcels. The parcels struck from the sale represent about 382,882 acres of Priority Habitat Management Areas for...
GILLETTE — Six officers were assigned to the commission chambers Tuesday for the Campbell County Commission’s regular meeting after the county sheriff had been asked to provide extra security. The request was made because of behavior at the previous commission meeting when some people were asked to leave because they were being disruptive. A group of library protesters showed up, as they have for the last few months, over concerns about library books. But on Tuesday, their signs were placed against the walls and chairs. And they were quiet for...
CASPER — The biggest coal-fired power plant in the country gets all of its coal from Wyoming. A second of its four units is now slated for retirement, halving total capacity before the end of the decade. Three Wyoming mines — Buckskin, Caballo and Eagle Butte — supply most of the millions of short tons of coal burned annually by Georgia’s 3,520-megawatt Robert W. Scherer Power Plant. Last year, roughly 10% of the mines’ combined coal production went to Scherer, according to the Energy Information Administration. Unit 3 is expected to shutter b...
RIVERTON — An attempt to tighten Wyoming’s loosened gambling regulations during the special legislative session failed last week when the House opted not to introduce a corrective bill. Senate File 1019 and its counterpart, House Bill 1019, sought to correct what their language called a “scrivener’s error,” or unintentional drafting mistake dating back to the 2021 session –– when legislators tried to repeal a sunset date for gambling regulation but instead, by an apparent omission that State Sen. Affie Ellis, R-Cheyenne, called an error –– r...
The number of Wyoming deaths tied to coronavirus has increased by 69, the Wyoming Department of Health announced Tuesday. The department said the deaths, which occurred between August and the end of October, brought to 1,243 the number of Wyoming residents whose deaths have been linked to the coronavirus since it was first detected in Wyoming in March 2020. Thirteen Sweetwater County residents, nine men and four women, died in September and October, the department said, and nine were hospitalized for the treatment of coronavirus. Ten Natrona...
U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) has an extensive foreign policy record. As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, Cheney is among a small group of lawmakers with outsized influence on the Department of Defense’s purse strings. Before she ran for office, she was a ranking official in the U.S. Department of State, serving as one of the Bush Administration’s top diplomatic officials at the height of America’s wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, played a major role in the United State...
Wyoming’s largest utility, Rocky Mountain Power, will decommission its entire coal-fired power fleet in the state by 2039 while continuing to add wind, solar and battery storage to its six-state operating system, according to preliminary details of its 2021 Integrated Resource Plan. RMP will retire 14 of its coal-fired power units across several states by 2030, and a total of 19 by 2040, RMP’s parent company PacifiCorp stated in a presentation to Wyoming utility officials late last week. PacifiCorp plans to add more than 3,700 megawatts of new...
As federal water managers declared the first-ever official Colorado River water shortage last week, a top official said he's confident Wyoming will responsibly implement its plans to store and divert even more flows from the troubled waterway. The Department of the Interior on Aug. 16 said it would reduce water diversions to Arizona, Nevada and Mexico in 2022 after a scheduled August review set the restrictive sideboards for releases next year. Despite that curtailment, Wyoming plans to corral...
Voters in Campbell and Johnson Counties weighed in last week on an issue that has long divided voters in Wyoming: whether to tax themselves for government services. For the third time in Campbell County’s history, voters faced the question of whether to raise taxes to pay for an independent community college district. The latest iteration was a reaction to significant cuts to Gillette College’s budget by the Sheridan-based trustees of the Northern Wyoming Community College District. In Johnson County, voters were given the choice to add 1% to...
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department is seeking tips on a poaching incident near Baggs involving two buck mule deer. Baggs Game Warden Kim Olson said both bucks had been shot from Highway 789 just outside of Baggs on the evening of Aug. 10. Both deer were wounded but still alive when Warden Olson responded shortly after 9 p.m. Warden Olson is seeking tips from anyone who may have information on this case. Tipsters can call the Stop Poaching Hotline at 1-877-WGFD-TIP (1-877-943-3847)....
A progress report to members of the Joint Committee on Minerals, Business & Economic Development in Laramie Thursday offered mostly good news to proponents of building a first-of-its-kind nuclear reactor in Wyoming. Even with the backing of the Biden White House and the U.S. Department of Energy, however, the nascent plan still faces numerous administrative and legislative hurdles. Officials with Rocky Mountain Power — who will facilitate construction of the project alongside billionaire tech entrepreneur Bill Gates’ company, TerraPower — t...
GILLETTE - It never ceases to amaze just how quiet a large group of people can be. More impressive still is when they stop talking suddenly, as if a switch got flipped and turned them off. That was the scene in Gillette College's Pronghorn Center at the funeral for Mike Enzi, the former Gillette mayor and U.S. senator. The crowd was chattering casually and suddenly they stopped. Pastor Donavon Voigt was leading the procession into the arena, followed by Enzi's casket and his family. From that...
CASPER — The Fremont County Republican Party has joined Carbon and Park counties in voting to rescind recognition of Rep. Liz Cheney as a member of the GOP, according to a resolution obtained by the Star-Tribune. But the leaders of the Republican parties in Carbon and Fremont counties gave different reasons for pursuing what amounted to another symbolic critique of Wyoming’s only congressperson. The Fremont County Republican Party Central Committee voted Monday in support of the move, which is emblematic of the far right’s sustained frust...
