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When state officials unveiled in June that a nuclear demonstration project is slated for Wyoming, they touted it as an advanced technology. But critics of the Natrium project say we’ve been here before — with the same technology and the same assurances made — only to see hopes dashed and massive public investments go to waste. The multi-billion dollar Natrium project is a joint effort of PacifiCorp, TerraPower and the U.S. Department of Energy that is expected to place a 345-megawatt power plant in Wyoming. Behind TerraPower is none other...
SUNDANCE — Crook County Treasurer Mary Kuhl was arrested on Friday on criminal charges related to her conduct as an elected official. The allegations include that she listed a customer’s license plate tabs as lost in the mail but then placed them on her own vehicle; that she adjusted the tax system to hide missing money; and that she issued a false certificate so that a personal friend could avoid paying registration fees. The investigation was headed by a special agent of the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation. According to County Att...
CASPER – As COVID-19 variants emerge globally, Wyoming is by a wide margin leading the nation in work to identify those mutations. Nearly 19% of COVID-19 tests in Wyoming are being genetically sequenced, meaning the department is analyzing the genetic base pairs that make up the virus’ DNA to identify mutations. Washington state places second, with fewer than 8% of tests sequenced, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The majority of states are analyzing fewer than 3% of virus tests. As more virus mutations have eme...
Former U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi died late Monday after being seriously injured in a bicycle accident in Gillette on Friday. A post on Enzi's Facebook page said the former Wyoming legislator died Monday at the UCHealth Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland, Colorado, where he was flown for treatment after the accident. "Former Wyoming U.S. Senator Mike Enzi passed away peacefully (Monday) surrounded by his family," the post said. "His family expressed their deep appreciation for all of the prayers...
As Lake Powell dropped to its lowest-ever level Friday — a decline that has forced dam tenders to unexpectedly release 125,000 acre-feet of water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir — Wyoming stood behind five projects that could divert tens of thousands more acre-feet from waterways in the troubled Colorado River Basin. Powell’s surface elevation dipped to 3,555.09, lower by 12 hundredths of an inch than the previous post-completion nadir of April 8, 2005. The new benchmark is “probably worth noting,” Wayne Pullan, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamati...
The deaths of six more Wyoming residents have been linked to the coronavirus, according to the Wyoming Department of Health. The department announced Tuesday that five of the six died in July and one died in June. The deaths bring to 766 the number of Wyoming residents whose deaths have been tied to COVID-19. The victims include two Laramie County men, both of whom had been hospitalized for treatment before their deaths in July. A Sweetwater County man died in July after being hospitalized, while a Sweetwater County woman who died in June was...
For the first time in decades, Campbell County will not send excess revenue to the state’s School Foundation Program, the primary statewide school fund. The county’s shift from a “recapture” to an “entitlement” district reveals changing economic dynamics among state communities. It also underscores the risk inherent in Wyoming’s reliance on mineral extraction to provide equitable and adequate funding for each district, no matter its local economic health. “I think it says a lot about the state of Wyoming,” Wyoming Education Association’s Govern...
CASPER — The University of Wyoming on Tuesday proposed sweeping changes at the institution, including budget cuts that would lay off 75 positions — some tenured, a reorganization of a slew of academic departments, and the formation of a school of computing — among other additions. The proposal must be approved by the university’s board of trustees, which meets all this week in Torrington. If approved, it would still require a formal public review for 120 days, a process mandated by the university’s regulation 2-13. Trustees are expected...
When Susan Gore arrived in Wyoming more than two decades ago, the heir to the Gore-Tex fortune was a minor player in the state’s politics. Campaign finance documents show limited involvement in Wyoming politics until the late 2000s. Even then, her influence was fairly narrow, and her contributions hewed closely to the policy agenda espoused by Wyoming Liberty Group — the Libertarian-leaning think tank she founded in 2008. Campaign finances records, however, show Gore’s spending grew dramatically over time. By 2020 she had become a key finan...
Breaking with the longstanding norm of intraparty candidate neutrality, a Wyoming Republican Party official asked members of Congress for help vetting potential challengers to U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney in next year’s Republican primary. According to emails obtained by WyoFile, Wyoming Republican Party Revenue Committee Chairman Jeff Wallack contacted staffers for Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) on June 15 “seeking veterans in Congress to vet our retired military candidates Denton Knapp and Bryan Miller.” Crenshaw, a Cheney ally and former Navy Seal,...
CASPER – Some communities would balk at the idea of a company building an experimental power source on the edge of town. Glenrock is not one of them. Before the end of the year, developers of a new type of nuclear power plant will decide which of four Wyoming towns will house their project, and Glenrock wants to be selected. During a Wednesday meeting with the heads of TerraPower and Rocky Mountain Power, community leaders listened attentively to the companies’ pitch. Most were already on board with the project. A few safety questions did come...
Wealthy conservative donor Susan Gore was a key financier of a years-long effort to spy on Wyoming Democrats and Republicans, an article published Friday by the New York Times revealed, shining a light on the lengths to which the Gore-Tex heiress and Wyoming Liberty Group founder has gone to influence the state’s politics. The report alleges Gore helped finance the infiltration of numerous political organizations in the state by a pair of “spies” tied to the right-wing group Project Veritas. Their targets were varied, according to the inves...
CASPER — Two Wyoming lawmakers and a former state representative say they were targeted as part of an undercover operation performed by conservative operatives to infiltrate political campaigns and progressive groups during the 2020 election cycle. Wyoming appeared to be the home base for these efforts, according to an investigation published Friday by the New York times. The conservative operatives, Sofia LaRocca and Beau Maier, reportedly used the Wapiti home of Erik Prince, the founder of private military firm Blackwater, for training. T...
RIVERTON — Originally charged with stealing more than $34,000 from the Town of Pavillion, the municipality’s former clerk was charged again last week, after more unexplained expenditures were discovered. The newly discovered bank account charges date back to 2013 and appear to have funded a wedding in Kentucky. Rebecca Irene Milleson, a 48-year-old Riverton woman also known as Rebecca Hatcher, now faces an additional count of felony larceny. The charge in worst-case scenarios could be punishable by up to a decade in prison and $10,000 in fin...
RED DESERT – Sitting in the verdant shade of an aspen grove on Steamboat Mountain — which rises out of the Red Desert in southern Wyoming — Jason Baldes talks about buffalo. As the buffalo reintroduction coordinator for the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, this is not unusual for Baldes, who’s wearing a shirt that reads “Make Buffalo Great Again.” But on this day in early June, he isn’t focused solely on the herd he helped reintroduce to the Wind River Indian Reservation. Instead, he imagines the hulking creatures that once roamed this mountain being pu...
Wyoming lawmakers have begun the lengthy and involved process of redrawing legislative district maps for the next decade. The Joint Committee on Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions’s June 7 meeting marked the beginning of months of data crunching, discussion and negotiation on how population changes recorded in the 2020 census will affect representation in the Wyoming Legislature. The results could impact sitting legislators, shift the voting tendencies of individual districts, affect the partisan representation in the House a...
Some lawmakers are worried that school districts are using federal pandemic-relief and recovery funds to add new positions and purchase equipment that might add to ongoing costs for the state. The anxiety stems from the fact that school districts have discretion in how to spend the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds distributed to districts from the CARES and American Recovery and Reinvestment acts. Wyoming’s allotment of ESSER funds total $470 million so far, according to state and federal data. About 90% is directly a...
CHEYENNE –– Gov. Mark Gordon and the Wyoming Legislature are playing the long game when it comes to American Rescue Plan relief funding, mapping out a three-pronged plan that is centered around serving future generations of Wyomingites. With the state being granted about $1 billion to spend by the end of 2026 – in addition to more funding for municipalities, infrastructure improvements and schools – the governor’s “Strike Team” has outlined the state’s near-term, mid-term and long-term spending strategies based on surviving, driving and the...
RIVERTON – If there’s one thing Liz Cheney never expected, it was to be called a RINO. The derisive term, an acronym for “Republican in Name Only,” seems not just an unlikely label for Wyoming’s sole U.S. Representative, but an absurd one, given party norms over most of the past 25 years. Applied, typically, to Republicans who run afoul of generally understood party principles, the put-down in the past tended to be used after a Republican member of Congress cast votes outside the party majority or ran for re-election while espousing something...
CASPER – After the recent announcement that Wyoming would be getting a nuclear power plant, many Wyomingites had a similar question. Is it safe? The Star-Tribune spoke with an expert who says yes, both the reactor and the waste storage are secure. Wyoming will be the site of the first Natrium small modular reactor (SMR) from a partnership between Bill Gates’ company TerraPower, the U.S. Department of Energy and PacifiCorp. The Natrium SMR has a design distinct from previous reactors, making it safer than traditional reactors. Traditional mod...
Wyoming’s Covid-19 vaccination rate remains among the lowest in the nation, yet the state has declined to set quantifiable goals, offer incentives or otherwise modify its approach to address the underperformance. Almost half of the national population has received at least one Covid-19 vaccination shot, with just less than 40% being fully vaccinated. The highest vaccination rates in the nation are in the northeast and New England. Vermont, the second least populous state behind Wyoming, is approaching its goal of vaccinating 80% of the p...
CASPER – Although a highly invasive and harmful mussel was unexpectedly found in aquarium decorations at Wyoming pet stores earlier this year, wildlife officials say they have not yet detected the zebra mussels in state waters. “Right now, we are negative for zebra and quagga mussels in the state,” Alan Osterland, chief of fisheries for Wyoming’s Game and Fish Department, told the Star-Tribune. Colorado, Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon are also negative, Osterland said. If zebra mussels were to proliferate, they would be harmful to Wyom...
JACKSON — New legislation spearheaded by U.S. Sen. John Barrasso proposes to do away with permit fees for small film crews and social media influencers shooting video on most federal land. The bill introduced by Wyoming’s senior senator, called the Federal Interior Land Media Act, would codify a recent legal decision that led the National Park Service to suspend permit fees for “low-impact” filming outside wilderness areas. While that change in policy is confined to 85 million acres of Park Service property, the law that has been pitched...
CASPER – Wyoming Sen. Anthony Bouchard says he is staying in the U.S. House race following the disclosure that he impregnated a 14-year-old when he was 18, striking a defiant tone at the possibility that he could face repercussions in the Wyoming Legislature. “They’re gonna censure me for (what I did) 37 years ago? That’d be great,” he said. “Do it. Bring it on.” Bouchard has faced a wave of criticism after he acknowledged late Thursday that he had impregnated the girl, whom he married a year later. But speaking to the Star-Tribune...
CHEYENNE — The Wyoming Department of Health on Friday announced the likely final phase for statewide public health orders related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the immediate removal of one of the two remaining orders. Statewide public health order #2, which affected indoor events of more than 500 people, is now eliminated, according to a news release. Mask use and physical distancing requirements in statewide public health order #1 related to K-12 schools will remain through May 31, while the same requirements for colleges are i...
