Continuing the Crook County News Since 1884
Continuing the Crook County News Since 1884
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JACKSON — With some last-minute changes being made to satisfy the state of Wyoming, the National Elk Refuge is moving forward with a five-year plan to start whittling down its historic elk-feeding program. A document outlining the long-delayed changes, dubbed a “step-down” plan, is supposed to achieve goals that were established in an overarching plan some 13 years ago: reducing elk numbers to 5000 and skipping supplemental alfalfa feeding during average winters. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed in its draft plan to alter the proto...
LARAMIE — Albany County District Court Judge Tori Kricken ruled Friday that the University of Wyoming must turn over, within 30 days, numerous records related to former UW President Laurie Nichols to several news organizations, including the Laramie Boomerang, the Casper Star-Tribune and Wyofile. If upheld by the Wyoming Supreme Court, Kricken’s ruling could give the public a glimpse into the reasons the university’s board of trustees opted not to renew Nichols’s contract after negotiating one in 2019. However, the records — including...
SHERIDAN — The Joint Education Committee advanced a bill that gives school districts increased power to determine disciplinary policy for absences and increasing penalties for absenteeism and truancy. The bill grants school districts the power to define an “unexcused absence” and determine the number of unexcused absences that constitute “habitual truancy” and “willful absenteeism.” The bill defines “habitual truant” as “any child who, disobeying reasonable and lawful demands of the child’s parent, guardian, custodian or other proper authorit...
GILLETTE — The 14-year-old slowly comes closer and into focus while running down the middle of an empty northeastern Wyoming highway. It is a cold, sunny winter afternoon on the outskirts of the Black Hills near Devils Tower. The road is a flat, two-lane highway that spans the prairie and gentle rolls of landscape blanketed in Black Hills pines on the horizon. The high school freshman wears a red sweater and black track pants while he runs straight ahead. He seems alone and isolated, yet his h...
LARAMIE — Albany County circuit court Judge Robert Castor should make a ruling on the legality of the University of Wyoming’s gun ban, Albany County Attorney Peggy Trent said in a Friday court filing. Trent’s office is currently prosecuting Lyle Williams, a Uinta County man, for trespassing after he refused to leave the UW Conference Center in 2018 when he was open-carrying during the Wyoming Republican Party’s annual convention in Laramie. Williams was the only person to receive such a citation, but was among about a dozen such delegat...
Wyoming’s flu season begins JACKSON (WNE) — It’s flu season in Wyoming, but public health officials aren’t ready to make a determination about its severity. “This is probably too early for us to put a real characterization on this season,” Wyoming Department of Health spokeswoman Kim Deti said. However, people are still coming down with the mostly seasonal virus that causes fever, coughing, fatigue and other undesirable symptoms. “We are seeing activity across the state,” Deti said. “I don’t know if it’s at widespread levels yet.” The stat...
CASPER — President Donald Trump signed a $1.4 trillion appropriations package Friday night, averting a government shutdown and saving health care for hundreds of retired coal miners in Kemmerer. Coal has been the critical economic building block for the southwest Wyoming community, where miners have labored at the open pit coal mine in Lincoln County for decades. They’ve contributed millions of tons of thermal coal to the nation’s electricity supply. For many miners, working at the Kemmerer mine was the only livelihood they ever knew. But l...
GILLETTE — It was a cold December morning, and Cody Nehl stood in a lot off of Little Powder River Road, waiting for a customer. A large pile of stoker coal was stored in the back of a truck, ready to be sold. After a few minutes, another truck pulled up and drove onto a scale. Nehl powered up a conveyor belt, which transported the coal and dumped it into the bed of the truck. The coal would be used to heat someone’s house and shop north of town. That day, Nehl, operations manager for GMHR LLC in Gillette, completed his first sale of sto...
CHEYENNE – Despite objections from Gov. Mark Gordon, lawmakers on the Joint Appropriations Committee approved a bill Thursday that would raise the salaries of the governor and the other four elected state officials beginning after the 2022 general election. The bill would raise the governor’s salary from $105,000 to $150,000, while the other four officials – secretary of state, state auditor, state treasurer and superintendent of public instruction – would see their salaries jump from $92,000 to $120,000. The bill’s approval, which marks the...
Husband of Cheyenne mayor arrested on suspicion of domestic violence CHEYENNE (WNE) — Cheyenne Mayor Marian Orr’s husband was arrested Friday night on suspicion of domestic violence against her. Christopher Jimmy Orr, 54, was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor domestic battery in the 3400 block of Warren Avenue, and is currently being held at the Laramie County jail. It’s unknown at this time who made the phone call to the Cheyenne Police Department to report the incident. Marian Orr wasn’t taken to the hospital for treatment of any injurie...
Man accused of stealing from ATMs faces federal charges CODY (WNE) — A Brazilian man is now facing federal criminal charges for allegedly stealing nearly $8000 from Park County ATM machines in recent weeks. Allisson Bebiano, 29, is facing three felony charges in federal courts after he was initially charged on 17 different counts in Park County. On Dec. 6, deputy Park County prosecuting attorney Larry Eichele submitted a motion to dismiss the charges without prejudice as, “it is in the best interest of justice,” Eichele wrote in the filin...
CHEYENNE — According to the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services, coal workers in Wyoming need more protections when it comes to bankruptcy filings in the industry. Representatives from the department presented their “wish list” of changes Monday to the Legislature’s Select Committee on Coal/Mineral Bankruptcies, which was formed in September after a string of coal bankruptcies in the state shook Wyoming workers. After hearing reasoning from Kelly Roseberry, a lawyer with Workforce Services, the committee directed the Legislative Service Of...
PINEDALE — After two harrowing rounds of state lease auctions that invited bids for the mineral estates under their home beside the New Fork River, a local couple is applying for the 240-acre lease in the state’s “over the counter” option. Applying for an unsold Office of State Lands and Investments’ lease “over the counter” falls in a time period after two unsuccessful auctions. Homeowners Jan Allen and Mike McFarland, who live next to the New Fork River, took this route after a July lease sale and another in November brought no bidders for P...
Public Service Commission approves expansion of Corriedale wind project CHEYENNE (WNE) – The Wyoming Public Service Commission Thursday approved an expansion of the planned Corriedale Wind Energy Project to include an additional five wind turbines. The application for the wind farm, submitted by Black Hills Power and its subsidiary, Cheyenne Light, Fuel and Power Company (aka Black Hills Energy), was initially approved in July. With the commission’s approval Thursday, the project will expand from 16 to 21 wind turbines. The wind farm is exp...
CASPER — Gov. Mark Gordon told lawmakers Monday that he would be “willing” to consider a statewide lodging tax if it came across his desk this winter. However, in his first budget presentation to members of the Joint Appropriations Committee this week, Gordon declined to entertain any other tax legislation, instead focusing his first hearing on cost-savings as the state faces a future of declining revenues. Kicking off the first of several weeks of budget hearings, Gordon seemed largely on the same page as leaders of the budget-making commi...
CASPER — The names and salaries of every school district employee in Wyoming will be released this month after a request from a state senator, a move that’s drawn criticism from educators across the state. “There is a big gap between what I’m legally bound to do and what is the right thing to do,” said State Superintendent Jillian Balow. “And I have difficulty figuring out and reconciling how the release of names that intrudes on the privacy of citizens in our Wyoming community, that potentially puts their security, safety and other aspec...
CASPER — A Wyoming tribe is looking to hemp and medical marijuana as potential ways to bolster the Wind River Reservation economy and treat illnesses, an approach more and more tribes view as potentially lucrative. In late September, the Eastern Shoshone Tribe’s General Council voted to approve a resolution to have a group examine legalizing medical marijuana and allowing hemp production as well as formulate a plan to potentially vote on. Advocates for the measures say hemp and cannabis-related businesses or cultivation could help div...
Work on eastern Wyo. pipeline begins LUSK (WNE) — Bridger Pipeline, LLC has begun construction of a crude oil pipeline that will run from Guernsey, through Goshen County and run the length of Niobrara County before reaching its final destination in Hulett. The Equality Pipeline is a 20-inch diameter pipeline designed to transport crude oil from the Bakken to an established hub in Guernsey, according to the pipeline’s website, bridgerexpansion.com. The Equality Pipeline will run for 120 miles across Wyoming, and is expected to transport up to 20...
U.S. Senator John Barrasso and Wyoming’s first family, Governor Mark Gordon and First Lady Jennie Gordon, all spent the Thanksgiving holiday with members of the three Wyoming Army National Guard units deployed overseas. On Thanksgiving Day in Afghanistan, Barrasso joined President Donald Trump in a surprise visit to American troops stationed at Bagram Air Base. This includes members of Wyoming National Guard’s A Battery, 2nd Battalion, 300th Field Artillery, who are conducting artillery mis...
Teen charged as adult for threats against schools CHEYENNE (WNE) — A 15-year-old boy accused of making a bomb threat at Cheyenne schools had his preliminary hearing Friday afternoon in Laramie County Circuit Court. Charles Reese Karn is being charged as an adult for allegedly making terroristic threats against several schools. The crime carries up to three years in prison and/or a $10,000 fine. Karn is being held in custody on a $5000 cash only bond. Circuit Judge Denise Nau bound the case over to Laramie County District Court after finding t...
The public is invited to a ceremony for Wyoming’s state remembrance wreath on Dec. 9, at 10 a.m., at the Wyoming State Capitol Rotunda, 200 W. 24th Street. The ceremony is part of the Wreaths Across America program that honors all veterans and active military members during the holidays. Wyoming’s ceremony will be hosted by the Wyoming Veterans Commission. Wyoming’s First Lady, Jennie Gordon, and Wyoming’s Adjutant General, Maj. Gen. Gregory Porter, will be the featured speakers. The remembrance wreath will remain at the Capitol rotunda through...
Andrew Saul, Commissioner of Social Security, and Gail S. Ennis, the Inspector General for the Social Security Administration, announce the launch of a dedicated online form at https://oig.ssa.gov to receive reports from the public of Social Security-related scams. These scams—in which fraudulent callers mislead victims into making cash or gift card payments to avoid arrest for purported Social Security number problems—skyrocketed over the past year to become the #1 type of fraud reported to the Federal Trade Commission and the Social Security...
CHEYENNE — Firearms manufacturer Stag Arms announced Monday it will relocate to Cheyenne by the end of the year from its current headquarters in New Britain, Connecticut. The business will be located in the Arundel Building, 7052 Commerce Circle, in the Cheyenne Business Parkway, east of Sierra Trading Post. Stag Arms manufactures AR-style rifles and pistols, and is known for creating a left-handed AR-15 sporting rifle. Right now, the company employs between 15 and 20 people, according to recently hired President Chad Larsen, but he said t...
SHERIDAN — An anonymous website that purports to chart state Republican lawmakers’ adherence to the party platform has drawn criticism from Wyoming Republicans for presenting reductive and divisive characterizations of state legislators. The site, WyoRINO.com, seeks to expose “liberal Republicans” or “Republicans In Name Only” (RINO) by assigning every state legislator a score based on how their votes in the previous legislative session corresponded to the Wyoming Republican party platform. That score, however, is based on legislators...
Man charged with murder in discovery of body CODY (WNE) — Former Cody resident and convicted felon Joseph Underwood is now facing multiple charges, including first degree murder, in Laramie County related to a homicide investigation. In addition, Underwood is also accused of first-degree sexual assault, stalking and two counts of applying pressure on the throat or neck. His charges were filed in Laramie County last Friday. Underwood’s court file is sealed due to the sexual assault allegations, but his charges were available on circuit cou...
