Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming! I'm Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom, for Wednesday, June 5th.

Canadian energy firm Enbridge Inc.'s proposed $1.2 billion solar farm development in South Cheyenne has encountered delays.

Energy reporter Pat Maio says the company is in a dispute with Laramie County officials over who is to pay for a county-maintained road needed for the project that will power nearby social media giant Meta Platforms enterprise data center.

"They're gonna have to widen it and resurface it is because there's going to be three to four hundred cars a day, in the morning and at night. That'd be, what, 600, 800 cars daily going down that road. So it has to be wider. There's going to be trucks going down, they're doing construction work on the solar farm. Remember, this is the one that's 1.2 million solar panels, the largest utility scale solar farm in the state of Wyoming, it's going to produce about close to 800 megawatts of power."

The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality issued key permits to Enbridge on May 21 to move forward with the project. However, the county's planning commission and board of commissioners must still take up the proposal before Enbridge can begin construction.

A substitute teacher says he's been barred from a Cheyenne-based school district after refusing to use preferred transgender names of students.

Gene Clemetson was escorted out of East High School in Laramie County School District No. 1 while substitute teaching in March, he told Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland.

"Clementson says that he has been kicked out of these high schools for refusing to use transgender students' preferred names. He told the students, that's not the name on the roster, I don't want to go with it. He told me in an interview a few days ago that if people got their names changed legally, he would go with it. But he said that he doesn't want to humor, 'whims and frivolity' are his words… HR officers also referenced Clementson allegedly taking issue with a plastic pollution documentary that he had to show children, and allegedly getting upset about a program at Triumph high school where students are allowed to call teachers by their first names."

In the federal U.S. District Court for Wyoming, a judge ruled last year that teachers don't have a free-speech right to avoid using students' preferred names, if the school's policy requires them to do so.

Mogul Capital's proposed 360,000-square-foot mega hotel at the north end of Jackson has landed in limbo for at least 120 days, after the town council put a moratorium on large development projects.

Cowboy State Daily's Renee Jean reports that the emergency moratorium put a temporary hold on any new commercial projects greater than 35,000 square feet in Jackson's downtown or commercial zoning areas.

"That actually puts the mega Mogul hotel proposal in limbo, because the company had asked for vacation of an alley. And that was part of their sketch plan. And since the council didn't approve that alley vacation, that's going to invalidate their sketch plan."

Critics have said that having such a huge development at the gateway to Jackson would forever change the town's character.

Property tax relief in Wyoming was the biggest issue of the last two legislative sessions and continues to be along this year's campaign trail.

Whether it provides enough relief for Cowboy State residents is at the heart of the debate, but Cowboy State Daily's Leo Wolfson reports