Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming, for Wednesday, December 18th. I'm Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - brought to you by the Cowboy State Daily Morning Show with Jake. From 6 a.m. to 10 a.m., Monday through Friday, Cowboy State Daily's Jake Nichols takes you deeper into the stories that matter - and keeps up with the news, weather and sports in your part of Wyoming. Just tune into Cowboy State Daily Dot Com and join the conversation.

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While the Teton County Sheriff's Office's failure to communicate with federal immigration officials allowed more than 100 illegal immigrants to slip away between early 2023 and late 2024, other major Wyoming counties avoided similar results by keeping in coordination with federal officials.

That's according to Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) data released Tuesday. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reviewed the report.

"This is a saga continuing from late November when Harriet Hageman was like, Teton county sheriff is scuttling ICE's efforts to detain illegal immigrants while they're still at the jail. And so ICE on Tuesday released numbers showing how successfully, or how faithfully, other major Wyoming counties detain illegal immigrants for the agency at its request, and those numbers showed that none of the top populated six counties in Wyoming are having the same kinds of issues. they have basically scuttled zero hold requests due to non notification or being non communicative."

In a Tuesday interview with Cowboy State Daily, Teton County Sheriff Matt Carr reiterated his earlier position: He's happy to hold inmates for up to 48 hours after they're supposed to be released, but only if ICE can get its detainer request signed by a judge, magistrate or clerk of court.

Read the full story HERE.

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A prolonged downturn in Wyoming's fossil fuel revenue over the past decade has state Rep. John Bear of Gillette bringing a plan to the table he believes will be a novel approach to bolster the state's coal industry and give communities more control of their power supply.

Cowboy State Daily's Leo Wolfson reports that Bear wants the state to develop a regulatory framework to allow for the creation of small coal-fired power plants dotting the state.

"This would be done, really, for the idea of trying to help Wyoming become self sufficient for its energy, to keep lower costs down, and as a way to keep its coal industry alive, as way of trying to keep this industry going with the demand of these small scale plants. It's a very innovative and rather unique idea… But there's certainly some major roadblocks that would occur with this. For one is getting people to invest in this would be certainly a challenge, especially because of the uncertain regulatory landscape that that would bring."

Coal production is on pace to record another modern low in Wyoming, at risk of falling below 200 million tons produced for the year for the first since 1992.

Read the full story HERE.

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BNSF Railway has made public statements about a tentative collective bargaining agreement reached after arbitration with union officials, which tout a 3.5% wage increase pe