Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Thursday, February 19th. I'm Mac Watson.

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The Carbon County GOP is calling for resignations of four state reps for their silence on the ongoing "CheckGate" scandal. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports the party says they knew defamation claims aimed at Rep. Mike Yin for making the check-passing public were wrong, but didn't speak up.

"When you belong to and represent a major political party, sometimes you're beholden to accountability maneuvers by those parties and the Carbon County Republican Party met Tuesday night and advanced two resolutions for consideration by the state party that call for resignation of at least four state representatives that are reportedly involved in the Check Gate controversy. And so it's basically saying, 'We believe these four representatives at least knew that there had been checks handed out on the House floor, and yet, when Representative Mike Yin, the minority floor leader, was talking about this and warning everyone about this last Wednesday, another Representative accused him of defamation. And these four who reportedly knew that he was telling the truth did nothing to stand up for him."

The first resolution calls for the resignation of Republican Reps. Joe Webb (Lyman), Marlene Brady (Green River), and Darin McCann (Rock Springs). That's according to a copy of the resolution obtained by Cowboy State Daily.

Read the full story HERE.

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Wyoming lawmakers heard emotional testimony from teachers, miners and students on Tuesday urging them to protect public lands from federal selloffs. Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports that the Senate panel unanimously advanced the resolution titled: "Keeping public lands protected and decisions local."

"It's basically a declaration that Wyomingites support public land…what this resolution seeks to do is say, 'We're different – that Wyoming doesn't want to sell its public land.' We heard testimony from high school students, from teachers, from Game and Fish, from all sorts of public lands supporters and professionals who work in that space all saying that, 'Look, we want to have a local voice in in how public lands are managed, but we do, and we but we do not want them sold.'"

SJR 9 was introduced by Sen. Eric Barlow, of Gillette, with 38 co-sponsors — a bipartisan coalition that includes a total of 17 senators and 22 representatives.

Read the full story HERE.

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Winter weather created nasty driving conditions that contributed to a pair of multi-vehicle crashes Wednesday that closed a 21-mile stretch of westbound I-80 between Evanston and Kemmerer. Cowboy State Daily's Andrew Rossi reports that one motorist caught in the middle of the pileup says visibility was down to zero.

"The Wyoming Highway Patrol is still investigating the contributing factors into the incidents that happened on Tuesday, let alone the one that was happening on Wednesday afternoon and evening that involved multiple vehicles in both the westbound and eastbound lanes of I 80, but they are going to chalk up a lot of this to icy conditions, winter weather hazards and possibly wind gusts as well. Those are all factors that might have contributed, but we won't know for sure, but based on the images, it looks pretty likely that people were driving in white-out conditions. Roads were slick, and these incidents happened. We don't know if there are any injuries or fatalities involved in Wednesday evening's incident, but we do kn