Around the 307
News, commentary, and other items of interest from the greater Wyoming landscape.
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Here are your Around the 307 news items for the week of February 18th, 2024:
The Wyoming Legislature was in high gear this past week as they passed the midway point of their 20-day 2024 Budget Session which began on February 12th and concludes on March 8th. As many of you have a high-interest in the current property tax situation around our state, I wanted to share information about another tax reform proposal introduced this week that actually made it through the House Revenue Committee on Tuesday, February 20th. The bill, HB0203, should it continue to progress through the legislature, would eliminate most property tax in Wyoming in return for hiking the sales tax by 2%. This sounds like a win-win to me! But, please, give this bill a look and form your own opinion. You can also review the status of other property tax bills currently under consideration by the legislature on the Wyoming Taxpayers Association website at this link.
Tuesday, February 20th, Cowboy State Daily published a story about a recent Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) expansion proposal that would run three passenger rail routes through Wyoming including the I-80 corridor, a north-south route from Billings to Cheyenne, and one running from Cheyenne to Rapid City. Currently, there is no passenger rail service in Wyoming. Given how fun it is to drive I-80 in winter, a passenger rail option sounds pretty nifty. You can read the full news article here and also find additional reading on rail service expansion into flyover states like Wyoming at the All Aboard Northwest website.
An aerial view of the historic rail yard roundhouse in Cheyenne Wyoming. Thursday, February 22nd, the National Weather Service (NWS) in Pocatello, Idaho shared an update on the Facebook page of current water storage conditions in the Upper Snake River Reservoir System. Check out Figure 1 below which shows Palisades Reservoir is 86% full with Jackson Lake coming in at 76% full. These percentages are above normal levels and are actually better than this time last year! Also on Thursday, the NWS in Riverton, Wyoming posted a Wyoming snowpack status to their Facebook page (see Figure 2 below). In summary, southwestern and central portions of Wyoming are right where they should be, but northern and eastern portions of the state are lagging. Additionally, the Bighorn Mountains are a concern as many SNOTEL sites there are indicating near record low snow water equivalent (SWE) values for this time of year. If you want to see SNOTEL SWE data directly—you can use this link. In the meantime, come on more big snow for the Cowboy State before spring finally gets here!
Figure 1—courtesy of NWS Pocatello, Idaho. 
Figure 2—courtesy of NWS Riverton, Wyoming. Lastly—as a fan, I couldn’t help but share the news of a new documentary titled “399: Queen of the Tetons” (about Wyoming’s famed Grizzly 399) that debuted this week before a packed house at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana. After a run on the wildlife film festival circuit the documentary will likely be available on a streaming service later in the year. In the meantime you can watch a trailer of the film on YouTube by clicking the image below.
Click image above to see the documentary film trailer on YouTube. Thanks for reading! Have a good week cowboys and cowgirls!
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