tribune election edition 2014

ElEction GuidE

online Primary

2014

Vote August 19Governor............................................. Pages.2-9Secretary.of.State............................. Pages.10-13Superintendent................................. Pages.14-17House.Districts.25.&.50....................Pages.18-25Park.County.Commission................. Pages.26-36Park.County.Sheriff..........................Pages.37-39Park.County.Clerk........................... Pages.40-44

Powell tribune online Election Guide Thursday, August 14, 2014

GovernorProfile

BY TOM LAWRENCETribune Managing Editor

Hustle.That’s a word Pete Gosar repeats

over and over. It’s the key to a Demo-crat winning in heavily Republican Wyoming, Gosar said during a stop at the Park County Fair in Powell June 21.

More than three times as many voters in the state, 166,723, are registered Republicans, compared to 52,956 Democrats, as of July 1, according to the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office.

Gosar said he will hustle to make up for that.The Republican Party has a huge edge in

fundraising, and Gosar said he knows he will be outspent in this election. Gov. Matt Mead spent more than $2 mil-lion to win in 2010, $1.2 million out of his own pocket, while Gosar said he would like to raise and spend $500,000, while realizing that is a lofty goal.

His answer? Hustle.“I’m not very cynical abut Wyo-

ming people, Republican, Demo-crat, independent or anything else, I have an opportunity to get a per-son’s vote if I can engage them in what we share in common,” Gosar said. “And I think that’s quite a bit.

“It’d be great if I had a half a million,” he said. “I don’t believe money will be an issue, whatever it is. Money does not buy accessibil-ity.”

He said his plan is to “look them in the eye. You’ll get their vote honestly, and we plan on doing that.”

Gosar said he is “proud to be a Democrat. Mom and Dad told me, ‘Say who you are and people will accept you and take you at face value.

“I’m not cynical,” he said. “And I’m proud of that.”

This is the second time Gosar, 46, has sought the governor’s chair. He came in second in a five-candidate race in the 2010 Democratic primary; Leslie Petersen won the nomination but lost in a landslide to Mead.

This year, Gosar is the sole Democratic candidate. He was the state chairman but resigned that position when he announced his bid for the office. Gosar said when no one else came forward, he felt a strong desire to run.

“You know, I thought there were a lot of con-versations to be had,” he said of his decision to run. “There needed to be a conversation, and I was willing to do it.

“And I think there’s an opportunity to win,” Gosar said. “I sense a growing dissatisfaction with the continued politics of making decisions based on polls and election season. I think

people get tired of that.”Gov. Matt Mead, Superintendent of Public

Instruction Cindy Hill and Dr. Taylor Haynes are battling for the Republican primary, which will be held Aug. 19.

But Gosar is focusing on the general election on Nov. 4 and said he has no preference in the GOP race.

“Whoever wins would be, by definition, the strongest candidate in the Republican field,” he said. “I just focus on what we do and my team and what we do in the campaign.”

‘NOThiNg pOLL-TEsTEd ABOuT ME’Gosar said he plans to “hustle on social

media” and in people’s neighborhoods. He said what people see and hear is what he has

to offer.“There’s nothing poll-tested

about me,” Gosar said. “You’ll get the straight scoop from me in Jack-son or Gillette, Laramie or Rock Springs. You won’t hear the mes-sage adjusted for the crowd.”

Mead’s communications direc-tor, Rennie MacKay, responded to those comments via email.

“The statement is irresponsible,” MacKay said. “As communications director for Governor Mead I have attended many, many events with

Governor Mead and heard him speak on many, many issues and I have never heard him change positions on an issue. I also have never seen Pete Gosar at any of these events.”

Gosar has not spoken this year with former Gov. Dave Freudenthal, a Democrat who was elected in 2002 and 2006, but he said he’d like to follow in his footsteps.

“He hustled about a lot like we’re trying to do,” Gosar said. “That’s the ground that’s left to you as a Democrat.”

He said he admires the effort of Charlie Hardy, Democratic candidate for U.S. Sen-ate, who is running an uphill race against Sen. Mike Enzi.

“Very similar. You face the long odds in a statewide race with the money that the other side will be able to move against you,” Gosar said. “There’s a lot of disadvantages, but you just hustle, and I think that is what Charlie will do.”

He noted that Mead had spent more than $1 million of his own money in 2010 campaign and can dip into his wallet during this race, too.

“As a working guy, you can’t do that,” Gosar said.

He and his brother own an aviation business in Laramie, and Gosar also serves as pilot for the state. Mead has been his passenger sev-eral times, and the two men know each other, Gosar said.

But he said while they differ on many, if not most, issues, they get along well. However, the campaign appears to have struck a few nerves.

“Matt Mead and Pete Gosar first met when they were both candidates for governor in the 2010 primary election,” MacKay said. “While Pete did not move on from the primary elec-tion, the relationship continued. Governor Mead appointed Pete to the State Board of Education.

“We have been surprised by his negative comments,” he said. “We hope Pete will offer positive solutions and that the debate will fo-cus on the issues.”

Medicaid expansion has been one primary issue, and Gosar, who has “Medicaid Matters” and a red cross on his campaign business card, is trying to bring it into even sharper focus.

On July 21, Mead said he would work with the Department of Health and Human Ser-vices to launch a Medicaid expansion program in the state. Gosar quickly responded.

“This administration’s decision to start look-ing at the possibility of expanding Medicaid in Wyoming comes four years too late,” he said in a statement. “During this time, the Mead administration denied access to proper health care to approximately 18,000 hardworking Wyomingites. This could have cost lives.

“His reckless and irresponsible agenda not only affects the working class of our state, but it also affects our local hospitals with $200 mil-lion annually of uncompensated care.”

In Powell, Gosar doubled-down on that statement.

“I can’t really speak why the administra-tion is doing what it’s doing. I’ve been talking about the Democratic Party’s view and myself for more than a year now,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense to turn down hundreds of mil-lions of dollars to insure nearly 18,000 people.”

MacKay offered a rebuttal.“Pete Gosar’s statements appear to overlook

a legislative footnote providing for the pos-sibility of a Medicaid waiver under certain conditions,” he said.

“This footnote has bipartisan support and is intended only to get a conversation started about possible options for Wyoming citizens,” MacKay said. “Governor Mead is opposed to the Affordable Care Act. His concerns about Medicaid expansion remain, even as the intent of the footnote is fulfilled. The discussion will continue.”

Gosar serves on the Wyoming Board of Education — he was appointed by Mead — and supports the Next Generation Science Standards. He said most Wyoming residents, no matter their partisan beliefs, want the best possible education for kids.

Pete Gosar

PETE GOSAR

see gosar, page 3


GovernorProfile

Gosar: Says uphill climb does not intimidate him

Gosar said he is also opposed to reductions in hunter access programs and education, and he is concerned about the state’s high rate of injuries in deaths for workers. Employee safety must be considered even as economic development is encouraged.

LiBERAL sTANds ON issuEsHe also disagrees with Mead and legisla-

tive Republicans who took away much of Hill’s authority last year and battled against her reinstatement earlier this year.

“I don’t think stripping the office was the way to go,” Gosar said.

He said he agrees with the state Supreme Court decision to reinstate Hill with full au-thority, although he said there was another answer — impeachment.

“She should not have been tried in the court of public opinion,” he said. “I think there’s a lot that bothers the people of Wyoming with what happened with Senate File 104 and the stripping of duties from that office.”

He supports increasing pay for workers.

“It makes economic sense to raise the minimum wage,” Gosar said. “I was a person who made minimum wage. You’re working to get behind. Something that has to change.”

He said while some jobs may be lost, the state as a whole will benefit. In many ways, it’s a smaller government issue, Gosar said, as people will be able to afford health insur-ance and food at the store. They won’t need as much government assistance, he said.

Gosar said he supports making sure women earn as much as men for doing the same job.

“A woman make 63.8 cents on the dollar compared to me,” he said. “That’s intolerable in the Equality State.”

He also backs legalizing same-sex mar-riage.

“I support allowing all Wyoming families to marry,” Gosar said. “It’s covered by the Con-stitution. We have no second-class citizens in Wyoming. To me, it’s very straightforward. Wyoming is a live-and-let-live state.”

Gosar said he plans to return to Park County “a couple of times,” since it is a large population center for Wyoming. He said he

does not feel it’s unfriendly territory for a Democratic candidate.

“Plenty of Republican folks that want their kids to have a quality science education,” he said. “A lot favor Medicaid expansion.”

Gosar said he hears a message of gloom and doom from a lot of people. They tell him he’s on a fool’s errand, that he has no chance, but he doesn’t let that get him down.

“We have a lot to offer,” he said. “We’ll just hustle.”

The Pinedale native was a walk-on for the University of Wyoming football team who ended up starting the second half of his junior season and all of his senior year. He ended up being named a second-team all-conference outside linebacker.

“I’m a lifelong Poke fan,” Gosar said. “Running out on War Memorial Stadium was a thrill.”

He said he learned lessons then that still apply now.

“You hear those same refrains in the gov-ernor’s race,” Gosar said. “You know how to do this. You work hard and keep hustling. You just come out competing.”

Continued from Page 2


Dr. Taylor Haynes says he’s the true conservative voice — and choice — for Wyoming.

Haynes, 68, a Cheyenne rancher, business-man and retired doctor, is seeking the Repub-lican nomination for governor. He announced his candidacy earlier this month, and is making campaign appearances across the state. includ-ing several in the area.

Haynes will be at the Northwest College Student Union Lounge from 6-8:30 p.m. tonight (Tuesday). He held a fundraiser in Clark Sunday night and held a town hall meeting in Lovell on Monday.

“I am running to reform our state government in several areas, beginning with education,” Haynes said in an interview with the Powell Tribune. “I will also establish the proper working relationship with the federal government. I feel the governor could have a lot more suc-cess taking that approach.”

He will run against Gov. Matt Mead and Superintendent of Public Instruction Cindy Hill in the August Republican primary. Hill announced her inten-tion to run last year, while Mead made his plans clear after the legislative session.

It won’t be his first bid for the office; Haynes ran for governor as an independent in 2010 and received 7.3 percent of the vote as a write-in candidate, totaling 13,796 votes.

“For a write-in candidate, that 7 and a half percent is more than anyone has ever done,” he said. “And I did it in a three-month period. That’s a pretty good showing.”

Deciding to run for office for the first time in his life was caused by his perception that the nation and state were headed in the wrong direction, Haynes said.

“Seeing the God-given rights being eroded caused it,” he said. “We’re losing our rights to do many things. And we’re losing our rights to educate our children.”

Haynes said there is simply “too much in-terference” in people’s personal lives today, as well as too much regulation on businesses. Those are issues he has faced in the past, he said.

“I’ve dealt with the federal government, face-to-face, one-to-one, and I’ve had quite bit of suc-cess,” Haynes said.

He said he has done so by respecting authori-ty but by insisting they respect his rights. That’s an approach he would bring to the governor’s office, Haynes said.

He said he feels he can win both the nomina-tion and the general election.

“This is not a symbolic campaign,” Haynes said. “We’ve received tremendous encour-

agement and support during this exploratory phase. We’re certain that we can win by the grace of almighty God.”

The religious theme is something he re-turned to in the interview, saying he has been successful in business “by the grace of God.” Haynes said his diverse business career, from entry-level jobs to years as a medical doctor and then top positions in health care compa-nies, including one he owns, make him a quali-fied candidate.

“I will bring my senior executive leadership experience to the race and the office,” he said. “I operated a successful solo specialty surgical

practice. I am an organic grass-fed beef rancher and an entrepreneur in health care coverage and employee benefits.”

Haynes said he believes he has an “excellent chance” to take office in January 2015, and said he has been receiving a lot of positive feedback as he tours Wyoming.

“Fundraising’s going really well right now,” Haynes said, estimating he will need between $500,000 and $1 million to run a competitive race.

“We’re on pace to do that,” he said.

Haynes said he wants to engage in several debates with his opponents, and wants the can-didates to “come in cold,” without knowing the topics that will be discussed or with any ad-vance knowledge of the questions.

“When you’re sitting in office, do you really know what’s going to come in?” he said. “I think debates are critical for voters to make their opinion.”

Haynes said he has nothing personally against Mead or Hill, and thinks Hill has been a good superintendent of public instruction. But he said he is disappointed in Mead’s per-formance.

“Clearly I don’t think he’s done a good job. If I thought he did a good job, I would not be run-ning,” he said. “He should not be re-elected.”

‘LOOk AT MY BOdY Of WORk’Haynes said he is calling on voters to judge

the three candidates by their life experiences and accomplishments.

“Look at my body of work. That’s a body of work that voters should evaluate,” he said. “Ob-viously I think I can be the best candidate with my knowledge of and belief in the Constitution. I am saying compare what they are offering to what I am offering.”

Haynes said an issue he is focused on right now is Common Core Standards, a national pro-gram on language arts and math goals. Those standards are in place in Wyoming and several other states now, but he said he wants to see it repealed.

“Common Core will bring devastation to the

future of our youth to the state and the country as well,” Haynes said. “I will lead and facilitate the reform of education so teachers are free to teach and parents are kept involved and control is kept at the local level. Thus, I will abolish Common Core.

“I have plans for an expanded role for our community colleges and University of Wyo-ming Outreach,” he said.

Haynes opposed the passage of Senate File 104, which stripped Hill of most of her duties. He said he was not at all surprised when the state Supreme Court rejected the law in Janu-ary, declaring it unconstitutional.

Haynes said he strongly opposes the Envi-ronmental Protection Agency’s decision which would alter the boundaries of the Wind River Reservation.

“The recent decree by an unelected bureau-cracy, the Environmental Protection Agency, unilaterally and negatively affects millions of Wyoming acres and thousands of Wyoming res-idents,” he said. “This is simply the result of an improper and unprofessional working relation-ship with the federal agencies and in this case the Wind River Reservation. My business ex-perience bringing seemingly disparate people (companies) together to achieve a purpose will help a great deal in this area.”

Haynes said he feels Mead has done a poor job of working with the Washakie Tribe and he is “very disappointed” by that.

“He should have told them we want to engage in a thoughtful conversation and work together — we need each other — for a meaningful discussion,” Haynes said. “And that hasn’t hap-pened.”

He said other issues he will address during the campaign include health care, over-taxa-tion, over-regulation and dependable funding for our counties, cities and towns. He said he will be a proponent of individual liberties.

“I have concrete plans to address these and a system to account for and address the unforeseen,” he said. “The other candidates have not clearly articulated any issues to my knowledge.”

Although he lives in southeast Wyoming, Haynes has made several appearances in the northwest corner of the state. His campaign manager, Fi Brewer, and statewide coordina-tor, Shirley Tidwell, both live in Cody.

A divERsE LifE ANd CAREERHaynes was born in Shreveport, La., in 1948,

and grew up on a produce farm with his parents and four siblings.

He was raised a Democrat, but has been a Republican for most of his adult life, he said.

“The (Democratic) party’s changed,” Haynes said. “The party changed a great deal from when I grew up, when it had very strong Judeo-


GovernorProfileTaylor Haynes

TAYLOR HAYNES

see haynes, page 5


GovernorProfileHaynes: Candidate asks voters to examine his record

Christian values. Seems like myself and Ronald Reagan saw the same light; he was a Democrat, too, you know.”

He said he knew early on he wanted more for himself; he was determined to get a quality education.

“I paid for my education as a waiter, Team-ster (freight worker/truck driver) and steve-dore,” he said in an email.

Haynes earned a mechanical engineering degree from Southern University in 1969, and then took an engineering job with the Kennecott Copper Corporation Research Center in Salt Lake City Utah.

Still not satisfied, he enrolled in the Univer-sity of Utah School of Medicine and became a board-certified surgeon in adult and pediatric urology. Haynes said he had an “innate need or

desire to help people” and also wanted to be in control of his own destiny.

“I wanted to have more direct ability to help people,” he said.

Haynes and his family came to Wyoming 30 years ago, settling in Cheyenne, where he opened a practice. While the 2010 bid for gov-ernor was his race for elective office, he noted that he has been selected by his peers for lead-ership positions in the past.

He was elected vice chief of staff and chair-man of patient care at then-DePaul Hospital, which has now merged with United Medical Center. He was chosen as president of Lara-mie County Stock Growers, president of Pole Mountain Cattlemen, regional vice president of Wyoming Stock Growers, founding board member and president of Independent Cattle-men of Wyoming, and was a board member of R-CALF-USA thus the regional director for

Wyoming, Colorado and Utah.Haynes served two six-year terms as a mem-

ber of the University of Wyoming Board of Trustees, where he served as vice president of the board and chaired several committees, in-cluding the Fiscal and Legal Affairs Committee.

Haynes and his wife own and manage Mountain Benefits Management Company, a third-party administrator of health benefits with offices in Cheyenne and Worland. If that hasn’t been enough to keep him busy, Haynes raises organic grass-fed beef cattle through the Thunderbasin Land Livestock & Invest-ment Company, headquartered at his ranch in Albany County.

He married Barbara Brumfield in 1968 and the couple had four children: Kenya, Ayodele, Taylor III and Enioma. Barbara Haynes died in 1998. Haynes and his second wife, Elisabeth “Beth” Wasson, were wed in 2002.

Haynes: God pushed me to run for governorBY TOM LAWRENCETribune Managing Editor

Dr. Taylor Haynes really didn’t want to run for governor but God insisted, he said in Powell Tuesday night.

“The Lord won’t give me peace if I don’t do it,” Haynes said during a question-and-answer session on the Northwest College campus.

The rural Cheyenne rancher, businessman and retired doctor is running for the Republi-can nomination for governor, as are Gov. Matt Mead and State Superintendent of Public In-struction Cindy Hill.

Haynes, speaking to more than 50 people at the NWC DeWitt Student Center Lounge, said if he wins the nomination and the election, he can change the Wyoming GOP.

“When I’m governor ... it’s a new day in the Republican Party,” he said.

That “new day” would include some revolu-tionary ideas, as Haynes revealed during the two-hour presentation. He said the state has the power to nullify federal laws within its borders.

That’s an old argument that goes back to the 1790s and continued 30 years later when South Carolina expressed its right to “veto” federal laws. Other states have attempted to nullify fed-eral laws, including in the years leading up to the Civil War, and again in the 1950s and ’60s when Civil Rights issues came to the fore, but none have succeeded.

While it has been revived in recent years by tea party members and other conservatives who point to the 10th Amendment, courts have consistently ruled that states cannot decide which federal laws apply within their borders, citing the Supremacy Clause of the Constitu-tion, which states has been interpreted to mean

that only federal courts can decide which laws are constitutional.

But Haynes said he feels he has the right and duty to nullify federal laws and actions that he perceives as illegal.

“Nullification is, in fact, our job,” he said.The U.S. Constitution is clear on it, Haynes

said.“It means what it says,” he said. “It is very

simple language.”Haynes said he would prevent abortions in

the state, in part by mandating that pregnant women view an ultrasound of their fetus, which he said will stop 90 percent of the procedures and force abortion clinics out of business.

In addition, he said he would work to outlaw them entirely.

“I’m all for it, all for it,” he said.Wyoming is a wealthy state that needs to take

control of its assets, Haynes said. It could then decline federal funding, and by doing so, not be forced to follow federal mandates.

This would also bolster the state’s economy, providing more and better-paying jobs for people, he said. That’s why he does not have an expansion of government health care pro-grams, since people making good money in “the energy patch” could afford their own health-care coverage.

Haynes said with Wyoming asserting its au-thority, it could also take control of Yellowstone National Park and make it a state park.

National parks are “a scam,” he said, and an “over-reach” of the federal government. When the state was formed, the federal government lost all rights to designate part of it as a national park, Haynes said.

The Wyoming National Guard should be kept in the state, he said, unless Congress declares

war. Haynes said he also wants to provide proper care, including mental health treatment, for veterans who may be in need of it.

That goes for non-veterans as well, the re-tired suregon said. He said community-based facilities can offer more care for those who need assistance.

But he said he doesn’t think people who have struggled with mental health issues should be denied access to a gun.

“I understand the concern, but no, I would not have that as a disqualifier,” Haynes said.

He said he doesn’t believe in “background check nonsense” and said the government has no right to place any limits on gun ownership except for felons in prison or those who have yet to complete terms of their probation.

Otherwise, he said, if people want to own an F-16 fighter jet, “go ahead.” Haynes said people should own and know how to use guns and should carry them concealed, which will end crime.

People will not assault or attack others if they’re not sure if the person they are targeting is armed, he said. He said gun control means this to him:

“The people who have a gun should know how to control it,” Haynes said.

He wasn’t content merely to assail the fed-eral government and its agencies. Haynes also had harsh words for President Barack Obama, calling him “a puppet and an idiot.”

The far-right talk was well-received by the audience, as applause broke out several times and people nodded their heads as Haynes spoke. He said he was merely being honest, not mean.

“I’m not hard-hearted, but I’m not soft-head-ed, either,” Haynes said.



GovernorProfile


Cindy Hill say she’s a fighter.Hill, Wyoming’s superintendent of

public instruction and one of three Re-publican candidates for governor in the Aug. 19 primary, said she tells people what she thinks and never plans to change.

“I never pander,” she said during the Big Horn Basin TEA Party picnic in rural Emblem Aug. 2. “And I don’t let this get me down. I am an optimist.”

Hill’s approach has led to some success — she was elected to lead the Depart-ment of Education in 2010 — and some controversy. Several Republi-can legislators and Gov. Matt Mead worked to strip her office of much of its authority during the 2013 session through bills that were crafted by the Legislative Select Committee on Statewide Education Account-ability, passed by both houses of the Legislature and signed into law by Mead.

Hill allegedly intimidated staff-ers, sought to mandate their support and misused department funds. She denied the charges and said she would regain all her duties.

Hill announced at the height of the battle over her duties that she would run against Mead in 2014, then waged a long legal battle. In the end, she was restored to office earlier this year after the state Supreme Court sided with her.

Hill said Senate File 104, which stripped her office of much of its power, passed too quickly and was clearly unconstitutional. The long wrangle over it cost $1.3 million, including hiring a director of education who reported to Mead.

She predicted many legislators who voted for SF 104 will be defeated because Wyoming resi-dents resented the action.

“It was a power grab,” Hill said.The governor has said it was the right deci-

sion because employees were concerned and the goal was to improve education. Mead said he feels he and the legislators acted in good faith, but the Supreme Court ruled it unconsti-

tutional and he accepts that.Hill said she feels Wyoming residents should

be pleased she fought for her office.“You got your vote back,” she said. “You’re

welcome.”Hill was born in 1962 and raised in Newcas-

tle, Rawlins and Wheatland, graduating from Wheatland High School.

After earning her undergraduate degree from the University of Wyoming, she attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Mich., where she received a master’s degree in educa-tional policy and administration.

While she is the head of public education in the state, Hill also has worked in the trenches.

She worked in juvenile treatment facilities for 15 years before taking a job as a principal at Cheyenne’s Carey Junior High School.

After 20 years in education, she decided to run for office and de-feated incumbent Superintendent Jim McBride in the primary before rolling past Democrat Mike Massie in the general election.

Politics was not new to her, how-ever — her husband Drake Hill, an

attorney, is a former chairman of the Wyoming GOP and has often been at her side while she campaigns. They have one son.

Hill has been a favorite of the Tea Party movement and received warm welcomes at Tea Party events across the state, including the Big Horn TEA Party picnics in 2013 and this year.

One reason for her support there has been her steadfast opposition to Common Core. Hill said it’s not needed in Wyoming and has repeat-edly criticized it. That’s a stance conservatives have cheered.

“They should be Wyoming standards, no matter what they are,” she said during the PBS debate Monday night. “And they should reflect our values.”

Instruction is more important than setting standards, Hill said. She focused on that during her first two years in office and education im-proved statewide while she reduced her depart-ment’s spending by $1 million.

Hill said she wants to use her skills as an edu-cator to help legislators understand the budget and wants more time spent on it. In addition,

she wants the public to get more involved, in-cluding placing information online and making it available to citizens.

“Right now, only a few understand it,” she said.

Her dealings with the media have been less than cordial. Hill has often criticized Wyoming journalists and has refused to speak to the state’s biggest paper, the Casper Star-Tribune, for several months. She also declined to appear at a debate the newspaper co-sponsored this summer.

Hill said she wants to investigate what she claims are payments the state is making to the Casper Star-Tribune. The paper receives money from the state that she feels may be tied to what she feels has been unfair coverage of her tenure in office and her campaign.

“And I’d like to know why,” Hill said. “It’s all speculation on my part.”

Casper Star-Tribune Publisher Nathan Bekke dismissed Hill’s allegations.

“Like many other media outlets in Wyoming, including the Powell Tribune, we receive pay-ments for advertising and subscription services from the state of Wyoming,” Bekke said. “Any speculation on the part of superintendent Hill that would suggest anything inappropriate is absolutely preposterous.”

Hill also had sharp words for Dr. Taylor Haynes, the third candidate in the GOP guber-natorial contest.

He jumped into the race late, she said, and is not a serious contender. Hill said she feels she has a real chance of taking the nomination from Mead.

Hill has campaigned with Sheryl Lain, who works in her office and is seeking the Republi-can nomination for the job Hill now holds.

“I hope she wins,” Hill said.Hill said she hasn’t done any polling and

doesn’t know where she stands, nor is she wor-ried about raising enough money during the campaign, saying that is not something she focuses on.

“I look to the people — that’s who I respect,” she said.

While she is seen as a Tea Party favorite and a conservative candidate, Hill said she seeks support from across the board.

“I hope I get votes from everybody,” she said. “I hope the people vote for Cindy Hill.”

Cindy Hill

CINDY HILL


GovernorProfileCindy Hill eager to return to Ed Department


Cindy Hill said she is eager to return to work as the director of the Wyoming Department of Education.

Hill, the elected superintendent of public instruction, was stripped of much of her authority by the Legislature and Gov. Matt Mead a year ago.

But she may soon be back in charge of the department.

On Jan. 28, the Wyoming Supreme Court ruled the law that took away much of her au-thority was unconstitutional. No timeline for her return to full power has been set.

Hill, in a call to the Powell Tribune Tues-day, said she is waiting for the process to be completed. Mead has asked Attorney General Peter Michael to seek a new hearing before the court, and Hill said she will wait for a de-cision from the court on when she can resume her duties.

“I hope it is soon,” she said.Hill, while noting that she is not a lawyer,

said she isn’t sure the state will have much luck getting another hearing on the case be-fore the state Supreme Court. Such a measure is “rarely requested,” she said, and “highly unusual.”

Hill said she feels the court’s decision was “good for the Constitution and good for the people of Wyoming” and affirms the rule of law and the people’s vote.

Hill said she wants to return to work. She said Richard Crandall, the former Arizona

legislator who was brought in last summer to manage the department, needs to go, and should never have been given the job in the first place.

“Hiring him was unconstitutional,” Hill said. “It’d be like Arizona hiring (state Sen.) Hank Coe to lead their education depart-ment.”

Coe, a Cody Republican, has been an out-spoken critic of Hill. He told the Tribune Monday he does not regret his vote to remove much of her power from her. Hill said she feels Coe has made several false statements.

“Mr. Coe has said a lot of things that aren’t true,” she said.

Coe was unavailable for comment Wednes-day.

But Hill said she has no bad feelings for anyone and wants to work with people who have been opposed to her in the past. She said if she regains control of the Education Department, staffers need not worry about firings or repercussions.

“Of course not. Of course not. I have worked with everyone,” Hill said. “Anyone who is willing to work with me, I am willing to work with anyone.”

She said during the two years she was in charge of the department, only probationary employees who weren’t “the best fit” for their jobs didn’t retain their jobs. Hill said she has heard a report that some department employ-ees were in tears when the court decision was announced.

“I understand that Mary Kay Hill (Mead’s deputy policy director and no relation to Cin-

dy Hill) went over and started crying in front of the staff and some started to join her,” Hill said. “I wasn’t there, but I imagine that could have happened.”

Renny MacKay, Mead’s press secretary, said such a meeting did happen, with Mary Kay Hill and Kari Gray, the governor’s chief of staff, going to the department’s offices.

“The Governor’s Office was there to pro-vide answers and information,” MacKay said in an email response to a Tribune question. “Emotions were running high, but according to Chief of Staff Kari Gray the conversation was fact based and informative.”

Although she has taken differing public stances on issues, including Common Core Standards, from Crandall, Hill said she isn’t ready to have the department make a dra-matic change of course if she returns to full power.

“We have no information on what has taken place,” she said.

Education Department staffers were told not to speak with her or inform her on what was happening, so she said she would have to catch up on department business if she returns to work.

Hill said she is spending evenings and weekends running for governor. She is op-posing Mead in the August primary, and said even with the court ruling, she is not inter-ested in a second term as superintendent of public instruction.

“I’m running for governor,” Hill said. “And if you knew what I knew, you would run for governor, too.”


GovernorProfile


CODY — Gov. Matt Mead was man enough to wear pink Friday.

The governor, who is seeking a second term but first must get past a pair of challenges in the Aug. 19 Republican primary, donned a pink shirt to go along with blue jeans and a cow-boy hat as he toured the state. He made a pair of stops in Cody after starting the day in Cheyenne and then going to Sheridan, where he learned it was “Tough Enough To Wear Pink” day at the Sheridan WYO Rodeo.

“I didn’t have a pink one so I had to get a dif-ferent shirt,” he said.

His hectic schedule continued on Saturday, after headed home to Cheyenne. He went to Laramie, Wright and Gillette.

Mead, 52, is making appearances as the governor, touring theCody Senior Center and Cody Laborato-ries when he was in the Park County seat. But he’s also on the campaign trail, meeting and greeting folks, shaking hands and offering inter-views to media outlets.

After all, it is campaign season. Things are going well, he said, and donations are coming in on a “pretty steady” basis.

“Some days $5,000, some days $40,000,” Mead said. “Carol and I will spend some of our own money. We’ll be putting in some, not a lot.”

During the 2010 campaign, Mead invested more than $1 million of his own money during the race. He said he feels it’s important to spend his own money when he asking others to sup-port him financially.

Mead said his campaign is just starting to conduct polling. In May, he told the Tribune a friend had told him a survey showed him with support from 80 percent of Republican voters. Mead said he doesn’t have a figure now, but feels he is doing very well.

“We think so,” he said. “Not being a political junkie myself, I don’t take anything for granted. I think every vote has to be earned.”

Mead said his approach is to tell voters, “Here’s what I’ve done and here’s what I am go-ing to do,” and allow them to compare that with his opponents.

That strategy worked in 2010, with Mead winning a hotly contested four-way GOP primary and then crushing Democrat Leslie Petersen 66-23 percent in the general election, with Haynes, running a write-in campaign, get-ting 7 percent of the vote and Libertarian Mike Wheeler garnering almost 3 percent.

Haynes appears to have a lot of support in traditionally conservative Park County, but Mead said he was not ill-at-ease in Cody.

“We always get a pleasant reception here,” he said.

Mead said when he talks with tea party mem-bers and supporters, he emphasizes his own conservative views and policies.

Wyoming has the lowest taxes in the USA, and Mead said he has made state government smaller, “trimmed the sales on the budget” and added hundreds of millions in savings.

fuEL TAx ‘WORkEd gREAT’Mead has had an active term as governor

and he touched on some decisions he has made, issues he has supported and political battles he has waged since taking office 2011.

He supported a 10-cent increase in the fuel tax, with the money set aside for highway and

road repairs and maintenance.“I think it’s worked great,” Mead

said. “It’s raised about 70 million bucks with a portion to local govern-ment, which is a priority with me.”

More than half the fuel tax dollars are paid by people from out of state, he said, which is a reason the Wyo-ming Taxpayers Association and truckers supported it.

Mead said he supports the Wyo-ming Supreme Court’s decision last month that some internal docu-ments, used to shape policies, can be

withheld from the public.“It’s similar to what the federal government

does,” he said.Mead said it’s “healthy” to allow advisors and

staff members to sent memos and notes with ideas and proposals, even if they are deemed off-base and in some cases almost absurd.

“I don’t want to be surrounded by ‘Yes Men,’” he said. “I want to be surrounded by a lot of skeptical people not afraid to say, ‘Here’s what we ought to do.’ I want an opportunity for a free exchange of ideas.”

If everything is made public, people will be afraid to write or send emails because they may be mocked or humiliated down the road, Mead said. He was Wyoming’s U.S. attorney from 2001-07.

Mead said he rejects accusations that he not supporting people who are profoundly disabled.

He said he asked for $12 million for helping that segment of population in 2013 and “made another run at it in 2014.” Some people in need of assistance were on waiting lists for up to six years; he favors a maximum of 18 months.

“I want to lessen that waiting list and put money toward it,” Mead said. “We’re going to provide services to people.”

The system is being redesigned, he said, and newly enrolled people may not be offered all the services that others were, since studies have shown many were offered assistance they did not need or want. The newcomers’ “actual needs” will be determined and “appropriate levels of funding” will be determined, the gov-ernor said.

“Some will get more, some will get less that they do not need. It will be about a 7 percent change up and down,” he said. “But I want people to remember, I was the one asking for more money and I was the one rejected by the Legislature.”

‘MARRiEd TO highER sTANdARds’Mead said he has publicly support Common

Core education standards and is not changing his stance now.

“We need higher standards,” he said. “I’m not married to Common Core, but I am married to high standards.”

Mead said he would support a program that set equal or greater standards. Common Core was created and developed by states, not the federal government, he said.

The Legislature has blocked funding for Next Generation Science Standards and the State Board of Education has halted a review of state standards that it does every five years until the Legislature changes its mind. Mead said he wants to get parents, teachers and community members involved and informed.

“I feel the same about them. They have to be high standards,” he said. “Republican or Demo-crat, hey, education is fundamental. We have to have well-educated citizenry.”

Accusations that he is setting up refugee camps for Somali immigrants, and is bringing them to Wyoming to fill job openings raise his hackles. It was the only time in a 30-minute in-terview that his calm demeanor changed.

“It does bother me. This program started post-World War II for people from European nations,” he said.

Refugees are fleeing murder, rape and other forms of violence and merely want to “find sanctuary,” Mead said. Many of them are spon-sored by church groups.

He said allegations that he was setting up camps “is just completely false.” Mead said if 1,000 Somalis suddenly arrived in Wyoming, they would be noticed.

He said in 2013 he asked federal government what a system would look like, since Wyoming is only state without such a program. Somalis and people from other lands are already enter-ing the state but Wyoming had no idea how to track their needs and issues.

“We’re not sure where we’re going to go,” Mead said. “I don’t think it’s appropriate to bury your head in the sand. It’s wrong to say, ‘These people are always bad, or these people are always good.’”

Mead said he is watching the GOP secretary of state contest but will not endorse one of the four candidates. He did, however, offer mini-descriptions of the candidates.

He said there are “two very experienced legislators, a sharp attorney from Rock Springs and a successful businessman from Cheyenne. It’s going to be an interesting race.”

Matt Mead

MATT MEAD


GovernorProfile


CODY — Gov. Matt Mead said he is likely in the midst of his last campaign.

“I’ve never saw this as a career,” Mead said in Cody Friday. “Get in, make the best decisions you can, make the hard deci-sions, and get out. I don’t view politics as a long-term career.”

Superintendent of Public Instruction Cindy Hill and Dr. Taylor Haynes are opposing him in the Aug. 19 GOP primary. Both are run-ning to the right of Mead.

“I think it’s obvious you would prefer run-ning unopposed in a primary,” he said during

an interview with the Powell Tribune at the Cody Senior Center. “It does happen in Wyo-ming. It’s not necessarily unhealthy as the system goes.”

Mead said with Wyoming being a “su-permajority” state, GOP contests allow voters to decide who best represents their party.

“Overall it’s probably healthy for the citi-zens to hear different points of view,” he said.

They can then decide who has the correct vision to “lead the state the next four years,” Mead said.

The governor said he will officially be in campaign mode during the first week of Au-gust. He said he and his family will “jump in pickup and hit all the counties” to let people

know he wants their vote.“That’s going to be my campaign week,”

Mead said. “We’re going to make a whirlwind trip.”

Mead ran for the Senate in a special elec-tion in 2007 but now said he has no desire to work in Washington, D.C., in part because of the exhaustive travel schedules he sees fed-eral lawmakers keep.

He said he plans to “go back to ranching” if he wins and serves one more term in office. But that’s for another day. The summer and fall of 2014 will be spent, in part at least, run-ning for a second term.

For more on Mead’s thoughts on his years as governor, see Page 7.

Mead says this will be his last campaign

Secretary of State


Ed Buchanan ProfileBY iLENE OLsONTribune News Editor

Citing experience that includes 10 years in the Wyoming Legislature, work to promote economic development, com-

munity involvement, military service and rural Wyoming roots, Ed Buchanan is cam-paigning to become Wyoming’s next secre-tary of state.

According to his online biography, Buchan-an, a Republican, grew up farming in Goshen County and graduated from the University of Wyoming with a bachelor’s degree in political sci-ence. He received a commission as an officer in the U.S. Air Force, where he served as an intelligence advisor to senior-level officers in the Department of Defense.

While stationed in Colorado, he received his master’s degree in public administration from the University of Colorado.

Upon his return to civilian life, Buchanan attended law school at the University of Wyoming, graduating in 1998. After working with another law firm, Buchanan opened his own business in 2002.

He was elected to the Legislature in 2002 and served as majority whip and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee from 2006-08, majority floor leader from 2008-2010, and was the speaker of the Wyoming House of Representatives from 2010-12. He left the Legislature in 2012.

“I stepped down voluntarily,” he told the audience at a July 7 candidate forum in Cody. “I never expected two years ago to be here today, but I saw an opportunity to serve when (Secretary of State) Max Maxfield decided to retire.”

Buchanan is running on a platform of five promises. If elected, he said, he will:

• Be responsive and responsible commit-ment to local communities through the State Loan and Investment Board.

• Promote technology to better serve citi-zen and business requests.

• Be proactive in the prevention of voter fraud to maintain the integrity of elections.

• Provide consumer protection against fraud.

• Be an ambassador for Wyoming citizens for the promotion of our great state as the ideal place to live and work.

Buchanan said elections in Wyoming are well-handled and he doesn’t see a need to change much.

While some call for simplifying the voter registation process, “I don’t believe a simplified process of voter registration would reduce voter fraud. It’s already simple enough,” Buchanan said. “You need an ID to register; you don’t need an ID to vote.”

However, Buchanan said he does see the possibility for voter fraud in the process for absentee

registration. “It’s a bit tricky,” he said. “You have to

prove who you are at the same time.”That is accomplished through a notary pub-

lic who verifies the identity of a person regis-tering to vote. But Buchanan said he has seen some problems with the way some notaries are performing their duties.

“One notary signed her boss’ signature, then notarized it,” and saw nothing wrong with that, he said. “That tells me ... they need more training.

“I think we need to be proactive” to prevent voter fraud, he said. “While we haven’t seen any examples of voter fraud in Wyoming yet, we have seen examples east of the Missis-sippi. ... If we’re not proactive against election fraud, and we can’t maintain the integrity of

our elections, then really, nothing else in our democracy, our republic, matters.”

The Wyoming Secretary of State’s Business Division oversees registration of corporations in the state, registration of trademarks and other business functions. Buchanan said if he is elected, he will work to “get unnecessary regulations out of the way to promote busi-nesses.”

“Wyoming is joining the ranks of states like Delaware as hot places for the development of corporations,” he said. Reasons for that include availability of types of business struc-tures, such as limited liability companies, which Wyoming pioneered several years ago. That is appealing for businesses, as is the fact that there is no corporate income tax, he said.

Buchanan said he would use technological advances to make it easier to file business forms. For instance, making effective finance statements available online “would greatly help industries such banking and agricul-ture,” he said.

The secretary of state also plays an im-portant role in utilizing the Legislature’s Business Ready Communities Act, which promotes economic development by building infrastructure, he said.

Buchanan said he is a fiscal conservative and has a proven record on social issues.

“I sponsored a proposal for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman,” he said.

His online biography states Buchanan is and has been involved with many commu-nity organizations including Rotary, Gos-hen County Economic Development, Goshen County Republicans, Goshen County Two-Shot, Wyoming PBS and Goshen Community Theatre. His favorite charities are St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, Shriner’s Hospital and March of Dimes. He also is a volunteer pilot for Pilots ’n Paws to help orphaned pets find new homes.

ED BUCHANAN


Ed Murray decided the time, and the job, was right for his entry into politics.

Murray, a successful Cheyenne real estate developer, investor and businessman, is one of four Republican candidates for Wyo-ming secretary of state. He was in Powell re-cently to speak to the Powell Valley Chamber of Commerce and also stopped by the Tribune to discuss his campaign.

Murray, 55, said before he en-tered the race he consulted with his family, friends and business associates.

“And in the end, a lot of prayer,” he said.

Murray is one of five candidates for the office, four Republicans and one from the Constitution Party. Max Maxfield, a Republican, is not seeking a third term.

The other Republican candidates are former legislators Pete Illoway of Cheyenne and Ed Buchanan of Torrington and Rock Springs Councilman Clark Stith, an attorney and city council member. Jennifer Young of Goshen County, the chair of the Con-stitution Party, is also running for the office.

Murray said he distinguishes himself from them because he is not a career politician and is well aware of the regulatory burden govern-ment can place on businesses. He said he has the “passion, vision and message” to be an ef-fective secretary of state.

“I’m the only candidate who has extensive business experience owning and operating a business from the ground up, resulting in the creation of numerous jobs and their impact on a community, things like new schools, home, apartments. businesses, Boys and Girls Clubs and all the related infrastructure to support those,” Murray said.

He is a fourth-generation Wyoming resident with deep roots in Laramie County.

Murray graduated from Central High School in 1976 and went on to receive a degree in business administration with dual majors in finance and real estate. Following his college graduation, he earned a law degree at the Uni-versity of Wyoming College of Law.

He was offered a chance to stay with the family business, Ed Murray and Sons, but his dad said, in “a come to Jesus meeting,” that he might want to consider striking out on his own.

Murray said he and his wife had an infant daughter and another child on the way when

he started his own development business. He drove a used pickup to job sites and rolled up his sleeves to pitch in and help.

“I had always had an interest in building things,” Murray said.

That business has succeeded to a great de-gree. It’s also made Murray a bit of a target, as Buchanan and Illoway have said they fear Murray will use his deep pockets to attempt to buy the office, a charge that Murray emphati-cally denies.

“I don’t think personal wealth should be an issue in the race,” he said, pointing to his stance on the issues as more important to voters.

“I think it’s an insult to Wyoming voters ... to suggest their votes can be bought,” Murray said.

pRO-BusiNEss CANdidATEMurray, in his campaign plat-

form, vows to offer transparency in the office while boosting jobs and the state’s economy through business-friendly practices and by

fighting fraud and scams, which he said after a continuing problem in Wyoming.

He pledged to be “a wise steward of our public lands” while protecting private proper-ty rights. Murray said efforts to turn national forest lands and other federally owned prop-erty over to the state is a “huge deal” and one he will explore if elected to the office.

“It’s a monumental issue now,” he said.He said will seek to make “wise decisions on

the boards and commissions through the lens of constitutionality and transparency.”

The secretary of state is one of five elected officials who serve on the State Loan and In-vestments Board, the Board of Land Commis-sioners and the State Buildings Commission.

The secretary of state also handles elections, and Murray said he will count on the experi-enced staffers in the office and the 23 county clerks, who are in charge of the contests

“They are the real heroes,” he said.Murray said in addition to ensuring elec-

tions are safe, he will work to promote increased voter turnout. He said that is an important part of the job and an area that can be improved upon.

Murray and his wife Caren have raised four daughters in Cheyenne: Meghan, 27, Erin, 25, Kelley, 22, and Frannie, 19. The Murray fam-ily has been a lifelong member of St. Mary’s Parish.

Ed Murray has served as a consultant and on the board of directors for numerous or-

ganizations, including the Laramie County Community College Foundation (where he served as president) and the Cheyenne-Laramie County Corporation for Economic Development (where he was instrumental in assembling the property for the North Range Business Park where companies like Sam’s Distribution Center and Microsoft Data Cen-ter are now situated).

The Murrays are “strong advocates of edu-cation,” he said, and donated land for school sites and funding for scholarships and endow-ments for LCCC cultural series.

Doug and Susan Samuelson of Laramie County and Father Carl Beavers of Sheridan County are heading Murray’s leadership team as honorary campaign chairs. Father Beavers, a Powell native, has been a priest and com-munity servant in Wyoming for more than 40 years.

“Ed will bring a fresh outlook into state gov-ernment with his passion for Wyoming and his energetic outlook,” Doug Samuelson said. “I am proud to endorse Ed Murray and have con-fidence that he will keep moving our state for-ward in the positive and conservative manner that we all expect from our elected officials.”

“Ed Murray is one whose roots are extreme-ly deep in Wyoming through families who have been here for generations,” Beavers said. “With this legacy, coupled with impressive qualifications and a deep love for our state, he joins those who are impelled to give back what they themselves have first received. As a businessman himself, he is keenly aware of the things necessary to have a strong economic climate.”

Bill and Debbie Simpson and Colin and Deb Simpson are the Park County chairs for the Murray campaign.

“This is about getting the entire state in-volved in my campaign,” Murray said of his leadership team. “I have focused on building a team of community stakeholders, business owners, and civic-minded citizens who togeth-er represent the fabric of Wyoming.”

Murray said his candidacy is in the spirit of the Founding Fathers, who said people should step forward to serve. He said he is interested in the position because it’s a good match for his abilities and does not consider it a possible stepping stone for higher office.

“That is the office that best suits my talents and skills,” he said. “I’m focused totally on the office of secretary of state.”

To learn more, go to edmurrayforwyoming.com or www.facebook.com/EdMurrayforWyo-ming.


Ed Murray

Secretary of StateProfile

ED MURRAY

BY iLENE OLsONTribune News Editor

Pete Illoway, a Republican from Chey-enne, threw his hat into the ring for Wyoming secretary of state after Max

Maxfield decided not to run for another term.

“I would never have run against Max,” whom he feels has done a good job, Illoway said during an interview Friday at the Tribune.

But Maxfield’s retirement prompted Illoway to consider running for the office.

“I thought long and hard about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life,” he said.

After forming a committee and doing some exploratory work, he made his decision: “Go for it.”

Illoway, 73, said he is the most experi-enced of the five candidates — four Repub-licans and one from the Constitution Party — running for secretary of state.

“If people believe that experience matters for the secretary of state, then I’m the guy.”

Illoway served in the Wyoming House of Representatives for 14 years, from 1998-2012, when he decided not to run again. For eight of those years, he was chairman of the House Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee.

Illoway’s biography states, “One of his hallmark accomplishments was guiding the Corporations Committee through the redistricting process. Always a contro-versial process that must occur every 10 years after the census count, Pete’s steady hand and calm demeanor as chairman deftly guided dialogue and the redistricting discussion to a successful and agreeable outcome.”

During his service with the Corporations Committee, Illoway learned much about the workings of the Secretary of State’s office, which reports to the committee.

The secretary of state oversees elections in the state, as well as registering corpora-tions, stockbrokers and notaries public, among other duties.

The Secretary of State’s Office is really a

business office,” Illoway said. It has 31 em-ployees a $7 million biennial budget. The office brings in fees totaling about $38 mil-lion each biennium, he said, and hundreds of thousands of business and election docu-ments are housed there.

“It’s a busy office,” he said. “Anybody that does business in Wyoming has to be registered in the state.”

Illoway has a broad variety of experience in addition to his time in the Legislature.

He received his degree from Colorado State University in farm and ranch management economics in 1963 and began his career in Wyoming working for the USDA Statistician’s Office in Cheyenne. He later worked as state agronomist for the Wyoming Department of Agriculture, fol-

lowed by work in a variety of positions with Wycon Chemical Company/Coastal Chem Inc. until his retirement in 1997.

Illoway served as vice president of Chey-enne LEADS, the economic development agency in Laramie County, from 2002-06. He is a board member for the Wyoming Business Council and serves as board member for the Wyoming Taxpayers As-sociation. He is a board member for the Cheyenne Airport Board, and serves as public member of the Advisory Task Force on Capitol Restoration and Rehabilitation. He also serves on the Board of Advisors to First Interstate Bank of Cheyenne and the American Heritage Center.

Illoway is a longtime supporter of the armed forces and FE Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, serving on the Military Affairs Committee of the Cheyenne Cham-ber of Commerce. He is a member of the Cheyenne Frontier Days Public Relations Committee and the Heels of Cheyenne Frontier Days, and he is a Benefactor Mem-ber of the National Rifle Association.

Pete and his wife Chloe have five chil-dren and six grandchildren.

Illoway said he believes the Secretary of State’s Office has run well under Maxfield and his predecessor, Joe Meyer. But he sees a need to increase availability of forms and documents online.

People can file for limited liability corpo-rations online, but Illoway said people have approached him with requests for making it possible to file other forms online as well.

“I think we could continue to make it eas-ier to fill out forms, then file them online,” he said. “It’s going to cost some money, but on the other hand, I think we need to move forward with technology.”

Illoway said the Wyoming Legislature last year told the Secretary of State’s Office to begin work to post online all the rules and regulations for all state agencies “so people can do a search online, so, for example, if you search for water, it would show what agencies have to do with water, what the process is, etc. That’s quite a job.”

In addition his or her other duties, the secretary of state serves — along with the other four statewide elected officials — on the State Loan and Investments Board, the Board of Land Commissioners and the State Buildings Commission.

“The State Loan and Investment Board has distributed, and continues to distribute, millions of dollars all over the state” to mu-nicipalities and public entities for projects such as water and sewer lines, senior citi-zens buildings, fire trucks and search and rescue facilites, Illoway said.

Millions of those dollars have paid for projects in Powell, Cody and Park County, he said.

The Board of Land Commissioners has control over 3.5 million acres of state-owned land, most of which is used for graz-ing, and 3.4 million acres mineral estate. The State Building Commission oversees all state-owned buildings, Illoway said.

The secretary of state also serves acting governor while the governor is out of the state. While some see the office as a jump-ing-off spot for people with aspirations for the Governor’s Office, Illoway said he has no plans to run for governor.

If elected, Illoway said, he would work closely with county clerks, and he wants to make civic presentations about the impor-tance of voting to students in high schools and colleges around the state.

“Young people think their vote doesn’t count,” he said. “I know (they do), because I won my first primary by 23 votes.”

Secretary of State


Pete Illoway Profile

PETE ILLOWAY


Republican Clark Stith of Rock Springs is running for Wyoming secretary of state with a campaign focused on re-

ducing the size of state government.Wyoming is No. 1 in the nation for the per-

centage of government workers in the state’s workforce, he told the audience at a candi-date forum in Cody on July 7.

“One out of 4 means three people have to go to work every day to pay the fourth government worker’s salary. It chips away at individual liberty and the moral fabric of the government,” he said. “You deserve state govern-ment that is smaller and cleaner.

“Even when you take out schools, Wyoming is still No. 1. Wyoming has 450 state and lo-cal government employees per 10,000 people. Alaska, with 392, is No. 2.”

Stith said he thought the Secretary of State’s Office might be an exception until he found that the number of employees in the department increased from 26 in 2002 to 31 now.

“The staff has increased by 5, or 19 per-cent,” he said.

That would change under his leadership, he said. On his web page, www.clarkstith.com, Stith said he is a “budget hawk” on the Rock Springs City Council.

“If you want smaller government, I be-lieve I’m your candidate,” he said.

Stith said he views serving as chief elec-tions officer as the most most important function of the secretary of state. He said two of his opponents — Ed Murray and Ed Buchanan — failed to vote during the 2012 primary election, yet they are running for the office that oversees elections.

On his web page, Stith said he opposes making it easier to form minor political par-ties.

“Current law already provides a process that works,” he said. “The 2012 Wyoming general election ballot for U.S. House of Repre-sentatives offered voters choices from five separate political parties (Republican, Democrat, Liber-tarian, Constitution and Country parties). Wyoming elections are robust, clean and independent. Let’s keep it that way.”

The secretary of state also oversees corporations. He said he plans to provide excellent custom-

er service to legitimate Wyoming companies by creating an optional same-day, online “Express Lane” for the formation of legiti-mate Wyoming companies.

But he said three fourths of companies registered in Wyoming don’t have any actual ties to Wyoming.

“Their owners do not live here, they don’t own land, they don’t buy or sell here,” he said. “The core reason: Wyoming grants a very high degree of anonymity that provides fertile ground for bad (people) to do bad things all around the world.”

That must change, he said.

On his web page, he states, “Business friendly is not fraud friendly. When to comes to out of state operators who have no real ties to Wyoming, my approach will be different. For example, I will not allow Colorado mari-juana dealers to use Wyoming corporations to launder their drug money. We will not sell Wyoming’s good name for a $100 filing fee.”

If elected, Stith said he would put people in the state first, the Legislature second, and the federal government last.

“The federal government has acted in a very heavy-handed way to encroach on the rights of the people of Wyoming,” he said.

He cited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ruling that Riverton is part of the Wind River Reservation, calling it “an out-rage.”

The secretary of state also serves with the other four statewide elected officials on the Board of Land Commissioners, the State Loan and Investment Board and the State Capital Facilities Commission.

As a member of the Board of Land Com-missioners, “I will work to preserve multiple use of Wyoming’s state lands,” he said on his web page. “I will also stang against environ-mental extremism. Radical environmental-ists believe that rocks and trees and sage chickens are as important as people. My message to them: sage chicken tastes great!”

Stith, who was born and raised in Atchi-son, Kansas, has degrees in electrical engi-neering, philosophy and law. He practices business law in Rock Springs, where he and his wife, Liisa, have lived since 1997. They now live in separate households. They have two children, Kirsi, 18, and Steven, 16.


Clark Stith

Secretary of StateProfile

CLARK STITH

BY TEssA sChWEigERTTribune Features Editor

A former teacher with experience in state government hopes to bring focus and local control to the Wyoming Depart-

ment of Education. Jillian Balow, one of three Republican candidates for superintendent of public instruction, said the office has turned too political in recent years.

When she first started consider-ing running for superintendent, Balow said she read something that resonated with her: You’re ready to run for office when you have a fire in your belly and bile in your throat.

“I am so disappointed with the way that education is moving in Wyoming from the state level — that’s the bile,” Balow said. “We’re overtaken by the politics in educa-tion, we’re not focused on the right things — when we open up the pa-per and three days a week it’s about politics in education and not what our local school districts are doing, that’s a problem.

“The fire in my belly is that I know we can do better,” she said.

Balow said the department should be the support structure for the local school districts and that the superintendent has a unique role as a collaborator and coordinator between local communities, districts, the state depart-ment, the Legislature and other partners.

“One thing I’ve really seen is that the office has kind of become an adversary in one way or another,” Balow said. “I think just the op-posite — the superintendent ought to be the advocate.”

A fifth-generation Wyomingite, Balow taught for 10 years in Wyoming classrooms and has always had an interest in govern-ment, she said.

Balow, 43, has worked eight years in state-wide administration with the state Depart-

ment of Education and other departments. She is the administrator of family assistance at the Wyoming Department of Family Services. Balow said she oversees multiple programs and dozens of employees across the state and helped turn around the budget and get it back on track.

Balow said she supports high standards for education in Wyoming and sees the Common Core standards as a starting point, not an end.

“Am I opposed to the Common Core movement? Absolutely,” she said. “What I see happening with the Common Core movement is that there has been a nationaliza-tion/federalization attached to it that encroaches on our privacy, on our ability to make local decisions and I am adamantly opposed to that as a conservative.”

She added that it “comes with a whole lot of strings and that’s an issue.”

Balow said standards need to set a bar, but local districts should have the flex-ibility to make them more rigorous.

Adopting national standards and assess-ments takes away districts’ ability to choose teaching materials, she said.

“I believe we need a leader in the office who understands the difference between standards and the Common Core movement and isn’t ardently opposed to high standards but is opposed to federal encroachment and taking away our ability to make choices and teach our children,” Balow said.

She said science standards need to be Wyo-ming standards, and she would reach out to unlikely education partners in agriculture, geology and the energy industry.

Balow said she believes the office of su-perintendent should be an elected position. The superintendent has an important role in serving on state boards, such as the State Loan and Investment Board, and represents the perspective of children and families. She

called it “a very unique perspective that no other elected official brings.”

“It is really important to keep it as an elect-ed position, but to create some safeguards so that education is more protected from politics and not so dependent on who is in the office,” she said.

The office of superintendent was in turmoil in recent years as the Legislature took away many of its powers with Senate File 104, which the Wyoming Supreme Court later ruled was unconstitutional.

“SF 104 is in our rearview mirror in terms of legislation,” she said. “There have been lots of really important discussions and de-bates that have come out of that that I hope will continue, but not at the expense of educa-tion.”

As she read Wyoming’s education laws, Balow said she came across a statute calling for an education planning and coordination council.

“To my knowledge, that council is either non-existent or doesn’t work the way that it should,” she said. “But there are a number of folks that ought to be on that planning and co-ordinating council — including the governor, superintendent, chairs, joint of education, teachers, parents, administrators.”

She said that council could set clear targets for education and help move it forward and shield it from politics.

“I lead and I manage with the same values from the classroom to the board room to the SLIB committee to the floor of the Legislature — and that is with passion, integrity, honesty, hard work and a sense of working together to accomplish goals,” Balow said. “This is not about driving my agenda, this is not about taking away rights or choices for local com-munities — it’s about empowering you so that you can be successful.”

Balow is running against retired Naval offi-cer Bill Winney and Sheryl Lain, an adminis-trator in the Department of Education, in the Republican primary Aug. 19.

Superintendent of Public Instruction


Jillian Balow Profile

JILLIAN BALOW


A Powell native is drawing upon her de-cades of experience in public education as she seeks to become Wyoming’s next

superintendent of public instruction. Sheryl Lain, one of three Republican candidates for the position, said she is concerned about Common Core State Standards and the top-down management of education.

“I’m interested in bringing schools back to where the heart of education is — and that is focusing on students, focusing on teachers and focusing on parents,” Lain said during a Park County Repub-lican Party forum last month.

Lain’s career in education spans more than 40 years, and she has worked as a teacher, admin-istrator, instructional coach and facilitator. She currently serves as the instructional leader in Superintendent of Public Instruction Cindy Hill’s office. The two had previously worked together at Carey Junior High in Cheyenne, where Hill was a principal.

“When Mrs. Hill decided to run, she looked around for an instructional person and she asked if I would come as an appointee,” Lain said.

In recent years, Lain has worked around the state, delivering professional develop-ment for teachers.

“I taught, I led, I coached schools all around the state of Wyoming,” Lain said. “I’ve been in the majority of schools in this state and where I went, working collabora-tively with teachers, scores went up.”

Lain said she is opposed to the Common Core State Standards. She called the adop-tion of the standards a “rush job” and said corners were cut in the protocol, specifically

by not seeking public input.“If we were to have sought public input,

we would perhaps have an entirely different product, but for certain, we wouldn’t have the turmoil that we’re seeing today, which is not in the best interest of public education. It’s not in the best interest of teaching,” she said.

Lain said she’s also worried that Common Core standards are tied to teacher evalua-tions and data collection.

“When you start talking about a standardized test that can evaluate how well teachers are doing their job, there simply is no such thing,” she said.

Lain taught in Wyoming from 1968 until the mid-1990s. She and her husband, Gayle, have four children, three of whom teach in Wyoming public schools. Nine of her 13 grandchildren are students in the Wyoming education system.

Lain’s father taught agriculture at Powell High School, and after

graduating from the University of Wyoming, she followed in his footsteps and got her first teaching job at Wind River High School.

Years later, as a district administrator for curriculum, Lain helped write some of the first education standards for Wyoming, she said.

Education leaders didn’t know then that the standards would involve “a tremendous amount of testing and the expense of that,” Lain said.

“We have unintended consequences that we need to address,” she said.

Lain said she wants to hear from the public about state education standards.

“As a superintendent, I simply want to bring back the conversation and open up the dialogue so the communities’ and parents’ and teachers’ voices are heard,” Lain said.

She believes Wyoming should focus on

establishing a common vision for standards and assessments based on Wyoming values, and then support instructional excellence statewide, according to her campaign web-site.

“At the end of the day, instructional excel-lence is the only way to ensure student suc-cess,” she said.

Lain said she brings a belief system that is fundamentally based on conservative princi-pals of de-federalizing.

“I decided to run for this office because I do believe we’re at a crossroads in Wyoming education,” Lain said. “At this crossroads, it is critical that we have full background ex-perience and a fundamental principle belief system, and I bring that to the table.”

Lain said she believes her perspective as a 40-year educator in Wyoming is useful now.

Instruction has been the focus in her role as the instructional leader in Superintendent Hill’s office.

As a member of Hill’s management team, Lain’s hiring of her daughter for a job at the Wyoming Department of Education has come under fire in recent months.

A final report by a special legislative committee released last month says Lain “violated Wyoming’s laws and policies” by approving a no-bid contract benefiting her daughter, according to The Associated Press.

The topic resurfaced during a debate Tuesday night sponsored by Wyoming PBS when Jillian Balow, another candidate for the position, challenged Lain to apologize for committing nepotism.

Lain, who admitted to nepotism when she under oath during a legislative committee investigation into how the agency was run under Hill, didn’t address Balow’s challenge, the AP reported.

The third superintendent candidate in the GOP primary election is Bill Winney, a re-tired Naval officer.


Sheryl Lain Profile

SHERYL LAIN



After 30 years of active duty in the U.S. Navy, Bill Winney hopes to bring his leadership experience to the Wyoming

Department of Education.The retired Naval officer is running for

superintendent of public instruction as a Re-publican in the Aug. 19 primary.

Winney, who lives in Bondu-rant, has spent 10 years observing the Wyoming Legislature as a citizen, and said leadership and collaboration are integral to mov-ing forward with education in Wyoming. During a Republican forum in Cody earlier this month, Winney said that as superinten-dent, he would work with legisla-tors, the State Board of Education, local boards, local teachers, local administrators and “most impor-tant, the parents.”

Winney said he is opposed to the Common Core State Standards, which Wyoming has adopted for math and language arts.

Going door-to-door on his campaign, he has met teachers who said Common Core is telling them how to run their classrooms, and they don’t like it.

“The single most critical factor in my not liking it one bit is when teachers say it tells them how to run their classrooms,” Winney said. “Our teachers are professionals — they’re pretty darn good … and we’re going to tell them how to run their classrooms?”

He taught at a chalkboard for two years, teaching about reactive theory, mechanical engineering, chemistry and other subjects.

“I had to learn that you have to explain it

several times sometimes,” Winney said.In the Navy, “education and training were

a part of everything we did,” he said.“Careers were made in the Navy by how

your pupils performed on periodic examina-tions on your ship,” Winney said. “Either you did it right or you didn’t.”

Along the way in his career, Winney’s wife Louise taught in a number of places, includ-ing South Caroline, Virginia, Nebraska and

Guam, he said.“Through her eyes, I saw the

good and the bad of school admin-istrations,” Winney said.

He has seen the issues facing education, and he’s now drawing upon his own experiences running big organizations and overseeing budgets nearly as big as Wyo-ming’s state budget. More money isn’t going to fix Wyoming’s educa-tion system, he said.

“There’s a tendency in our Leg-islature to throw money at a prob-

lem,” Winney said.Winney believes the Legislature continues

to try the same things while expecting a dif-ferent outcome, he stated on his campaign website.

“More money, administration and bureau-cracy won’t get us to excellence, it only leads to more mediocrity,” Winney said.

Winney said that when he ran organiza-tions, he made them better. By observing how an organization really operated, he would make things run smoother and with less red tape, he said.

Winney opposed Senate File 104 when it was first proposed. The law removed the superintendent as the head of the Depart-ment of Education. He called the measure

improper and said it “was run through the Legislature far too quickly.”

The Wyoming Supreme Court ultimately declared SF 104 unconstitutional.

During the Republican forum, Winney said he is concerned about the State Board of Education and Legislature going down the path of creating an evaluation system for employees.

“The evaluation system doesn’t seem to have an over-arching purpose,” he said. “It’s like they’re going to write up these evalu-ations, expend all the administrative time it takes to write them up and put them in a file cabinet and maybe they’ll drag them out once in a while.”

He said he would discuss this with leaders to reconsider that and give a better path to take.

Winney said he would work with the Legis-lature to look at creating education vouchers for families whose children do not attend public K-12 schools in Wyoming, and said he would support vouchers.

While stationed in Guam during the Navy, Winney said he and his wife decided to homeschool, because of the quality of the lo-cal schools.

“We had to make that choice, and it wasn’t an easy choice. Parents should be supported when they have to make those kind of choic-es,” Winney said. “I would work with the Legislature — that would be a long discus-sion with the Legislature.”

Winney also said it’s important for schools to prepare students who decide to pursue careers in technical fields instead of a tradi-tional college route.

Winney previously ran for House District 22 in 2010 and 2012, and for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006 and 2008.


Bill Winney Profile

BILL WINNEY



The three Republican candidates who want to lead the Wyoming Department of Education all took their children out

of public schools at some point.Jillian Balow, Sheryl Lain and Bill Winney

said during a forum in Cody last month that they would support more discussions and re-search into education vouchers for Wyoming families who choose an alternative option.

“As a state, we have not done enough to investigate the voucher system and how that might look in Wyoming,” Balow said. “I abso-lutely support the evaluation and discussion moving forward to make sure it’s a fit for Wyoming.”

Winney and Lain agree, saying parents should have a choice in their children’s edu-cation.

“I’m a public school advocate,” Lain said, noting her decades of work in public educa-tion. “I believe in the public school notion that this America stands or falls based on the enlightenment of our public.”

However, she said her son attended a reli-

gious-based school during high school “and it was a good place for him to be.”

“As a public school teacher, I would like very much to think that my choice could have been subsidized,” Lain said.

Wyoming has many quality home-school-ing parents and school options with charter school and private institutions, she contin-ued.

“Not being completely aware of how it would be to change this particular law, I would like to offer the idea that school choice is the ultimate right of a parent and should that parent find it necessary for a child to go to an alternative situation, I would support that completely,” Lain said.

She said she would like to “look into what it would take to revamp the rules and regula-tions about funding.”

During his years in the U.S. Navy, Winney was stationed on the island of Guam with his family. He and his wife faced the decision to home-school their children because they were unhappy with the quality of the local schools.

“We had to make that choice, and it wasn’t an easy choice,” Winney said. “Parents

should be supported when they have to face those kind of choices.”

Winney said education vouchers would have to be worked out with legislators.

“I would work with the Legislature — that would be a long discussion in the Legisla-ture,” Winney said.

He also said that the Legislature and edu-cation leaders in the state have a responsibil-ity to make sure the school districts are such that parents wouldn’t want to use a voucher for alternative education.

For faith-based reasons, Balow said she and her husband decided to send their chil-dren to a Christian school for four years, “not because they wouldn’t be successful in the public school, but because that’s a deeply personal family choice we made.”

“As a parent of two kids in public schools, I have exercised my ability to make alterna-tive choices for both of my children,” Balow said.

Balow said that as an educator and govern-ment leader, she works to make sure families have options and access “to think outside the traditional school, bricks and mortar build-ing.”


Candidates took kids out of public schools NewsSuperintendent of Public Instruction

House District 25


Dave Blevins ProfileBY giB MAThERsTribune Staff Writer

As a freshman representing House Dis-trict 25, Dave Blevins spent a lot of time learning the legislative ropes. So he’s

aiming for another term, at least.“To be effective I believe you have to com-

mit to two or three terms to really make a difference,” said Blevins, 65. “I hope that in the 32 years I have lived in Powell that I have made a difference. It is important to be an active member of our community.”

Blevins did support Senate File 104, which would have made changes to the role of the State Superintendent of Public Instruc-tion by transferring the day-to-day responsibilities of managing the State Department Of Education to an appointed director of education but he said he carries no grudge.

“I have no bones to pick with Cindy Hill,” Blevins said.

Blevins accepted the Wyoming Supreme Court ruling that SF 104 was unconstitutional.

“I support the Supreme Court ruling as it is their job to interpret the law,” Blevins said. “That’s why we have the Supreme Court.”

The Wyoming Constitution should be amended to make the superintendent’s po-sition an appointment by the governor of Wyoming, he said. “Because the position re-quires an education leader with a broad base of knowledge and experience,” Blevins said, “programs that are implemented need con-tinuity to continuously improve our schools over time and not be subject to the stop and go approach an elected official brings to the office of superintendent.”

Blevins has also served on the local school board. “My experience on the school board reinforced my belief that local control of our schools is the most important protection the state can guarantee our schools,” Blevins said. “We (legislators) want local control.”

What is crucial is keeping the proceedings less political and more about education. To-day’s youth must be prepared to perform in a world economy, he said.

“We have to know what is going on in our classrooms so that all our students have the opportunity to grow and learn,” Blevins said. “We have a wonderful school system in Wyo-ming and we need to maintain them.”

He supported the 2013 fuel tax charging 10 cents per gallon because it provides revenue for the Wyoming Department of Transporta-tion.

The Legislature was appropriating up to $100 million per year to WyDOT. The state

can no longer afford to pony-up that much every year, Blevins said.

“We need multiple sources of funding,” he said. “Besides a fuel tax we should be allowed to collect a toll on interstate highways.

“A proposal to allow states to collect tolls on interstate highways to raise revenue for repairs was a part of the federal transportation legislation earlier this spring be-fore the temporary extension of the current bill, that did not include the toll, passed,” Blevins said.

He also supports a toll on U.S. Interstate I-80.

“We need multiple sources (of funding),” Blevins said. “Not rely on one.”

Hopping on a train is not possible to get from Point A to Point B in Wyoming. And, fly-ing is not usually an option.

“I think federal funding is at risk,” Blevins said, “that’s why we need to toll the roads, especially federal roads.”

Although Wyoming highways are better than other highways in the nation, they still must be maintained to connect people around the state and to get school buses safely to school, sports and other events around the state, Blevins said.

NEW kid AT ThE CApiTALDuring his first term, Blevins had his hands

full shepherding a bill that allows an owner of real property to transfer the property to a designated person by a deed that becomes ef-fective when the owner dies.

“It was a real learning experience for me,” he said.

It was described as a two-page “slam-

dunk” bill that ended up being 17 pages by the time it passed, Blevins said.

The bill, effective July 1, “streamlines the transfer of property at the time of death re-ducing legal red tape,” Blevins said.

Another bill that passed the House and was made an interim study topic by the joint Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee. The bill will provide the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, as well as tourism and state parks departments, with additional revenue.

Under the bill, a smart phone app will offer the 9 million visitors to Wyoming maps and voice-guided tours, video, special event dates and even cowboy campfire recipes. The pos-sibilities are limitless for providing informa-tion about our state to tourists, the freshman lawmaker said.

The app may cost in the neighborhood of $2. “If you’re coming to Wyoming why wouldn’t you get it,” Blevins asked.

The House TRW Committee is re-drafting the bill and asking the University of Wyoming business school to lend a hand. TRW hopes to have it ready by the 2015 session, Blevins said.

Wyoming invests a lot in wildlife.“I am very concerned about our wildlife,”

he said. “We have to manage them well.”Blevins grew up in Powell. He served as

a pilot and an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy for 27 years, retiring as a captain.

For the last 32 years he has run his State Farm office in Powell. He and his wife, Cindy lived in Japan for two years. They have two sons, Todd and Christopher or “Kipper.” Todd works in Denver in the financial servic-es industry and Kipper is a resident physician at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Blevins said he’ll listen to his constituents. Open dialogue is the key to finding a solution. Wyoming legislators have the people’s best interests at heart, he said.

Legislators, their lawmaking colleagues and their constituents still enjoy an open dialogue.

“We’re fortunate that we can still talk face to face,” Blevins said. “I am accessible to folks. I hang my shingle on main street Pow-ell.”

DAVE BLEVINS

BY giB MAThERsTribune Staff Writer

Dan Laursen of Powell is hoping to un-seat incumbent Dave Blevins for the Wyoming House of Representatives

House District 25 seat.Laursen, a Republican, did not agree with

Blevins’ endorsement of Senate File 104, which would have made the state’s superintendent of pub-lic instruction an appointed not an elected position. He said the electorate should decide who is the state’s superintendent of pub-lic instruction, not the governor of Wyoming.

“Even if she (Cindy Hill) wasn’t doing a good job, the citizens should decide that,” he said.

That is one reason he is running in the Aug. 19 primary. The win-ner will almost assuredly be elected, since there is no Democratic candidate yet.

Laursen said he would probably have sup-ported the 2013 fuel tax charging 10 cents per gallon because it provides revenue for the Wyoming Department of Transportation. Highways have grown increasingly expen-sive to build and repair, but they must be maintained by whatever means available.

“Roads are pretty darned important,” Laursen said. “People don’t want to have more taxes, but expect to have good roads.”

A toll on U.S. Interstate I-80 would be ac-

ceptable to Laursen. Whoever uses the inter-state highway the most should pay the most, he said.

Still, if someone has a better plan to fund Wyoming’s highways, Laursen said he will listen.

“I’m all ears,” he said. Laursen is concerned with the federal

government’s intrusion into state affairs. The state should write the regulations, not Washington, D.C.

“I think local control is always best,” Laursen said.

The federal government is aim-ing for more control of water. Wyo-ming water should be managed by the state, Laursen said.

Laursen’s career has been cen-tered around water and agricul-ture. “I think I’d be a big voice for water and ag,” he said.

He has experience in crops and livestock. “I would guess that would be my biggest contribution,” Laursen said.

He would support continued funding to the Wyoming Water Development Commission, which provides grants for water development projects for irrigation and potable water. Wy-oming needs to get the most out of its water before it flows out of the state, Laursen said.

Although imminent domain may be neces-sary to obtain easements for utilities for the public good, it should not be exercised for a business or an individual’s gain. There will always be a small percentage of people who

fight an easement, but imminent domain rules should remain unchanged and con-trolled by the state, Laursen said.

Laursen, 54, has has lived in the Powell area for 46 years as a farmer, former Heart Mountain Irrigation District manager from 2006-14 and now as a hydrographer for the Wyoming State Engineer’s Office.

Laursen and his wife, Denise, have two adult offspring, Amy and Chris. Amy is work-ing toward her doctorate’s degree at the University of North Texas in Denton. Chris is completing his master’s and then a doctorate degree at the University of Wyoming.

Laursen earned his bachelor’s degree in agriculture engineering at the UW. Denise earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education at UW. Following his schooling, he returned to Powell to farm for approxi-mately 23 years before taking a position at the irrigation district and now the state, he said.

Laursen said he would listen to both sides of an issue. Ninety-five percent of the time, he’d vote with the Republican Party’s local and state platforms, but, “I’m not a follower,” Laursen said.

He would be available to his constituents by telephone or email.

“If I get elected I would definitely be open to what people have to say,” Laursen said.

He realizes legislative sessions in Chey-enne are grueling, but said he’s willing to roll up his sleeves.

“I think I’d do a good job down there,” Laursen said.


Dan Laursen

House District 25Profile

DAN LAURSEN

House District 25


Candidates hold friendly discussion during forum ForumBY giB MAThERs Tribune Staff Writer

State Rep. Dave Blevins squared off against challenger Dan Laursen dur-ing the opening round of the Powell

Tribune’s candidate forum Wednesday night.

Blevins, R-Powell, hopes to keep his House District 25 seat while Laursen seeks to claim the seat. They are battling in the Aug. 19 primary; there is no announced Democratic candidate.

During the one-hour segment, the candi-dates took questions from the moderator, Powell Tribune Managing Editor Tom Law-rence, a three-person panel that included Tribune Staff Writer CJ Baker, KODI News Director Bryce Cornatzer and Park County Republican Party Chairman Larry French, and the audience, and also asked each other a question.

They agreed on several issues, with Laursen sometimes saying he did not have enough information to offer an opinion. On some matters, however, they took differing stances.

Laursen said he opposed Senate File 104. The law, enacted in 2013 but overturned

by the state Supreme Court, would have stripped most of the authority from the Superintendent of Public Instruction Of-fice. Blevins voted for the law but said he respects the court’s ruling.

Laursen said he favored keeping the posi-tion an elected post.

As an elected official it is difficult to see education programs through to completion if they are not reelected, Blevins said.

Converting the superintendent to an ap-pointed position would allow for more time to see programs through from start to finish and track student progress,

“I think we need to address how we can achieve stability in our education,” Blevins said.

His wife, Denise, is a teacher who has ex-perience with the Common Core Standards and he listens to her on that, he said. It’s a position his opponent shares.

“I’m in favor of the Common Core,” Laursen said.

But, Laursen said, he was worried about

federal government strings attached to the program. A student may encounter different curriculums, he said.

If the student moves to a different school district they may be forced to catch up with the curriculum at that new school. Common Core provides a universal sequential cur-riculum, Blevins said.

Is it the government’s role to promote economic development, such as the “Cody Lab” bill, the candidates were asked? The bill passed through the Legislature very quickly, they noted.

“I think there’s a proces I think was vio-lated,” Laursen said.

Most of state money for the lab would be a loan. Ultimately, the lab loan would promote Northwest College and jobs, said Blevins, who voted for the bill.

They also discusses guns in schools.“I did vote against firearms in schools,”

Blevins said.He has confidence Powell police can

handle any gun-related emergency. “I believe in the Second Amendment

(right to bear arms),” Laursen said. He said he applauds the Legislature for

allowing concealed-carry permits. If a per-son working at a school is properly trained in firearm use, it should not be a problem, he sad.

The candidates were also asked about the Tea Party’s impact on the Republican Party in the state and nation.

“I think the Tea Party is doing a good job,” Laursen said.

“I think there is room (for the Tea Party) as long as people are willing to listen to each other,” Blevins said.

They were asked about Environmental Protection Agency rules on agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.

“It would just be more regulations the farmers would have to contend with,” Laursen said “I would hope that we all fight that.”

Blevins said he agreed with Laursen and he hoped greenhouse gas emissions could be regulated at the local level. Farmers are far more informed than they were 50 years ago, he said.

“I don’t think we need any more help from the government,” Blevins said.

“Game and Fish does a remarkable job,” Laursen said when asked about Wyoming Game and Fish Department funding. “I sometimes wonder if they have too many people.”

Game and Fish must keep continue to keep aquatic invasive species (AIS) such as zebra mussels out of Wyoming, Laursen said.

The department cut its budget by 8.5 per-cent. He supported a bill to fund the depart-ment’s grizzly bear, wolf and AIS programs. “We’re going to pay for their benefits,” Blevins said.

Blevins voted for the 10-cent gas tax and said the 2013 increase has been an overall positive.

“We really haven’t felt it at the pump,” Blevins said.

He noted that 53 percent of the tax is paid by people from out of state.

The tax is assessed to wholesalers, most of whom are not in Wyoming, Blevins said. Now the state is getting the 10 cents per gal-lon, he said, instead of having fuel tax dol-lars going to other states.

Wyoming needs multiple sources of high-way funding and another potential source are tolls on the interstate highways, Blevins said.

Laursen said while he is not in favor of higher taxes, he supports the fuel tax.

“I think they did the right thing,” he said.On the interstate, his unofficial count

was around 10 tractor-trailers to every one automobile.

“I wouldn’t have a problem with looking at a toll on the interstate, Laursen said.

Both men said they opposed abortion, le-galizing marijuana and same-sex marriage, although Blevins appeared to stake out a position than one he took earlier this year. (See related story.)

“I do not support gay marriage, just civil unions,” he said.

Blevins said he supports reelecting Gov. Matt Mead.

“He’s a pretty cool guy,” Blevins said. “You can talk to him.”

“I don’t think I’m for Matt Mead,” Laurs-en said. He said he had not decided if he supported Cindy Hill or Dr. Taylor Haynes, the other two candidates in the GOP pri-mary.


Citing differences in philosophies and the need for strong representation in Cheyenne, Charles Cloud of Cody is run-

ning for election to Wyoming House District 50 in hopes of unseating incumbent David Northrup.

“I feel Park County always has had a strong voice with Coe, Simpson and oth-ers, but I felt we’d lost that when David was elected,” Cloud said. “I was just really disappointed that we didn’t have that strong voice and values.”

Cloud said he ran unsuccess-fully for the seat in 2012, “but I beat Pat Childers, who I wanted to beat.”

Cloud was born in Alabama and came to Wyoming in 2003. He has owned Technical Cowboy, an au-tomotive repair shop, since 1983. He served on the Cody City Council from 2008-12, and he sits on the board for 307 First, a buy-local initiative. In addition, Cloud is a board member for Operation Finally Home, which provides housing for veterans. The organization has nearly completed building a home in Cody for Jim Butz, a deserving veteran.

Cloud and his wife, Cynthia, have three sons and one daughter. Cloud and two sons live in Cody, where Wyatt attends 8th grade at Cody Middle School and Connor is a sopho-more at Cody High School. Cynthia Cloud lives in Cheyenne, where their daughter is a senior at East High School. Another son, Luke, is a student at the University of Wyo-ming.

The defining issue of Cloud’s campaign, and of HD 50 candidates’ differences, he said, is Senate File 104, which stripped much of

the authority from Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction Cindy Hill in 2013. The Wyoming Supreme Court later ruled the law unconstitutional.

Cloud said Northrup now regrets his vote in favor of SF104, but he (Cloud) would have voted against it in the first place.

“The electoral process would have taken care of that in two years,” he said. “Every-body that we vote into office is not the best

thing since sliced bread.”He said he strongly opposes the

increased fuel tax. While the state does need to increase funding for highway maintenance and repair, that money could come from rev-enue the state already has, but the Legislature is putting it in the Legislative Stabilization Reserve Account — the state’s “rainy day” account, he said.

“How big do we want that rainy day fund to be?” he asked. “We need to decide when the sun sets

on that thing. We have a lot of things that need to be taken care of, and just dumping money into a hole doesn’t accomplish that.”

Cloud said the federal government is talk-ing about making states pay for highway con-struction, then reimbursing them after the fact, rather than funding projects up front.

“They’re basically be borrowing money from us,” he said. “All we’re getting back is money for the cost, then losing interest (on that money). The federal government can’t keep spending our money, then not paying interest.”

Cloud said Northrup was endorsed in the last election by the Wyoming Education As-sociation.

“They’re firmly behind Common Core (education standards) and all the things I’m firmly against,” Cloud said. “David said the Common Core is a tool in the toolbox. I dis-

agree with that. I think the common core is the tool box.”

Cloud said he also wants state government meetings, agencies and actions to be open to the public.

“I was concerned when the University of Wyoming was using a closed process to hire a president,” he said. When newspapers in the state sued for the names of finalists to be re-leased, “they won, then the Legislature went in and changed the rules.”

He noted that the Legislature has exempt-ed itself from open meeting laws.

“I remember listening to Hank Coe, who said, ‘We have a lot more private conversa-tions with our constituents, we need closed doors.’ I said, ‘More than city council? I live across the street from my constituents.’

“I think we’re starting to see, in the last four years or so, an overreach by the Legisla-ture, what they deem to be their power.”

Cloud said he supports the Food Freedom Act, which the Legislature voted down in 2013.

“I don’t drink raw milk, and I’m not pas-sionate about that, he said. But “people should have a right to do things that don’t harm other people. We don’t have a helmet law in wyoming; I bet there’s a lot more people who would be harmed by not having a helmet than drinking raw milk.”

Cloud said he has a strong sense of right and wrong, and “I’m not a special interest kind of guy.”

“I think most decisions that the Legislature makes are common-sense decisions,” he said. “I think my business background really helps in that. Should we fund this? How do we save money here? How should we spend money?

“But we do have issues that come up that are right vs. wrong. Is it constitutional, both federal and state? Is it moral,? Is it the best thing for the people of Wyoming?”


Charles Cloud

House District 50Profile

CHARLES CLOUD


Republican David Northrup of Powell is running for election to a second term in District 50 of the Wyoming House of

Representatives. Northrup said he is running “to continue

to be a strong voice for all of the people of the entire district,” regardless of where they live.

“As a lifelong Wyoming resi-dent, I have a solid understand-ing of issues that affect Wyoming people, including coal, oil, educa-tion and the ‘brain drain’ of our youth,” he said.

A fourth-generation Wyoming-ite, Northrup was born in Laramie and raised in Powell. He owns a farm and ranch on the Willwood, which he and his sons operate.

Northrup said he is a lifelong member of the Republican Party, and he served as Park County Republican Chairman from 2007-08.

Northrup and his wife, Astrid, have been married for 32 years and have three grown sons, and he cites his “strong family core values” as one of the reasons he should be re-elected.

He was elected in 2012 for his first term in the House, serving in the Legislature for the first time in 2013.

In the Legislature, Northrup serves on the House Education Committee, the House Revenue Committee and the Select Water Committee.

Northrup said the 2013 session seemed like “business as usual” until more experi-enced legislators informed him it actually was a very difficult session, due largely to

the debate and passage two controversial is-sues: Senate File 104, which stripped much of the power from the superintendent of pub-lic instruction’s office, and increasing the state’s fuel tax by 10 cents per gallon.

The Supreme Court later overturned SF 104, ruling it was unconstitutional.

Northrup said he voted for that bill, but now believes it was the wrong approach.

“I really agreed with doing something with the office, be-cause of being on the (Powell) school board for 12 years,” he said. “All they saw was turnover in the office” and a lack of experi-ence and leadership.

Added to that was all the tes-timony lawmakers heard about problems and strife within the office, and between the office and school districts, and it seemed like the right thing to do, he said.

“I was there (in the Legisla-ture) when they voted to replen-

ish the federal money” that was misspent under the leadership of Cindy Hill, he said. He recalls that lawmakers were very con-cerned, saying, “It’s federal money that’s being misspent. How can we possibly let that go?”

“So we put that back in,” he said.“Now, in retrospect, I think we should

have let the process take place,” he said. “If there was grounds for impeachment, that should have been discovered and pushed in that direction, rather than focus on the de-partment and the superintendent’s position.”

Northrup said he voted against the fuel tax, but “got beat up on that one.”

“That was very controversial,” he said.He said he also voted against the beer tax.

Legislators were concerned that raising that

tax a little would set the stage for raising it much more later.

Northrup said he expects the next session to be less stressful.

“There is no (SF) 104 out there, and Edu-cation isn’t planning to do anything with that postion. It won’t be on that front that there will be any big issues.”

The Joint Education Interim Committee is looking, among other things, to identify the reasons behind the difficulty Wyoming Community College students often find in getting their credits transferred to the Uni-versity of Wyoming, he said. While students who graduate with associate degrees gen-erally get their credits transferred to UW easily, students who transfer before getting their associate degrees often are told some of their credits won’t transfer. But students who transfer to other institutions, such as those in Montana, generally don’t experi-ence that problem.

“Right now, UW has put together a task force and is working on it,” he said.

In addition to his service in the Legislature and on the Park County School District No. 1 Board of Trustees, Northrup has served on the Park County Board of Cooperative Edu-cation Services (BOCES), the Willwood Irri-gation District board and the Willwood Light and Power Coop. He said he also has experi-ence working with the U.S. Forest Service and other government agencies, such as the National Resource Conservation Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Northrup said his opponent, Charles Cloud, “said this is a Cody seat.”

But the district isn’t made up entirely of Cody; it takes up the Willwood and the area between as well, he said.

“I represent all the people in the district,” he said.

House District 50


David Northrup Profile

DAVID NORTHRUP


Candidates clash over House District 50 issues

House District 50Forum


Two Republican contenders for District 50’s seat in the Wyoming House of Rep-resentatives squared off on Wednesday,

finding plenty to disagree about. Incumbent David Northrup and challenger

Charles Cloud took opposite positions on sev-eral issues.

However, they both agreed that a bill passed during the 2014 session of the Legislature that made it possible to provide a state economic development loan to help fund a new Cody Labs building will benefit both Powell and Cody.

Northrup co-sponsored the bill and cited it as an example of government’s role in eco-nomic development.

Cloud said he supports the Cody Labs proj-ect, calling it “wonderful” and saying it will benefit both Powell and Cody. But he said providing state money to private businesses can be risky.

“How many protections do we have to en-sure they don’t go out of business in 10 years?” he asked. “I think the long-term effects of this grant is probably good. But when you’re giving state money, you have to be smart about it.”

Northrup said Cloud had referred to the Cody Labs funding as “corporate welfare” dur-ing a candidate forum in Clark. He asked Cloud how he could justify saying that after asking for a $1 million grant for a technical training program that would have benefitted his auto repair shop directly.

“How do you call Cody Labs corporate welfare, and yet ask for $1 million yourself?” Northrup queried.

Cloud responded, “My idea was to go in and take kids who had graduated from a tech school and give them experience working with some-one hand-in-hand — someone older, who can’t work as well as they used to, with someone newer, who needs experience.”

According to a July 2009 Billings Gazette

report, Cloud, then a Cody city councilman, asked the city of Cody to apply for at least $1 million from the Wyoming Business Council to purchase an 11,000 square-foot building on Big Horn Avenue.

His plan was for the city would transfer the building to Forward Cody, which would have leased it at a substantially below-market rates to Cloud for use as a training facility for auto repair technicians.

Cloud withdrew the request after receiving a negative response from other shop owners, the Gazette reported.

Cloud told Northrup he didn’t call the bill benefitting Cody labs corporate welfare.

“I said you have to watch for corporate wel-fare ... make sure the city of Cody doesn’t end up owning a building it can’t use,” he said.

A review by the Powell Tribune of a record-ing of the Clark forum found no reference to “corporate welfare” from Cloud.

Northrup said the funding for Cody Labs is in the form of a loan, not a grant, and must be paid back. He and Cloud both noted it will benefit both Powell and Cody, as Northwest College is developing a program to train em-ployees for work at the expanded Cody Labs facility.

Cloud and Northrup took opposite sides on Common Core education standards, with Cloud challenging Northrup’s record.

“You say Common Core is a tool,” Cloud said. “You used to say you were against it.”

Northrup said he now supports it because flexibility allows school districts to use it as a guide, but “make it their own.”

They also disagreed over a bill that provided $1 million for early childhood education pro-grams. Northrup supported the bill.

“Zero to 3 (years old) — those are the pri-mary learning years,” he said. “Can you spend it any better than we are (with this program)? ... When they hit kindergarten, they need to be doing the best they can be.”

Cloud said, “The zero to 3 thing should scare people. Hitler said, ‘Give me a child until 3, and

he will be mine forever,’ and I, sir, want to edu-cate my own child from zero to 3.”

Northrup countered, “We’re not talking about federally run schools or a state-run school. We’re talking about if you’re taking your child to a day care, they’re on the same page as the schools.”

Both candidates were against abortion, but to differing degres.

“I’m against abortion as a form of birth con-trol, but it is justified when the mother’s life is in danger,” Northrup said.

Cloud said abortion never is justified. “God opens and closes the womb, and if he has cho-sen to bring a life into the world,” it is wrong to end it with abortion, he said.

Neither candidate expressed an opinion about nullifying federal law within Wyoming’s borders. Both said they would have to learn more to know what the effects would be.

House District 50 comprises the east side of Cody and extends east to include Ralston, Heart Mountain, Clark and the Willwood.

Cloud previously made an issue of the fact that he was a Cody resident and Northrup wasn’t, but downplayed that a bit before the Powell audience.

“We have a very spread-out district,” he said. “The population, yes, is probably in Cody. But everyone within the district deserves rep-resentation no matter where you are. Honestly, one of the reasons I decided to run was I didn’t feel we had that representation.”

Northrup said he’d heard “rumblings about it being a Cody seat.”

“That’s a falsehood” that began after court-ordered redistricting changed district bound-aries to base them on population rather than on county lines. Before that, Park County had two representatives serving the county as a whole, he said.

“It wasn’t a Cody seat; it wasn’t a Powell seat,” he said.

Northrup said all three Park County repre-sentatives need to pull together to get the most done.

BY CJ BAkERTribune Staff Writer

Those who’ve attended recent candidate forums for the Powell area’s seats in the Wyoming House of Representatives

may have some confusion on some of the can-didates’ positions.

In reviewing some of the statements made by the candidates for House District 25 (rep-resenting the Powell area) and House District 50 (representing east Cody, Heart Mountain, Clark, Ralston and the Willwood), the Tribune found three areas where candidates either shifted their positions or expressed conflicting statements on topics, including gay marriage and Common Core.

Below is a breakdown of some of the confu-sion noted by the Tribune.

BLEviNs: fOR OR AgAiNsT gAY MARRiAgE?Incumbent House District 25 Rep. Dave

Blevins, R-Powell, said at a Wednesday forum in Powell that while he supports civil unions, “I am against” and “I don’t like” same-sex mar-riage.

However, those statements conflict with a February vote to legalize gay marriage and an April opinion piece he co-signed with six other Republican legislators.

Blevins voted for a bill that would have re-defined Wyoming marriage as a civil contract between “two natural persons,” rather than the existing law defining marriage as being be-tween “a male and a female person.”

Blevins said in a follow-up interview with the Tribune that he believed the bill would have allowed civil unions rather than gay marriages. However, a reading of the bill — titled “Mar-riage definition” — shows Blevins is mistaken.

Blevins said his position is that gay couples should have all the rights afforded to hetero-sexual couples, but he does not want them to be called marriages.

“My wish is not to disparage the word of mar-riage,” Blevins said.

In the April opinion piece, published in the Casper Star-Tribune, Blevins and the other lawmakers wrote that giving gay couples the right to marry is the right thing to do and is in-line with Republicans’ dedication to smaller government.

The piece says in part that, “Only marriage can guarantee that couples and families will have access to the services and benefits they need when they need them. There is no substi-tute.”

Blevins said in the interview that the piece was presented to him in a very rushed, spur-of-the-moment way. He said he’d disagreed with its use of the word marriage, “but I wanted to make sure, I guess, that those people are af-

forded those civil rights.”

NORThRup: fOR OR AgAiNsT COMMON CORE?During Wednesday’s House District 50 fo-

rum, challenger Charles Cloud criticized Rep. David Northrup, R-Powell, for expressing con-flicting positions on Common Core. In dispute is a survey Northrup submitted to the group Wyo-ming Citizens Opposing Common Core.

On the group’s form, Northrup checked box-es saying he is “not in favor” of Common Core State Standards and that he would consider sponsoring legislation “that would include a total removal of Common Core in Wyoming and mandating state-created standards of higher quality.”

However, during the past legislative session, Northrup voted against a bill that would have — among other things — totally removed Common Core standards and barred their implementa-tion. Northrup also said in a July interview with the Cody Enterprise that while he has problems with some parts of Common Core — including the data collection and science standards that many associate with the standards — he does support its math and English standards.

“If you understand it’s a tool and not driving curriculum — it’s a good thing,” Northrup told the Enterprise.

A national group that opposes Common Core, Truth in American Education, noted the con-flicting statements and said in an online posting that Wyoming Republicans “should be angry that he (Northrup) is trying to play both sides of the issue.”

Pressed by Cloud on Wednesday to explain the discrepancy, Northrup said that, “I would sponsor legislation to remove Common Core as a standard because I believe that Wyoming can take the (Common Core) standards and make them their own.”

In a follow-up interview, Northrup summa-rized that, “I have problems with some of the parts of Common Core, but in general, Com-mon Core should be a good thing when it’s put together and Wyoming has a chance to make it their own.”

He questioned how he could express that nu-anced opinion on the survey.

Cloud noted during the forum that the ques-tionnaire had space for comments beneath each inquiry and that Northrup had used that free space on another answer.

CLOud: A shifT TO ThE RighT?At Wednesday’s forum, Cloud encouraged

voters to research his positions and answers to questionnaires around the state.

“Do they match what I say and what I’ve been saying over the last months? Or do I change my values based on what I think you want to hear?” Cloud said, describing himself

as a man of character and conviction. “My val-ues do not change, and they will not.”

A review of Cloud’s public statements in-dicates he’s been consistent during this cam-paign, but that he was not as conservative or unequivocal on social issues when he ran for the office in 2012.

For example, at a forum in Clark last month, Cloud said he opposes abortion in all instances, including if the pregnancy jeopar-dizes the health of the mother.

“God opens and closes the womb. So, that has to be my answer for all of time,” Cloud said. He restated that belief at the Powell forum.

Two years ago, however, he told the conser-vative group WyWatch that he believed abor-tions should be permitted when the health of the mother is at stake (that’s Northrup’s position).

“I’ve matured on the subject,” Cloud said of the shift in a follow-up interview. He said he’d tried to be “I guess more reasonable about it in the past, because it’s a delicate subject for people to discuss.”

He said Republicans put the qualifier about women’s health to make their position more palatable and “I’ve, over the years, started falling back on core principles. And what I said at the forum is what I believe.”

Cloud also said in Clark that, while civil unions sounded like a good idea, the fact that they create a separate “class” of couples has been used by courts to legalize equal gay mar-riages.

“My Wyoming values says that marriage is between a man and a woman. We shouldn’t go down the road of civil unions,” Cloud said. “We should hold that line fast, we should draw that line in the sand.”

Then he corrected himself: “Excuse me — on rock, not in the sand.”

In his 2012 WyWatch survey, Cloud had left the boxes blank about whether he supported or opposed civil unions and written that he supported “some type of contract.”

Cloud reiterated in the interview that he dropped his support for civil unions after see-ing how they’ve played out in courts over the past couple years.

“I realized that it wasn’t just about trying to be fair and accommodating. It was about what people have always said — that it was a stepping stone” to gay marriage, Cloud said. “I was just able to see that.”

At the forum in Clark, Cloud also faulted Northrup — who has voted against gay mar-riage but also against legislation that would refuse to recognize other states’ gay mar-riages — for not making enough of a stand on

House District 25 & 50


Analysis: House candidates flip-flop and shift Forum

see Analysis, page 25

the subject.Cloud said voters need to send someone to

Cheyenne who represents Wyoming’s conser-vative values, citing personal priorities of the sanctity of marriage, the sanctity of life and the Constitution.

“We need to stand up every chance we get and work to make sure that those rights stay with us, where they’re supposed to be,” Cloud said.

A review of Cloud’s statements show he had not made social issues a priority two years ago.

In stories about the 2012 race published in the Powell Tribune, Cody Enterprise and

Casper Star-Tribune, not once is Cloud quoted as saying a word about gay marriage or abor-tion.

In an interview with the Enterprise, Cloud said he didn’t take issue with the “good job” of then-Rep. Pat Childers — an outspoken sup-porter of gay marriage.

A columnist for the news website WyoFile also quoted Cloud in August 2012 as saying that Childers’ support for gay marriage had not factored into his decision to run and that the issue was best left to Wyoming voters.

When asked about the change in focus on gay marriage, Cloud said he didn’t believe the topic had come up.

“In the last election, Pat (Childers), of course, had his beliefs, but it really never was

brought up,” he said.Cloud noted he had indicated his opposition

to gay marriage in his 2012 WyWatch survey.Northrup had made his opposition to gay

marriage one of his campaign issues in 2012 — mentioning it at a candidate forum and in an interview with the Star-Tribune — and both he and Childers cited it as a reason for the long-time representative’s loss.

Cloud said he’s now emphasizing the topic because Northrup says he represents conser-vative Wyoming values and “if you’re going to talk the talk, you’ve got to walk the walk.”

Northrup told the Star-Tribune in 2012 that he opposed gay marriage but that Wyoming should recognize other states’ same-sex mar-riages.


Analysis: Stances altered during campaign

House District 25 & 50Forum



Former Park County Commissioner Dave Burke sees a need for “substantial im-provement” in some areas of

county government.Burke — one of nine Republican

candidates for three open seats on the commission — is looking to rejoin the board after a two-year absence.

“I want to help bring back neces-sary fiscal control to Park County government,” Burke said.

The Powell native and rural Cody resident says he has substantial experience on public lands issues, county management, budgeting and finances, landfill regulations, subdivision reviews and land use planning. Burke, 67, said he also has good working relationships with federal, state and local city and town officials.

One area in which Burke finds fault with the current commission is the county’s landfill de-partment. He said the loss of the city of Powell’s trash to the cheaper Billings landfill “was due, in large part, to wasteful expense budget that the landfill has.

“Once we get the budget back in line, then Park County government can lower the tipping fees and allow the city of Powell and outlying

areas to return to the landfill,” Burke said.He also criticized the commission’s vote to

give $5,000 to the American Lands Council, a Utah organization that lobbies for the transfer of most federal lands to state control. Burke

said the commission (which may not actually make the payment) was us-ing taxpayer dollars for a “personal political agenda” and faulted them for not seeking public input first.

“Once you send money out of state, it’s gone,” Burke added. “That tax money will never be used to help our infrastructure or to create jobs in Park County.”

He has similar criticism of the county’s spending on Ecosystem Re-search Group (ERG) — a Bozeman, Mont., based consulting firm. ERG helps prepare technical comments

on public lands issues of concern to the county, like plans that guide use of Yellowstone Nation-al Park, the Shoshone National Forest and the Big Horn Basin’s BLM land. Commissioners have said ERG provides exceptional technical expertise that’s worth the money, while Burke says there are Park County experts.

“We need to be on top of our public lands is-sues, but we don’t need to be sending hundreds of thousands of dollars out of state,” he said.

Burke said he worked to reduce payments to ERG during his time as a commissioner be-

tween 2009-2012.Burke was also critical of the commission’s

approach to the region’s BLM lands while on the board; in 2011, he said comments prepared by ERG for the county were tilted too heavily toward the oil and gas industry.

Burke said he’s highly supportive of greater extraction of minerals in existing oil and gas fields.

“That’s where the vast resources are and that’s where the minimal damage to the envi-ronment would occur,” he said, adding, “As we reach further and further away from those oil fields into pristine and remote areas, that’s where I start my objections.”

Burke said public lands should be used in a common sense and balanced way that sustains them for future generations.

His past experience includes 13 years as a district manager for more than 30 Montgomery Ward stores, 10 years in sales at Flom’s Ford and 12 years in materials management at West Park Hospital. He’s just finishing a two-year term on the hospital’s elected board of direc-tors, successfully running for that position in 2012 after deciding not to seek re-election to the commission at that time.

“Since there’s an election every other year, I thought it might be wise to step out for two years,” he said. “I’m very able and have the time to pursue another term as a commis-sioner.”


Park County CommissionersProfileDave Burke

DAVE BURKE


Tim French says his experience, hard work and common sense are some of the things that set him apart in the race for

the Park County Commission.“I’m not afraid to speak out,” French

added.The 60-year-old Heart Moun-

tain farmer is seeking a fifth term in office and is one of eight Repub-lican candidates for three commis-sion seats. He says the county is well-run and in good condition.

“We’re replacing the bridges, we’re updating the roads, we’re updating the infrastructure as we can afford it,” French said. “We’re not excessive in what we’re build-ing, and I’m proud that we’re maintaining what we’ve got.”

Over his 14 years in office, French said he’s helped the county add a modern Informa-tion Technology Department, a professional Buildings and Grounds Department to main-tain the county’s assets, build a new jail and upgrade roads as able.

French, spearheaded a 2012 campaign that opposed a proposal to increase the county’s sales tax by 1 cent. While acknowledging the campaigning was unpopular with “a certain crowd,” he proudly said that “voters agreed with me and voted it down.”

“I just thought it was really a bad thing to do,” French said. It would drive more busi-ness to Billings and be tough on people with fixed incomes and families, he said. He thinks there will be another push for the tax in two years and doesn’t think it’s wise.

Other future topics on French’s radar are completing a new multi-use facility at the Park County Fairgrounds and determining what to do with the county’s landfills.

The county decided years ago, in the face of new regulations, that it was most cost-effec-tive to consolidate to one full-service landfill in Cody. The new, modern trash cell at the

Cody site will fill up in six to eight years and French said the then-commissioners and customers will have to decide “if they want a sec-ond cell built or not.”

Over the past few years, the commission abandoned previous indications that it would provide subsidies to the outlying communi-ties, like Powell, to compensate for the loss of landfill service. That’s one reason why the city of Powell left the county’s landfills for cheap-er rates elsewhere.

“Hopefully, Powell will come back to us,” French said.

Lobbying federal land managers on the use of public lands has also been a primary com-mission topic, with both Shoshone National Forest and local Bureau of Land Management officials writing new land use plans.

French said he likes wilderness as much as anybody, but he also mentioned the im-portance of keeping lands and roads open to the public and the importance of oil and gas development. He said development is nothing like decades ago and “is well done nowadays.”

French is proud of his years of work lobby-ing for continued snowmobiling in and east entrance access to Yellowstone National Park during the winter.

As for Park County land planning, French said as more and more houses pop up, more people turn to commissioners to resolve their disputes with neighbors. He said those are best addressed through homeowners’ asso-ciations and covenants.

“It’s not really our job,” French said.The “big private property rights person”

said the county does try to ensure develop-ments are designed well and in a way that avoids future problems.

“It’s tough,” French said. “When you be-lieve in private property rights, you can’t be putting a bunch of restrictions on people just for the heck of it.”

When he ran for election in 2010, French promised he wouldn’t accept the pay raises that other commissioners approved for 2012-14 and “I’d be a hypocrite if I take it.”

French did end up taking the increased pay — a total of $4,500 over the last three years — but said he offset it by personally absorbing about that amount of travel and other com-mission-related expenses that he could have charged to the county. He said he also made donations to a couple charities, including the Wounded Warriors Project and the Serenity Pregnancy Resource Center.

“That’s how I handled it, right or wrong,” he said.

French was born in Cody, raised on Heart Mountain and schooled in Powell. He attend-ed then-Northwest Community College with the intent of being a teacher, but ultimately went into farming.

“The county commissioners, they repre-sent everybody in the county, but I am proud to be the only county commissioner that’s from the Powell area,” French said. “I think that’s important.”


Park County CommissionersProfileTim French

TIM FRENCH


Loren Grosskopf says he wants to keep making a difference on the Park County Commission — particularly in

helping push for fewer restrictions on federal public lands.

“Because of my qualifications, my unique background, I think I bring something valuable to the commissioners,” he said recently, adding that he enjoys the job.

As he seeks re-election to a sec-ond four-year term, Grosskopf said he continues to have the time and energy needed for the post.

The Cody resident and unof-ficially retired certified public ac-countant is one of eight Republican candidates seeking three available seats on the commission.

Grosskopf, 65, moved to Cody in 1972 to work for Husky Oil Company. He’s been a county resident ever since, amassing more than 40 years of financial experience with Husky Oil and a number of other companies.

“I’ve had upper-level managerial (experi-ence), running big companies, little com-panies,” Grosskopf said. “I’ve owned my business, so I understand what it’s like to make payroll for small businesses.”

In the coming four years, he said one of the biggest challenges for the county will be dealing with federal actions in Yellowstone National Park, the Shoshone National For-

est and local Bureau of Land Management-administered lands that “will have dramatic impacts on us.”

He expects there to be litigation over some land plans now in the works.

“I think most people, we just want to keep things they way there are,” Grosskopf said. “We don’t believe we need more rules and regulations.”

He’d like to see more flexible and site-specific regulations.

Grosskopf — who’s an ATV and snowmobiling advocate and club member — said it is a challenge to balance uses. For example, he noted the wide variety of outdoor enthusiasts who all want to use the relatively small part of the Shoshone that’s not wilderness or

roadless.However, “We can learn to share — and we

need to,” he said. “I don’t want to be one of the guys that is on a group that excludes other people.”

Grosskopf has represented the commission in the planning processes for both the Sho-shone and local BLM plans. He’s also helped develop the Wyoming County Commissioners Association’s positions on issues involving energy and the environment and has repre-sented Wyoming’s counties on the board of the National Association of Counties (NaCo).

At a recent NaCo meeting in Louisiana, Grosskopf helped push the organization to adopt a number of resolutions that he said

move local concerns “up the ladder” to the national level. They include: urging the BLM to speed up oil and gas leasing, opposing the listing of sage grouse as an endangered spe-cies, objecting to an Environmental Protec-tion Agency proposal to put more bodies of water under federal oversight, supporting permanent funding of federal Payments in Lieu of Taxes to counties, opposing new regulations for coal-fired power plants and opposing federal regulations on the use of hydraulic fracturing.

With NaCo’s lobbying influence — the group represents some 80 percent of the na-tion’s county governments — “That’s a lot of horsepower for Park County and the Big Horn Basin to have in Washington, D.C.,” Grosskopf said.

As for goals in the coming years, Grosskopf said he’d like to see the completion of the new multi-use facility at the Park County Fair-grounds, more accounting expertise brought into the clerk’s or treasurer’s offices to help improve the county’s audit performance and a continuation of efforts to turn more of the county’s dirt roads into gravel ones and more gravel roads into chip sealed ones.

On the topic of planning and zoning, Gross-kopf said that in general, a landowner’s pri-vate property rights should trump everything else, but “that only goes so far when you’re doing something that has an impact on your neighbors” and it becomes necessary for the county to step in.

“That’s the hard part of the job — where does that (impact) cross the line,” he said.


Park County CommissionersProfileLoren Grosskopf

LORENGROSSKOPF


Park County CommissionersProfileDonna “Dee” Guelde

Cody man drops out of commission race


Donna “Dee” Guelde says she would bring a different perspective to the Park County Commission.

“I want to see business growth — new jobs and job growth,” Guelde said recently.

The rural Meeteetse resident wants the county to entice manufacturers to the area using things such as loans and grants. Guelde also would rather see the county help build a Powell convention center than a new multi-use facility at the Park County Fairgrounds.

“I don’t think we need any new taxes, I think we just need to make better use of the money we have,” Guelde said. “My forte is financial management, financial analysis, so I have a lot of ideas.”

Guelde — who runs a small turkey farm with her husband — said she previously worked as a financial investigator for government and businesses, including casinos.

“I can really spot places where you could make improvements or make changes or maybe where something could be done bet-ter,” the Republican said.

She specifically mentioned the road and bridge department.

Guelde faulted the commission for plan-

ning to have the department demolish old buildings at the fairgrounds (“that wasn’t (a) road and bridge job”) while telling residents of a rural Cody subdivision that the county doesn’t have the money to take over the main-tenance of their private road (“that is the job of road and bridge”).

As general budget principles, Guelde does not support across-the-board cuts (they

“might not be enough in some situ-ations and way too much in other situations”) nor would she would she advocate for cutting any county jobs.

“It’s really not how much you collect or how much you spend. It’s what you accomplish with the bud-get, and I think that really is where I come from — that we should may-be be accomplishing more with the budget,” she said.

Guelde wants Park County to use county and state money to draw

in high-tech industry. Skilled workers in the county could help manufacture things such as medical prosthetics, cell phones, micro-waves, tablets or bicycles, she said.

“Those things are all very well-paying in-dustry jobs, or can be if they’re properly capi-talized, which we can afford to do, because we do get a lot of money from the federal govern-ment and a lot of money is available to create those kind of opportunities,” Guelde said.

If Park County has the money to build new

government buildings, maybe it should in-stead use the funds for creating jobs, she said.

“For $2.1 million (roughly the amount the county will put into the new fair building), ... we could buy a tour bus terminal and set it in operation. We could do it with a cooperative or an improvement district and start bringing people and more jobs and money into Pow-ell,” she said.

Calling the planned fair building too lim-ited to draw beyond the immediate area, Guelde would prefer the county budget for, and seek state money for, a convention center with a hotel and restaurants.

“I think that’s the one missing link for Pow-ell to take advantage of the beautiful town they’ve become,” she said.

Another of the current commission’s pri-orities has been engaging with federal land managers about the future use of the area’s public lands. Guelde’s priority would be to make sure they remain accessible to the public.

“I think there’s enough fences and no tres-pass signs out there in this country without contributing to that problem,” she said.

As for the county’s planning and zoning policies, Guelde said she’s heard complaints about trash and junk and believes the county rarely pursues violations.

“I would like to see Planning and Zoning (the department) given a little more leeway to try to take care of some of these problems,” she said.

DONNA GUELDE

The field of Republican contenders for the Park County Commission has narrowed to eight candidates.

Cody resident Paul Lanchbury announced Monday that he was withdrawing from the race.

Lanchbury cited personal reasons for the decision.

His withdrawal leaves incumbent commis-sioners Tim French, Loren Grosskopf and Joe Tilden and challengers Dave Burke of rural Cody, Donna “Dee” Guelde of Meeteetse, Pat Slater of rural Powell, Gina Sowerwine of Wa-piti and Jo Walker of Cody in the running for three available seats on the five-member board.


Pat Slater thinks his 30 years of expe-rience in public service is going to waste. That’s one reason why he’s run-

ning for the Park County Com-mission.

“I just want to give people a choice,” Slater said. “I think it’s time for some new blood in the commissioners’ office.”

The rural Powell resident is one of eight Republican candi-dates running for three open seats on the Park County Commission. He wants to “serve the commu-nity and the Powell area.”

“I just don’t think Powell has enough representation on the commission at this point. I know everybody tries to represent the entire county, but ...” he said, trailing off.

Slater added that he doesn’t want to attack anyone on the commission, calling public service a difficult job and tipping his hat to those who serve.

“I think everybody goes into it for the right reasons: they want to serve their com-munity and do what they think is right,” he said.

Slater, 61, now works as a carpenter. Prior to that, he worked for the Powell Rec-reation District from 1979 to 2008, the last

15 years as its director. That work, coupled with some 17 years on the Park County Parks and Recreation Board, trained him on budgets and handling public funds.

He said it won’t take him long to get up to speed as a commissioner.

“I’ve got that training and I’ve got the experience to step right into the budget and be able to ana-lyze what’s going on,” Slater said.

His biggest concern is how the county’s tax dollars are spent.

“I think overall we need to be tighter with them,” Slater said. He said every dollar should be justified by some kind of return on the taxpayers’ investment.

“I think that’s what taxes are: they’re an investment in our com-munity and our services,” he said.

Slater said that if elected, he would need to study the county’s operations — including visiting with employees — before honing in on any one area for tightening.

He thinks the county does a pretty good job providing quality services, but believes maintaining that quality will be a growing challenge amid rising costs.

“We have to look at where we can stream-line and where we can save,” Slater said. He complimented the current commissioners for putting money in reserves.

“Hopefully, that’s going to continue, be-cause there’s going to come a crunch one of

these days,” he said.Slater expects challenges with the coun-

ty’s landfills to be “front and center for a long time,” along with management of the area’s federally owned public lands. He’s supportive of efforts to have federal lands transfered to state control and thinks com-missioners should be open to anything that secures access to and multiple use of public lands in Park County.

“Hate to lose any more for wilderness protection and those kinds of things,” Slater said.

A fisherman, shooter and supporter of snowmobiling in Yellowstone National Park, Slater also said the “huge” number of local ATV and off-highway vehicle users should be supported on local public lands with an eye toward multiple use.

“Work out the details so everybody can enjoy it: the hikers and the joggers and the riders,” he said.

On resolving planning and zoning dis-putes, Slater said decisions should involve gathering as much information possible, considering the rights of the property own-er’s plus those of nearby property owners and “trying to do the right thing.”

Slater still disagrees with a 2011 com-mission decision that allowed a developer to add an extra two homes alongside his subdivision, saying the neighbors weren’t considered, but he also acknowledged it’s impossible to make everyone happy.


Park County CommissionersProfilePat Slater

PAT SLATER


Gina Sowerwine says she not running for the Park County Commission with any agenda, just a desire to represent

the views of the area’s women, families and young adults.

Noting that the five-member commission is currently made up of five men, Sowerwine said she’d simply like to bring a different perspective.

“I’m not a politician; I don’t want to debate the current issues. Instead, I would like to represent the women and young adults on all issues for the next four years — because at any point in time we’ve got important issues,” Sowerwine said.

She added later that she feels the job is “more than just an argu-ment about a few topics.”

With two young adult children, “I feel I know their interests and needs in our county and I just offer that perspective,” she said.

When asked what appealed to her about being on the commission, the 45-year-old Wapiti resident said she’s been a landowner for about 20 years, a Park County resident for

more than 30 and “I just feel that I have an overall knowledge of the county.”

Sowerwine and her husband, Jon, have owned the lower Trout Creek Ranch since 1994 and owned and operated a number of businesses, including the Wapiti Lodge, the Wapiti Valley Trading Post and Yellowstone Adventure Tours.

Sowerwine said she’s been a wife, mother (of three boys who are fifth generation Park County residents) and a homemaker for her family. Her oldest son recently graduated from Northwest College in Powell and her youngest son is attending Cody High School, from which Sowerwine graduated in 1987.

Sowerwine began volunteering at the Wapiti school when her old-est started kindergarten, helping organize and run many events through the parent-teacher group

during the 11 years her children attended the school.

For the past nine years, Sowerwine has worked as a school employee. She began as a special education para-educator and now serves as the school’s secretary and as a regu-lar para-educator.

Sowerwine helped restart the gymnastics

program at the Cody Recreation Center last year and continues to teach classes there.

One of a commissioner’s jobs is to repre-sent local residents in federal land manage-ment decisions. Sowerwine generally thinks the more local control of federal lands, the better.

“The people who use the lands locally should be the ones who decide on what to do with it,” she said. “So, any time you can take the federal control away, it always benefits the citizens.”

Sowerwine has similar thoughts as to how she would — as a very general philosophy — resolve conflicts over planning and zoning disputes over private property rights.

“People should be allowed to do with their land what they chose to do,” she said. “Again, the more control that people try to have over what people are doing with their own prop-erty — it just shouldn’t be that way.”

As for her approach to the county budget, Sowerwine goes back to her overall goal of wanting to represent the women, children and children of Park County and “whatever would benefit those people of our county and their interests, for their groups and their indi-vidual organizations.”

Sowerwine is one of eight Republicans seeking three available seats on the commis-sion.


Park County CommissionersProfileGina Sowerwine

GINA SOWERWINE


I enjoy the job and I think I am serving the citizens of Park County well.”

Joe Tilden said that — in a nutshell — is why he’s running for re-election to the Park County Commission.

Beyond that, Tilden said he also wants to see some things through. His priorities include the construc-tion of a new multi-use facility at the Park County Fairgrounds and, at the top of the list, the county’s continued involvement in plans that will guide future use of the area’s federal lands. Those include the Shoshone National Forest and local Bureau of Land Management properties.

“I think it’s very important that we have people at the table dealing with our federal land managers that are familiar with the pro-cess and know the issues,” Tilden said. “I think that’s the most important thing that Park County has facing it at this point in time.”

Tilden — who currently manages the Big Hat Ranch on the South Fork — said he has that knowledge. He pointed to his recent work representing the commission in BLM and Shoshone planning processes, plus past

experience as a licensed outfitter on Forest Service lands, as a cattle grazing permittee on BLM lands and as a former president of the Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife. He’s twice traveled to Washington, D.C., to lobby for the delisting of wolves and to discuss the

management of other endangered species, like grizzly bears.

“I’ve had a lot of experience with them,” Tilden said of the his dealings with the federal gov-ernment, chuckling, “Forty-plus years, I’m sorry to say.”

As for public lands’ importance, Tilden calls it the county’s “life-blood.” Oil and gas production, agriculture and tourism are the county’s economic drivers and “all three of those things in some way, shape or form have to deal with

the federal and agencies, when you figure 82 percent of Park County is federal land,” Tilden said.

While acknowledging there are special areas and “no one — and I mean no one — ap-preciates the wilderness as much as I do,” Tilden generally wants to see protections and regulations relaxed and the door kept open for future opportunities. That includes oil and gas development and, in the case of the Shoshone, perhaps a new trail for motorized vehicles.

Environmental groups often emphasize the importance of using federal lands for tourism and “tourism’s a great thing. It brings in a lot of money to Park County, especially the Cody area,” said Tilden. “But the majority of tour-ism jobs are minimum wage and they’re sea-sonal. They’re not jobs that people can really work on a year-round basis and raise a family and make a living at — where oil and gas is; agriculture is.”

Beyond the experience with public lands, Tilden, 63, has worked as a cattle rancher, guest rancher and a licensed securities dealer while also serving on the Cody Medical Foun-dation and school boards.

“I think I bring a diverse background to the county commission,” he said.

Tilden describes himself as extremely fiscally conservative and is proud of the county’s recent budgets. He said this year’s budget gave all employees a 2 percent raise — plus an additional 10 percent for sheriff’s deputies to try to curb turnover — while still putting about $2 million in reserves and maintaining the county’s infrastructure. Go-ing forward, Tilden hopes the budget will allow for the county to chip seal more roads.

Another big issue Tilden sees on the hori-zon is an upcoming rewrite of the county’s land use plan, written in 2000. He said he plans to “just listen” during the rewrite and hopes people will participate in the process.


Park County CommissionersProfileJoe Tilden

JOE TILDEN


Park County CommissionersProfileJo Walker


Jo Walker decided to run for county com-missioner after five years of watching Wyoming lawmakers and becoming

deeply concerned about the direction they appear to be steering the state.

Walker said she sees a push to make the state more like Colora-do, which she’s watched go from conservative red to liberal blue.

“It is because of what I’ve seen going on in Cheyenne, but I love Park County. I love the way of life, the family values, the heri-tage. This is a very special place and so I’m running and want to protect it for you,” she said in a recent interview, adding, “I want to protect your private property rights. I want to protect your liberties and your freedoms.”

When asked why she chose to run for the commission rather than the Legislature, Walker said she can be more effective as a commissioner because “every aspect of your life to some degree is touched by what the commissioners do; your quality of life and how much you lose, as far as freedoms go.”

Walker, a Cody resident, is one of nine Re-publicans running for the commission.

She said she’s ready to work with the rest

of the commission to help fight a two-front war with the state and federal governments against the push to close public lands. She said she understands the threats posed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Bureau of Land Management, the Wyo-ming Department of Environmental Quality

and “sustainable development.” Walker believes federal lands should be transferred to state ownership.

She came to Park County in 2009, following her son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren (who live in Powell).

The tea party supporter knows some people see her relatively recent arrival to the county as a detriment, but “what they don’t understand is ... coming from the ‘People’s Republic of Portland,

Oregon,’ you come in with an experience and exposure and a perspective that the other (eight) candidates don’t have.”

As a Christian, Walker said the Bible is her life’s plumb line and that she would use the U.S. and Wyoming Constitutions, along with state law, as her plumb line for making county decisions.

She said she has character and integrity and digs into topics with research on both sides of the issue to find out what people think.

Walker said she would be committed to the job, noting she’s attended nearly every commission meeting and work session since declaring her candidacy.

She does have a preference of who she’d like to replace on the commission (she won’t say who), but isn’t running because of any particular grievance.

“It’s very easy to complain and moan and groan ... (as) an outsider looking in, because they don’t know everything,” she said.

Walker, who is 70, was a stay-at-home mother until the youngest of her three chil-dren left for college. Walker then worked at her late husband’s insurance agency and sold property as a real estate agent.

She also worked as a CNA at West Park Hospital in Cody and more recently helped Romanian immigrant John Muntean tell his life story in the book, “Willing to Die: The True Story of John Muntean.” Muntean put his life on the line to escape the communist country with his family during the Cold War. Walker said that through her work on the book, she became more aware of the ways that communism — and it’s aim of control-ling every aspect of people’s lives — has been advancing in America since the late 1950s.

Walker said she’s fiscally conservative and supports a property owner’s right to do what they wish with their land if it’s inline with the law.

JO WALKER


Six of the Republican candidates for the Park County Commission laid out differ-ent priorities at a Monday night forum,

ranging from overhauling the county’s land-fills to fighting new taxes.

The six contenders — among eight Repub-licans running for three available commission seats — spoke at Northwest College during a forum hosted by the Park County Republican Women.

Incumbent Commissioner Loren Gross-kopf, a retired accountant from Cody, said the top concern will be dealing with a shrinking stream of funding. He noted that roughly 10 percent of the county’s budget (around $2.5 million) is federal funding that currently is in jeopardy.

“We (the county) did reduce our spending almost 8 percent last year, and we held the line this year, so I think we’re almost halfway there, and I think we can do that,” said Gross-kopf, who cited his accounting experience. “But it won’t be easy.”

Former Park County Commissioner Dave Burke, a rural Cody resident, said his biggest priority is the landfill, calling it the issue that affects every taxpayer.

“Somehow, we have to get the budget of the landfill back in line where it belongs and get the cost of the landfill down so that all resi-dents can afford to use it,” Burke said.

Jo Walker, an author from Cody, said her priority would be doing everything possible to get federal lands transferred to the ownership of the state of Wyoming.

“Then we won’t have any money issues,” Walker said, saying she’s not comfortable with relying on federal money.

Incumbent Commissioner Tim French, a Heart Mountain farmer, said the county will have to deal with two big issues. One, he said, is an upcoming Bureau of Land Management plan for the Big Horn Basin that will have “huge” impacts on oil and gas development, recreation and grazing. He also expects an-other campaign for an extra 1 cent sales tax in the county; French led opposition to the tax in 2012 and voters killed it.

“That’s something I fought and you agreed,” he said.

Pat Slater, a carpenter and former director of the Powell Recreation District, said it’s dif-ficult to single out one topic among tightening budgets, the landfill system and public land use. He said it is critical to keep fighting fed-eral efforts to cut down on multiple use and citizen’s rights.

“Anybody who sits up here at this table that’s not willing to fight shouldn’t be here, because we have a fight ahead of us, for four

years, for eight years — however long it takes,” Slater said. “We’ve got to battle every day to protect Park County.”

Incumbent Commissioner Joe Tilden also cited a need to deal with federal overreach in land management. He noted more than 80 percent of the county is federally owned and that nearly two-thirds of the county’s tax base comes from oil and gas development.

“We need people that are willing to find that balance — to protect the wildlife, protect the environment and also allow additional development and multiple use on what small portion of federal lands that we have that are still available for multiple use in this state,” Tilden said.

Gina Sowerwine, a para-educator and secretary at the Wapiti school, was unable to attend Monday’s event, making her the only candidate to miss both of the forums hosted by the Republican women. She sent a statement stating her desire to represent the women, children and families of Park County.

Donna Dee Guelde, a rural Meeteetse resi-dent who owns a small turkey farm, did not at-tend Monday’s forum or send a statement.

Burke, who clashed with his former com-mission colleagues throughout the event, stood alone in his criticism of the commissioners’ extensive use of a Bozeman, Mont., based con-sulting firm called Ecosystem Research Group (ERG). The group pulls together scientific information to help shape and back up com-missioners’ positions on public lands — such as their opposition to portions of land use plans proposed by officials with the Shoshone Na-tional Forest and the BLM.

Burke said counties and conservation dis-tricts around the Big Horn Basin, led by Park and Fremont Counties, have sent $991,000 of mostly state of Wyoming money to ERG over the past five years.

“This is an enormous waste of taxpayer money,” Burke said, saying the money is now gone from the state.

“It will never create jobs, it will never main-tain any buildings out there, it will never help anybody’s payroll,” Burke said. He said the needed expertise on land issues is available in Park County.

“I tried before to get the commissioners to hire local biologists, ecologists, retired BLM, Forest Service, Game and Fish, ranchers who have been on the land over 100 years — people who know this land — and they refused to do it,” Burke said. “They go back up to the same place up there in Montana. It’s wrong.”

Slater, however, said commissioners should aim to seek out the most knowledgeable people they can “and if this particular group is based in Montana, I see nothing wrong with that.” He said commissioners should gather as much in-formation as possible and the best information

possible, “and it sounds like that’s what the commissioners are doing.”

Walker, who noted she isn’t as familiar with the topic as those connected to the county, said it is very important to look first to local experts and businesses.

“My question is, if all of the people were hired that Dave (Burke) tried to get them to hire, then over years, would that not be a great deal more than $990,000?” Walker said. “I don’t know the answer to that.”

The three incumbent commissioners said Ecosystem Research Group’s expertise is un-matched.

“There isn’t any local groups or even state-wide that are qualified,” said Grosskopf. He said the group has been used by the state of Montana, the state of Wyoming and the U.S. Forest Service. Grosskopf noted that the group composed extremely detailed and technical comments on the Bureau of Land Management proposed land use plan on behalf of four coun-ty commissions and six conservation districts across the Big Horn Basin.

“None of the counties or the cooperators had the manpower or the knowledge to write 775 pages of very detailed explanations why we disagreed with the BLM,” Grosskopf said.

Tilden said ERG has former game war-dens and biologists, hydrologists and grazing experts on staff and knows how to find any expertise it doesn’t have in-house. Tilden also said the group is key to building an adminis-trative record for potential litigation and chal-lenges to land managers’ decisions.

“Without it (the administrative record), you basically have no voice,” Tilden said.

French specifically praised ERG for “prov-ing” that lynx were not in Yellowstone Na-tional Park and for identifying oil wells, power lines, roads, stock ponds and fences on lands the BLM had described as having wilderness characteristics.

“They bring a lot of science to it, and they help us make a better decision on these federal issues,” French said.

All the candidates agreed the position is a full-time commitment and that the current sal-ary of $36,174.50.

In her closing statement, Walker pledged to stay on top of county issues — including threats to private property — and to work to improve public access to the commission, including online video streaming of meetings and radio announcements. She said what she’s heard most often on the campaign trail is a perception that the commission “is a good old boy system.”

“I don’t know that that is true, but be as-sured that I am not and will not be part of any good old boy system,” Walker said.


Park County CommissionersForumCandidates see different priorities for county

see forum 1, page 35


Six of the eight Republican candidates for the Park County Commission sparred at a forum in Cody last week,

with their views on federal lands emerging as a topic of contention.

Each made their pitches to voters during the July 15 forum hosted by the Park County Re-publican Women.

Jo Walker, a Cody author and former CNA, cited threats to private property rights from state and federal agencies as part of her reason for running.

“I will do everything I can to help preserve our liberties, our conservatism in this state,” Walker said

Commissioner Joe Tilden, a South Fork ranch manager, said the current board of com-missioners is functioning very well and said it was important for the county to continue push-ing federal officials for more use of local public lands.

“If you’re looking for some type of hope and change, this is not the time for it,” Tilden said.

Pat Slater, a former Powell Recreation Dis-trict manager, said he wanted to continue his service to the community and to help the county control its own destiny rather than “have it given to us by someone in Washington, D.C.”

“I’m looking to stand up for the residents Park County and continue the fight that com-missioners are doing every day for us,” Slater said.

Donna “Dee” Guelde, a Meeteetse resident, said she wants to see money better used around the county and also wants to see investments in high-tech industry, like the manufacture of medical prosthetic devices.

“That’s where we really need to be thinking

— what we’re going to be doing in the future, what our children are going to be doing in the future,” Guelde said.

Commissioner Tim French, a Heart Moun-tain farmer, similarly said the commission isn’t perfect, but “there’s not a lot people can criti-cize (about) how the commissioners operate the county.” French said he’s done his best to improve Park County.

Dave Burke, a Cody resident who served on the commission from 2009 to 2012, said he would watch residents’ money and look for ways to make things better for everyone.

“If I get re-elected, I will continue to learn, I will listen to the residents and I will ask a lot more questions,” Burke said.

Commissioner Loren Grosskopf was at a National Association of Counties Meeting in Louisiana and unable to attend the forum, but he sent a statement. Grosskopf said he opposes further restrictions and regulations on federal lands, and will continue to advocate for plans that provide greater flexibility and consider the impacts on local jobs and revenue beforehand. Grosskopf also said he “would never sacrifice any square foot of our precious resources.”

Gina Sowerwine, a para-educator and secre-tary at the Wapiti school, also did not make the forum, but sent a statement read at the event.

“I’ve always remained focused on family, my true inspiration, and this position as county commissioner would give me the opportunity to represent the mothers and families of Park County,” Sowerwine said in the statement.

Federal lands dominated much of the discus-sion, including criticism of the commission’s May vote to give $5,000 to the American Lands Council — a group that distributes information in favor of transferring many public lands to state control. The commission has not actually given the money.

Burke said he was “outraged” by the vote and described a transfer as unlikely. He faulted commissioners for not consulting the public be-fore voting to send money to what he called an out-of-state group of lawyers.

“If it (a transfer) ever did happen — which it won’t — all (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) money and other federal subsidies would stop instantly and all of a sudden Wyoming would have to spend an unbelievable amount of money man-aging these lands,” Burke said. “And I’m sure Wyoming isn’t in that position to do that.”

Guelde also faulted the commission for the vote.

She said both sides of the debate over trans-ferring the lands have merit, “and if the county commissioners wanted to make that contribu-tion out of their own pocket, I don’t think any-body would have any problem at all, but when they choose to use public funds to take one side of the issues as they did, then it’s not fair.”

Guelde said her only concern is losing public access.

In contrast, Walker said Wyoming should do everything it can to get the land back from the federal government. She cited American Lands Council information saying land under state control has a much higher return on the money invested.

“We need to have control of our own lands,” she said.

Slater also said he supports “anything we can to fight for public access” and the American Lands Council “sounds really good.”

“My concern with the contribution is simply that whatever money is spent by the commis-sioners, I believe the taxpayers need to have some return on their investment, because that’s where the money comes from,” Slater said.


Park County CommissionersForum

Federal lands issues divide hopefuls for commission

Forum 1: Incumbents team up

Slater said his experiences working for and then running the Powell Recreation District and serving on the county’s Parks and Rec-reation board would be assets as a commis-sioner. He also promised to fight for personal property rights “for all of Park County resi-dents” and to preserve what the county has.

Burke said the county is his passion and that he would watch taxpayers’ money care-fully. He said the county’s budget has grown too since he left the board in 2012. (Grosskopf

responded that it’s been roughly flat).“When I criticize some budget issues, that’s

the businessman coming out in me and it al-ways will,” Burke said.

The three incumbents encouraged voters to support all three of them for re-election.

Grosskopf said the current commissioners bring a diverse set of backgrounds to the table, with himself offering a strong financial per-spective from his days as an accountant.

“I’m a serious candidate for a serious job,” he said.

French said he’s done his best to update

the county’s infrastructure in a financially responsible way and that the county stands in Wyoming as well-run.

“We’ve done a good job, for you,” he told the audience.

Tilden, who noted his past budget experi-ence with his own business, the Cody school board and the commission, similarly said he was proud of his and the commission’s record.

“I think the commission we have right now ... have served this county extremely well, and I hope that you will allow us to continue to serve,” Tilden said.

see forum 2, page 36


“You need to be able to justify that expense.”French and Tilden each said the county is

now unsure as to whether the American Lands Council is the best way to advocate for the transfer of the lands, but defended the cause.

“I have no doubt that the state of Wyoming can manage those lands better than the federal government,” French said.

As for fears that the land would be sold to private enterprise after being transferred to the state, “I’d be the first one to scream bloody murder if they were going to sell a chunk of it,” French said.

In advocating the idea of a transfer, Tilden complained that federal decisions are made out of fear of litigation from the environmental community.

“It’s time that we find some way in the West to make the people back in Washington, DC, sit up and say, ‘Hey, these people out West are se-rious,’” Tilden said. As for federal subsidies like Payment in Lieu of Taxes going away, Tilden said the federal government now holds counties “hostage” with the uncertainty around the pay-ments and the county wouldn’t have to worry if the state got control of the lands and minerals.

One question specifically put Burke on the spot about his views on public lands, asking if it would be a conflict of interest to be both a com-missioner and a board member of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, as Burke is.

Burke said that with any topic or group, “you leave your personal opinions out in the hall when you walk into that (commission) board-room” and recuse yourself when necessary.

Burke said he found several good reasons to join the coalition.

“One thing I’ve learned to like about Greater Yellowstone Coalition is they do advocate job creation; they advocate it at the same time that they’re advocating ... multiple use of public lands,” he said.

In contrast, French — who said his “hair would curl up” if he joined an environmental group — said he couldn’t see how being a com-missioner and Greater Yellowstone Coalition member were compatible.

“All they want to do is take, take, take from what the people in Park County have,” he said, accusing the group of being “obstructionists.” He specifically cited disagreement with the group’s positions on winter use in Yellowstone National Park, wolf management and oil and gas development.

Tilden similarly said it would be a “a severe conflict of interest” for a commissioner to be a GYC board member, though he acknowledged he was a regular member for a year while on the commission.

“I thought they were trying to come back a little towards the middle and maybe over towards the right side and now they have new leadership and I believe they’re way back on the left,” Tilden said, also calling them obstruc-

tionists.Tilden noted he is a member of other orga-

nizations, including Wyoming Outdoorsman. However, he said that group lobbies for things everyone agrees on, such as public access, maintaining habitat for wildlife and bringing more youth into hunting and fishing.

Slater said a commissioner’s priority needs to be to represent the residents of Park County. He said most environmental groups are prob-ably trying to do the best they can to protect the environment for future generations, but he op-poses those who are working to block multiple use.

Walker said she believes that “if we citizens had been better stewards of our country that there may not be quite so many environmental groups” and that there is a place for them. How-ever, Walker said many have an agenda “that goes to controlling you, ... what you’re able to do with your land, where you’re able to go.”

Guelde said she didn’t see a conflict between being on the Greater Yellowstone Coalition board and the commission.

She said she’s a member of the Sierra Club, but has had a falling out with the group over its advocacy for wolves.

“They’re top predators,” Guelde said of the animals. “They don’t belong anywhere where people are.”

Guelde said she supports preservation, but doesn’t like the aggressive way some environ-mental groups handle issues.


Park County CommissionersForumForum 2: Environmental issues discussed



CLARK — The candidates for Park County Sheriff took some shots at one another during a Monday night forum

in Clark.Park County Sheriff Scott Steward’s two

challengers — Deputy Bruce Olson and for-mer deputy Roger Dunn — said the sheriff’s leadership is lacking, while Steward shot back that they were inventing problems.

“In order to justify running for sheriff, I think that some of my opponents, I think they have to raise issues and raise prob-lems that aren’t problems to be able to solve them,” Steward said.

Olson, meanwhile, leveled the most di-rect criticism of the sheriff to date when he said the county needs “a sheriff that’s full-time.” Pressed by an audience member for an example, the Powell area deputy faulted Steward for limited participation in the investigation of a Cody child’s 2012 kidnap-ping and rape.

The morning after the crime, “the sus-pect was still at large and the sheriff went hunting,” Olson charged.

“I believe that’s totally incorrect,” Stew-ard responded. “I did not go hunting.”

Saying he wasn’t going to go into details, Steward said there were “specific reasons” as to why his office wasn’t heavily involved in the case. He said the kidnapping started within Cody city limits and there was a lack of “control.”

Steward also said he relies on his super-visors, who represented his office in the investigation.

“When you’ve got a roomful of 40 people, ... at what point in time do you clog that up with people who are not going to be so much involved in that investigation as much as your subordinates and the people that are running, investigating for your agency?” the incumbent said.

Dunn, who served in agreed that the sheriff’s office needs to have its employees work as a team.

“I’m not saying Scott (Steward)’s not do-ing work, but he can’t do it all,” Dunn said. “You’ve got to have a team that’s going to perform.”

However, going back to concerns with the department’s current morale and turnover, he said that in order to perform, employees have to be happy and dedicated to the job.

Dunn said he’s in the campaign because people — including current sheriff’s depu-

ties — asked him to run and make a differ-ence. He said the department’s morale has generally been low for the past decade.

“It’s not good,” Dunn said. “Law enforce-ment isn’t what I expect, and what I would like for the people to understand (is), are you getting what you expect from law en-forcement?”

He also faulted Steward for not doing enough to keep up deputies’ pay with the Powell and Cody police departments.

Olson said this month’s pay hikes of about 12 percent are appreciated, but also “kind of overdue” and not enough to solve the issue with turnover. The 33-year de-partment veteran said the root problems are “a lack of communication and a lack of concern and care for employees.”

Boosting training and communications were two of Olson’s suggestions.

Steward, however, said he’s improved training and that recent changes to depu-ties’ schedules and (with the approval of county commissioners) their pay were in direct response to two top complaints he heard from those leaving the department.

“It’s tough as a government employee to sit up here and push for government raises, but we were really in a bad situation and we have been, so I spent last three years trying to educate commissioners, bringing them on board,” Steward said.

The roughly 60-person department has lost 42 employees over the past nine years, Steward has said, with four being retirees and seven being people who were asked to leave or were fired. He attributed a part of the problem to “employment terrors.”

Steward emphasized his experience in running the department for the past nine years and questioned the credentials of his opponents.

“I think simply just making a promise of what you’re going to do, without having that experience to do it or know what you’re getting into, is an issue,” Steward said. “As we know, change isn’t always a good thing. Look at our federal government.”

As for supervisory experience, Olson referenced his experience as administrator of the Park County jail, his nearly a decade and a half as a patrol sergeant and in orga-nizing Wyoming’s Special Olympics.

Dunn, who worked four years in the jail and 17 years as a Powell patrol deputy, noted that he’s run security at the Cody Stampede where he supervised about a dozen other people.

Steward also took aim at a statement Olson made a previous forum, where the

deputy said he wanted to “bring the honor and the respect back to the office of the sheriff here in Park County and get back the good reputation that we used to have.”

“I don’t really mind if we raise issues on training, on retention, on other issues — that I don’t feel are issues,” Steward said. “But I think to say that the sheriff’s office has lost honor and integrity is a slap in the face to all of our professional women and men serving today, and they’ve expressed that to me.

“With that said, how you can run an agency if you’re telling the officers in that agency they don’t have any honor and in-tegrity?” Steward said.

Olson responded that he’s “never ques-tioned the honor and integrity of the people that work for the Park County Sheriff’s Department.

“I think what I said was that you need to lead by example by showing honesty and integrity in every situation, both on-duty and off-duty,” Olson said.

Dunn also addressed Steward’s criticism.“As far as integrity and honesty, those

officers have that,” Dunn said. “What they need is more of a community leadership where that they can do their job the way they’re supposed to do their job.”

Now, he said officers have told him “they’re avoiding each other.”

The three candidates also faced a num-ber of questions from the Clark audience about how they would deal with federal government intrusion.

“The sheriff should be there in defense of the people and their rights,” said Dunn, saying the sheriff’s first job is to take care of the people.

What if the government came to collect people’s firearms?, came the follow-up question.

Steward said it depends on situation — such if the federal government was coming in with soldiers in armored cars.

“You can say we’re going to do this, we’re going to take up arms, we’re going to force them out — again, I have a department with 45 sworn officers. They’re not going to do a whole lot,” Steward said. “So it’s going to be (up to) the help of the people. If that’s what the will of the people is, that’s where we’re going to go.”

“I wouldn’t let anybody take my gun. I wouldn’t let anybody take anybody else’s guns either,” said Olson. “But like Scott (Steward) said, if somebody’s coming in here with a full-blown assault, we’re going to have a lot worse problem on our hands.”


Park County SheriffForumSheriff’s race heats up


Park County SheriffForumChallengers knock sheriff on issues


The two challengers to Park County Sher-iff Scott Steward faulted the incumbent for high employee turnover during a

Monday night forum in Cody.Steward agreed with Deputy

Bruce Olson and former deputy Roger Dunn that turnover has been too high, but he also said it’s not unique to Park County and that he’s taken (and is taking) steps to address it.

The three Republican contend-ers shared their backgrounds, qualifications, priorities and other thoughts on the position during the Park County Republican Women-hosted forum.

Steward touted his experience and said he’s made the department more proactive, improved training and responded to the needs of the public.

“As long as I’m passionate, I’ll continue to try to ask for your vote, do the job, but the day I’m not passionate about the job, then I’ll be done,” Steward said. “I’ve got a lot more things I want to accomplish.”

Olson cited a need for improve-ment in the department for his decision to run. That includes wanting to boost the department’s morale, training and communica-tion.

“First and foremost, I want Park County Sheriff’s Department to be a better place for the people of Park County and the people that work there,” he said.

Dunn said people asked him to run to give them another choice in the sheriff’s race. He said he’s running out of a desire to serve the people.

“They’re really anxious for a difference,” Dunn said of the folks he’s spoken with during the cam-paign. “That’s what I’m offering, is a difference.”

All three named turnover as the greatest challenge currently fac-ing the department.

“It’s been expensive training, losing them and coming back and doing it all over again,” said Dunn, who left the department in 2012 after more than 22 years as a deputy. “You’ve got to maintain the officers that are there in order to serve the public; that’s where they’re expecting, but (they) aren’t

getting it.”Dunn said later in the forum that the sher-

iff should come up with solutions that meet the needs of an employees’ family so the em-ployee can stay on staff.

“Treat your employee like they make a dif-ference and they will,” he added at another point.

Olson, who’s been with the de-partment for 33 years, recalled days past when officers from other agencies wanted to join the department because it “had a reputation for getting along with everybody.”

“Now, people are just leaving,” Olson said, attributing the loss of good, experienced employees to a “lack of concern.”

“When you don’t care about the people you work with and you

work for, they’re going to find someplace where they are appreciated,” Olson said, adding that, “I want to bring the honor and the respect back to the office of the sheriff

here in Park County and get back the good reputation that we used to have.”

Steward, seeking a third full term as sheriff, said the turnover has been “excessive for me and it’s not acceptable for me.”

He said that’s why he’s listened to deputies’ concerns about pay and shift work by adjusting sched-ules and recently pushing for pay hikes. Commissioners approved a roughly 12 percent boost in deputy pay this month; about 10 percent

came from a proposal made by Steward and another 2 percent from a hike going to all county employees.

“The pay increase is a tough thing to swal-low, even (in) an election year, be-cause it’s not the most politically smart thing to do,” Steward said. The incumbent said he chooses what he thinks is right over what’s politically correct.

Steward took issue with a state-ment from Olson that the depart-ment has lost “over 60 people in the last nine years” — the time Steward has been sheriff. Steward called Olson’s claim “quite an ex-aggeration.”

He didn’t provide a figure of his own at the forum, but when lobbying for the deputies’ wage increases last month, Steward told commissioners he thought the department had lost “roughly 51 people in

six years.”Steward told the Tribune in an interview

that he’d misspoken about the timeframe, having meant to say those losses had oc-curred since 2006. He also clarified, based on further review of department records, that the 50-person figure mistakenly included deputies who left the jail for the patrol divi-sion and actually stayed with the department.

Steward said there were actually 42 em-ployees who left in the last nine years, includ-ing four who retired, four who were asked to leave and three who were terminated.

Olson and Dunn also criticized Steward for a lack of communication between his office and other local law enforcement agencies, saying they’ve heard complaints from those entities.

“I think the sheriff of Park County is the sheriff of the entire Park County — not just Cody, not just Powell, but it’s Powell, Cody, Clark, Meeteetse, the North Fork, the South Fork,” said Olson. “We need to serve all those people and I think it’s really important that we make sure that we do that.”

Steward said he believes there’s good cooperation between his office and other lo-cal law enforcement agencies, noting joint training and work on criminal cases. He added that “leaders can have different phi-losophies.”

“You have to learn to disseminate informa-tion, work in a positive atmosphere togeth-er,” Steward said. “That doesn’t mean you’re going to agree with each other’s philosophies and the way you’re going to organize certain things.”

Dunn said he’s been told the communica-tion “is not as good as it should be.”

“It may be the difference in philosophies, but you still have to overcome those philoso-phies and work together for the good of the people,” he said. Dunn suggested more work be put into cooperation so there are ongoing discussions “not when it’s needed, but prior to it, so you know what you’re expecting” from the other agencies.

Dunn worked for the sheriff’s office from 1990 until 2012, spending five years assigned to the detention center and 17 years as a Powell area patrol deputy.

Steward also joined the sheriff’s office in 1990. His career has included work as a dispatcher, detention deputy, patrol deputy, patrol lieutenant, undersheriff and finally as sheriff starting in 2006.

Olson has worked as a Powell area patrol deputy, patrol sergeant, jail administrator and as a member of a Division of Criminal Investigation task force during his more than three decades with the sheriff’s office.

SCOTT STEWARD

BRUCE OLSON

ROGER DUNN


Park County SheriffForumCandidates make final case for office


Park County Sheriff Scott Steward says his challengers lack the leadership ex-perience needed for the job, while they

say his leadership has been lacking.Steward faces former Powell-area deputy

Roger Dunn and current Powell-based Dep-uty Bruce Olson in next week’s Republican primary election.

“I think when you look at these candidates and you look at all of us, I think what you need to do is really look at the actual experi-ence we have,” Steward said at an Aug. 5 fo-rum at Northwest College. “... Is it just years of service? Or is it years of leadership and leadership experience and proven leader-ship experience?”

Steward, who lives in Wapiti, said he was a leader with the U.S. Marine Corps during four years of military service and has spent 13 of his 28 years with the sheriff’s office in a leadership post. That includes time as a pa-trol lieutenant, undersheriff and, for the last nine years, as sheriff.

Steward — along with Olson — noted Dunn never served as a supervisor during his more than 22 years with the depart-ment and has been away from the job for two years. Olson said Dunn is “a really nice guy,” but noted he’s no longer a certified peace officer, so “he has no power of arrest, can’t drive a marked patrol patrol car or back up his deputies.”

Dunn, who now serves as a substitute driv-er for the Powell Senior Center, has said he would do whatever it takes to get re-certified if he’s elected sheriff.

Steward downplayed Olson’s experience as well. Olson spent 14 years as a patrol sergeant and a year and a half as jail admin-istrator, but Steward said Olson’s stint run-ning the jail was 25 years ago “for an agency or department about a third of what we have today with budget and manpower.”

“If you had a business of 60 men and women and a $5 million budget, would you fire your CEO and bring in somebody with very little experience when they (the CEO) have already been doing a good job in the community?” Steward asked the audience.

Olson, meanwhile, charged that Steward’s leadership “has demonstrated a high turn-over rate in the department.”

“Because of his lack of leadership, morale is at an all-time low point,” Olson added, say-

ing that employees are leaving “at an alarm-ing rate and at a great cost to the taxpayers of Park County.”

The department has lost 42 employees over the past nine years, Steward has said, with four being retirees and seven being fired or asked to leave.

Both Dunn and Olson said Steward has failed to show care and concern for depart-ment employees.

A deputy just completed his 30th year on the job and there “wasn’t a word said about it,” Olson said.

“When people do a good job, they go above and beyond, I think you need to recognize that,” he said.

Steward said the top two concerns he heard from departing deputies were about salaries and shift work. In addition to his recent successful push for higher pay and shuffling the schedule of shift work, Steward said he’s changed the department’s recruit-ing methods to find people who want to stay a long time.

He also said the problem isn’t specific to Park County and is instead a national trend; Olson and Dunn said Park County doesn’t need to follow that trend.

Dunn faulted Steward for not acting quickly enough to raise pay and address of-ficer departures to better-paying agencies.

“Over, what, the last eight, nine years, it’s just now come to some conclusion as to get-ting raises and stuff,” Dunn said. “How long does it take? How many did we lose until then?”

Dunn and Olson have both suggested that Steward should have taken the $200,000 to $400,000 he’s annually returned from his budget to the county’s general fund and in-stead repurposed it to boost officer wages.

“You need to reassign that money and put it where it’s needed most,” Dunn said. “May-be you don’t need to replace your desks this year, but you need to keep the employees.”

He acknowledged the sheriff doesn’t con-trol a lot of things related to the budget, but said the sheriff needs to work with the com-missioners to do whatever it takes.

Commissioners set the sheriff’s budget and employee pay rates; acting on a request from Steward, they raised deputies’ pay by 12 percent this year.

Olson also criticized Steward for having leftover money at all.

“That’s a lot of money, and if you haven’t been able to figure out your budget any

closer than that, I’m not sure I would call that fiscally responsible,” Olson said.

Steward rejected the idea of shuffling money among different areas of the budget as inappropriate.

“You identify those line items specifically for a specific purpose — whether it be for training, whether it be for equipment — and then you adhere to that,” Steward said, add-ing, “If you’ve got a bunch of money left over in ammunition or (the) furniture budget, you don’t go spend it on other things. You stay to that and you adhere to that as best you can and leave it for those specific line items, rather than spend the money just to spend it because you have it.”

Steward also said he found it ironic that he was being criticized for not spending tax-payer money.

Another criticism from Olson and Dunn was about the sheriff’s communication with the public and other law enforcement agen-cies.

Olson said that within his first 100 days in office, he would hold town hall meetings in Clark, Cody, Powell and Meeteetse.

Dunn said the sheriff needs to get out and meet people all the time and not just during election years.

“I’ve talked to several (people) and I said, ‘Are you getting what you expect from law enforcement?’ They said, ‘No,’ and several said they don’t even know who the sheriff is,” Dunn said. “I’m thinking community involvement includes the whole county — not just the selected few you have time for. You have to make time for the whole com-munity.”

Steward responded that he’s out in the community quite a bit.

“I think I’m very open to the public,” Steward said, saying his often approached on the street with concerns.

He also said that while town halls are great, they sometimes only draw a few people.

“I don’t feel that they’re valid problems,” Steward said generally of the criticisms that have been raised by his opponents. “I think they’re exaggerating issues for political agendas.”

Dunn and Olson have each made vague comments about the sheriff needing to have honesty and integrity. Steward said last week that he had faltered “a little bit” in his personal life in the past, but said he’s dealt with those issues and is now moving forward.


Tod Larson

Park County ClerkProfile


Tod Larson has worked with government agencies in other countries, Washington, D.C., Cheyenne and Park County — and

he wants to bring that background to the county clerk’s office.

“I’ve got a wide breadth and depth of government experience and understand budgeting and understand all the things that are required,” Larson said.

He said he has the potential “to turn the clerk’s office around” and provide exceptional support to the commissioners and citizens of Park County.

The 48-year-old Cody resident has worked as a teacher and coach (including student-teaching at Powell High School), in several supervisory posts in the Wyoming National Guard (includ-ing two deployments to Operation Iraqi Free-dom) and is the current administrator of the Park County Detention Center. Larson said his 25-year military career and experience as a leader, manager and administrator has enabled him to objectively analyze the way things are being done and find the most effec-tive way to do them.

“I’m not a guy to go in there and say, ‘By God, I know more than everybody, and I’m going to change everything,’” Larson said.

“I’m more of an analysis and research guy, because I don’t know why a certain task is done a certain way unless I go in and watch it and analyze it.”

The Cody High School graduate said he can ask the stupid questions to figure out what is and is not working and how things can be

made better.“You can improve everything,”

Larson said.He knows he would like to im-

prove the office’s “professional-ism,” but his main priority as clerk would be to find ways to “get gov-ernment out to the people.” Larson thinks there are opportunities to put more information and services online and “step into the new cen-tury.”

“The thing I’ve been thinking about the most is, how can I keep

someone from Powell or Meeteetse or Clark or whatever from driving to Cody to do a little paperwork that really lasts 10, 15 minutes and then turn around and go back — and you spend, you know half-a-day or so, thinking you’re going to couple another task with it,” Larson said.

He said Park County is not doing as well as he remembers it doing decades ago.

“You can see it in the cars people drive and the homes and things and it just, it really kind of breaks my heart. So if I can make even just one little area a little bit easier ...” Larson said.

He said helping people is what makes him feel good and noted he’s spent his career in public service.

Larson served a combination of active and reserve duty with the Wyoming National Guard between 1986 and September 2011.

That included serving as deputy command-er (second in command) of a brigade combat team made up of more than 3,300 soldiers sta-tioned across the Middle East (including Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Bahrain and Qatar) between May 2008 and July 2010.

He also managed a $41 million training budget and coordinated the deployment of 400 to 500 soldiers to Canada for a training exercise, working with officials there and in Washington, D.C.

During a three-year stint as a battalion com-mander, Larson coordinated and managed the Wyoming National Guard’s responses to more than 70 emergencies or incidents, including floods, forest fires and the 2006 Hell’s Angels World Run in Cody.

In addition to his military experience, Lar-son worked as a junior high school industrial arts teacher and football and basketball coach in Casper between August 1991 and May 1994.

He has served as the administrator of the Park County Detention Center since July 2010. Larson holds a bachelor’s degree in education and is currently pursuing a master degree in public administration.

He’s one of three Republican candidates for the post.

TOD LARSON

Park County ClerkColleen Renner Profile


After three decades with the University of Wyoming Extension office in Cody, Colleen Renner wants to try something

new: She wants to be your Park County clerk.Renner, 53, has been planning to retire from

the university office next year, so “it’s a good time for me to pursue a new adventure, because I still want to work and serve the public,” she said.

Renner said she also decided to run for clerk because of a belief that “people needed to have a choice.”

She has spent the past 29 years as the office manager of the extension office, located in the basement of the Park County Courthouse.

Before that, she spent three years (1981-84) with the Fremont County Clerk’s Office, so “I’m coming in with some background in the office,” she said.

Renner described herself as a team player who has good working relationships with county employees and individuals and busi-nesses in the community, a willingness to learn and to seek expert advice, a dedicated work ethic and an ability to do high-quality work. She also said that as clerk, she would bring an ability to work with the public and a positive attitude.

“I think that is one of the things that is miss-ing in that office,” Renner said, saying it should be more friendly, positive and upbeat.

One of her first tasks as clerk would be to go through customer service training with the of-fice’s employees. She would want to work with the existing employees and get them better suited for the job.

“I’m not going to clean house; I’m not. That’s not my goal here,” Renner said. “My goal is to make what we have better.”

As examples of the need for change, she noted several errors made over the past four years.

In one instance, county employees were briefly paid twice, requiring their banks to then “back out” the overpayments that she said had already been divided into various bank, savings and health savings accounts.

“It made it hard on the financial institutions,” Renner said.

She also noted that earlier this year, the clerk’s office was late in making the county’s payment to the Wyoming Retirement System when the one employee trained to do the work was out of the office. That cost the county a $892.32 late fee.

Renner also mentioned elections problems from 2012, including a ballot error that forced some absentee voters on the South Fork to re-

vote and another that incorrectly listed a race for the Meeteetse Town Council.

Renner said she would want a full-time, year-round elections deputy — a position Clerk Jerri Torczon did away with.

“I think it’s a very important position within the county, that elections run smoothly, be-cause we’re all counting on that,” Renner said.

Torczon has questioned the need for having the elections position full-time when elec-tions are every other year, but “I think there’s enough work there, and I think we’re lacking there right now,” Renner said.

She said that opinion is shared by past elec-tion deputies she’s spoken with, and that during slow periods, the deputy can be trained to per-form other jobs.

Renner said she also would want to hire a first deputy with some budgeting and account-ing knowledge. Renner does have some have some budget experience herself. She served as the treasurer of the Park County Leadership Institute and has helped with the University of Wyoming Extension office’s money and budget.

Renner’s past experience also includes serv-ing in leadership positions with Sunlight Fed-eral Credit Union, the International Association of Administrative Professionals and the local chapter of the P.E.O. Sisterhood, an organiza-tion that helps women reach their educational goals.

She is one of three Republican candidates running for clerk.

COLLEEN RENNER



Incumbent Park County Clerk Jerri Tor-czon says she has the experience needed for the job.The Powell resident is facing two oppo-

nents in the Republican primary election: Tod Larson and Colleen Renner, each of Cody.

“I’m definitely the most quali-fied. I’ve been through it for four years, and it is a steep learning curve,” said Torczon. “If they (vot-ers) chose to vote someone else in, there they’ll have to go through the same learning curve. ... I think Park County needs stability.”

Torczon, 59, said the priority for her second four years in office would be to hire a firm to convert the county’s old paper and microfilm re-cords to digital versions to better preserve them. She also hopes to update the county’s personnel policies and wants to see the county’s pay plan revised.

Torczon wants to see the pay plan simpli-fied so it’s not so cumbersome. She said it should be changed so that each step up on the plan is the same increment. That would benefit longer-term employees by allowing them to get the same percentage raise as newer employees when they advance on the pay scale, Torczon said.

During her tenure as clerk, Torczon has

done away with a year-round elections dep-uty, making it more of a temporary post used only in election years.

“I can’t see paying someone a high-powered wage for two years when they only work one,” she said.

The incumbent would like to see the state begin offering a certification pro-gram for county clerks, similar to what the Wyoming Association of Municipalities offers for munici-pal clerks and treasurers.

She also wants to oversee a planned remodel of the clerk’s of-fice in Cody.

“It’s a challenge,” Torczon said of the job. “And I think that I can maintain my ability to meet the challenge.”

Torczon is a native of Kane, a small community that was

located east of Lovell before the construc-tion of Yellowtail Dam put it underwater. She’s a graduate of Deaver High School and Northwest College (where she obtained an associate’s degree in business) and she holds a bachelor’s degree in business ad-ministration.

Prior to becoming clerk in 2010, Torczon spent 16 years as a paralegal and legal sec-retary in the Park County Attorney’s Office in Powell, working with many different at-torneys.

She has maintained her certification as a paralegal and said the familiarity she’s

gained with Wyoming law has helped her as clerk.

Torczon also can take some shorthand and type 120 words a minute.

“That’s helped a lot with the (County Com-mission’s) minutes,” she said.

Torczon also spent 12 years with the city of Gillette, where she said her job was simi-lar to a deputy clerk. Her duties including working with payroll, administering benefits and drafting minutes.

“A lot of what I did over there relates di-rectly to what I’m doing now,” she said.

While in Gillette, she also organized events such as ribbon cuttings and conven-tions and put together newsletters for city employees and for utility customers.

Torczon said her employee newsletter was named “the most readable in America” at a training event in San Francisco. She said she tried to implement such a newsletter in Park County during her first four years, but “I haven’t got a lot of favorable response.”

Other past experience for the fiddler, grandmother and 27-year Wyoming resi-dent includes work in the corporate office of Checker Auto Parts. There she handled retirement benefits, including 401K plans and union pension plans.

Torczon has also been a member of the National Association of County Recorders, Election Officials and Clerks and the Na-tional Association of Legal Assistants.

She is one of three Republican candidates for clerk.

Jerri Torczon

JERRI TORCZON

Park County ClerkProfile


Park County ClerkChallengers cite need for improvements Forum


Park County Clerk Jerri Torczon says she’s improved the office over the past four years; challengers Colleen

Renner and Tod Larson disagree.The three Republican candidates made

their cases for the position at a Monday night forum in Cody that was hosted by the Park County Republican Women.

Torczon said she’s done “a very good job” in the post and wants to continue.

“The learning curve for this office is very steep and I feel that I have proven that I am up to that challenge,” she said.

Renner, a longtime office manager for University of Wyoming Extension in Cody, said she’s ready for a new adventure and believes new leadership is needed to fix a variety problems in the clerk’s office.

“A vote for me would be a positive vote for the future,” Renner said.

Larson cited a long-standing desire to serve the public, including two-and-a-half decades in the U.S. Army, three years as an industrial arts teacher and four years in his current position as Park County Detention Center administrator.

“I want to help,” Larson said. “I want to help people to get what they need out of the clerk’s office.”

The Cody resident wants to look into the possibility of providing more services either online or through mailings, so people don’t have to spend a half day coming over to Cody to do county business.

“Park County’s just not doing as good as we used to ... people are struggling, so I want to try to push out services to the people,” Larson said.

Torczon — who had to miss a substantial chunk of the forum because she was attend-ing the county’s budget hearing — said her top priority in a second term would be to hire a firm to a digitize the county’s century-

old records. She called it “imperative for Park County” and has been pushing com-missioners to approve the roughly $180,000 needed.

Renner said there’s a need for new lead-ership with a positive attitude. She cited problems with payroll processing and pro-cedures, late fees, elections and turnover.

After consulting her records, Torczon told the Tribune in a Wednesday interview that she has lost 16 employees during her tenure: six full-time employees quit, six full-time employees were fired, two temporary em-ployees quit and two temporary employees were fired.

Renner said during the forum that 19 em-ployees had come and gone.

“That’s a lot of employees,” she said. “I think a lot of it comes down to working with your employees and getting them ... to know each other, to work out your little tisks and tasks.”

Renner said she would implement team-building exercises to build “a little bit more camaraderie there.”

Larson said there had been a “number” of departures in the office.

“The way you figure out turnover is you’ve got to dig a little bit more than the surface” Larson said. He said he would talk to people about why they left and build a plan if there’s a problem.

Torczon said during the forum that she can’t conduct background investigations and suggested that was a part of the turn-over.

“Should I find something out that is op-posed to our statute or to a policy, I can’t keep them (an employee) here,” Torczon said, adding, “There are people that wanted to retire, there are people that realized they couldn’t do the computer. It’s not just that I demanded they resign.”

Torczon told the Tribune two employees were fired because they became aggres-sive and threatening, one departure was

her predecessor’s first deputy and another employee came highly recommended by another elected official but “couldn’t type.”

“The others had issues,” Torczon said.Renner said the main thing she wants

to see improved is how the clerk’s office treats the public. Larson said the office’s teamwork and professionalism has room for improvement.

Torczon defended her staff.“Anyone who comes in my office says this

is a much friendlier place,” she said.Torczon said her background and experi-

ence “was built for this postion.” She noted a bachelor’s degree in business administra-tion, 16 years as Park County Attorney’s Office paralegal, 12 as an administrative assistant for the city of Gillette and experi-ence administering retirement programs for Checker Auto.

Larson, who’s working on a master’s de-gree in public administration, said he has a record of serving people.

“I enjoy helping people, I enjoy see-ing people succeed, whether I’m teaching in a junior high or giving a $20 bill to a little Iraqi kid or ... helping people in the jail (and) some of the inmates that have really stumbled or struggled,” Larson said.

He said he’s good at breaking down and streamlining processes, as well as building and leading teams.

Renner said that prior to joining Universi-ty of Wyoming Extension in 1985, she spent three years working in the Fremont County Clerk’s office and got familiar with what the office does.

Renner said she goes “above and beyond” to help others — including, she said, helping secure the room for the forum at the last minute after a prior location fell through.

Larson and Renner each said they thought handling the county budget would be the most difficult part of the job. Torczon said the toughest aspect is handling staffing when four people call in sick.


Challengers would make online database free

Park County ClerkForum


Two challengers to Park County Clerk Jerri Torczon say they would end her practice of charging for online access

to public documents.Colleen Renner and Tod Larson said

they’d like to return to free access to the clerk’s database of public records like deeds, titles and mortgages.

Torczon had sought to impose a $300 an-nual fee after taking office, but commission-ers, after hearing complaints from Realtors, set the rate at $100 a year.

“I would like to work with the commis-sioners to hopefully be able to bring that back to the public as a free service to the taxpayers,” Renner said during an Aug. 5 forum at Northwest College.

Larson noted state law requires the clerk to charge a fee for some services.

“Other than that, we are paid fees, and that’s called taxpayer money,” Larson said. “I can’t see why we would charge additional (fees). We’re not in the profit business. We’re there to provide a service for your tax money that you’ve already paid.”

Torczon responded that state law does allow her to charge fees to recover costs. She said her fees are not exorbitant and that there are costs and security issues associ-ated with the records.

“Granted, taxpayers do pay taxes, but not all taxpayers access that information,” Torczon said at the forum. “Title companies have been charged historically for that in-formation on a daily basis.”

“I’m not the first one to charge them,” she

added.Torczon, of Powell, made the overall case

during the forum that she’s done a good job running the office and that the criticism she’s received during the campaign is mis-directed.

“I think I represent Park County very well,” she said.

In contrast, challenger Renner — the long-time office manager for the University of Wyoming Extension’s Cody office — criti-cized Torczon for missteps in payroll, elec-tions and turnover to make her case for a change. Larson — the administrator of the Park County Detention Center in Cody — pointed to his 25-year career as a public ser-vant and administrator in the U.S. military as qualifications for the job.

Both Larson and Renner have said there’s a lack of professionalism in the clerk’s of-fice, and at the forum, Torczon agreed there is a problem.

“I do have some issues with ‘professional,’ and I will try to work on that,” she said at the event, hosted by the Park County Republi-can Women.

However, Torczon also said her staff is friendly and communicates well. She point-ed to the way her office handled the rollout of increased fees this year.

“(We) communicated, sent letters to the title companies, to the banks, advertised,” said Torczon. “I think my staff has good public relations. (People) say it’s much friendlier in my office.”

As for his approach to communications, Larson said he would start within the office and then work on communications with out-side companies by going to their locations

and meeting with them.“If you maintain that communication, that

contact, when there is an issue, they’re go-ing to call you right up and it won’t fester,” Larson said.

Renner said as clerk she would like to improve customer service with a program called “True Colors.”

“I think it will better acquaint themselves (clerk’s staff) with each other and know what little things that don’t always click right to make us work closer as a unit,” Renner said.

All three agreed on the importance of cross-training clerk’s employees to handle the many tasks in the office.

Larson said he’d put together “continuity books” containing simple checklists that can guide anyone through a given task.

Renner suggested that, with better cross-training, the clerk’s office would not have been assessed an $892 late fee by the Wyo-ming Retirement System this year, assessed after the employee trained to do the work was out with a medical issue.

“I think it’s very important that you get your employees cross-trained so when the different questions come up, hopefully the answer will become available to you,” Renner said

Torczon said the problem with the retire-ment system went beyond the employee’s illness, citing system changes that made it hard to upload information.

“You’re very naive in thinking that’s the first time Park County’s ever been penal-ized,” Torczon added to Renner.

She said she recently recovered $43,000 from the state in overpayments.

Powell tribune online Election Guide Friday, August 15, 2014

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