After Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) was detected on the National Elk Refuge in May, it prompted questions about one of Jackson’s water sources, also on the refuge.

Teton County Public Health Director Travis Riddell said in an interview he is exploring options to test the town’s water supply to get ahead of any potential concerns.

“People can choose to eat or not eat elk that may be contaminated with this,” Riddell said. “But your choice of where you get your public drinking water is a little bit [of a] different scenario.”

Hunters are advised against eating elk that could have been carrying the disease. All elk hunted on the refuge are required to be submitted for testing. On state lands, testing is only focused on priority herds.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services did not respond about water concerns or elk management plans by press time.

“The chance that this could become an actual health threat to humans is quite low,” Riddell said. “But it’s a new and emerging problem.”

Right now, there’s no indication that CWD — which primarily affects elk, moose and deer — can spread to humans. But the highly contagious disease kills 100% of its ungulate hosts.

Prion diseases – such as scrapie in sheep – are generally limited to species-specific boundaries, according to the Wyoming Wildlife Federation.

“That barrier seems to be stronger with CWD than the mad cow disease that made news in past decades,” the federation states on its website.

That barrier, however, is not necessarily always enough. In 2002, the fatal neurologic disorder Creutzfeldt-Jakob was found in hunters who caught a prion disease, what scientists call a “transmissible spongiform encephalopathy” like CWD.

For CWD, when a sick animal expels bodily fluids, it leaves behind the damaged proteins, or prions. Those can last in soil for years, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Riddell wants to know if any of the prions can be detected in the water given Jackson’s proximity to the refuge. He doesn’t yet know what that process could look like.

“No decision has been made yet,” Riddell said, “You can’t just send a water sample off to a standard commercial water lab and ask them to look for prions.”

That testing requires specialized expertise, Riddell added. It’s unclear if any municipality with known local CWD outbreaks across the country has tested a public water supply.

Testing is on the county’s radar because Jackson draws water from wells at the south end of the refuge. WyoFile reported that’s also the area where a sick cow elk was found and euthanized for CWD testing in April, which resulted in the positive test.

Researchers in Wyoming have isolated prions in soil samples in other parts of the state, including the mule deer Project Herd in the Wind River Basin, according to Ben Wise, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s disease biologist. The state has since started banking samples from feedgrounds to test for themselves.

But that doesn’t mean prions will show up in Jackson’s water.

“I’m very confident that detecting prion in water in Jackson is going to be a very, very, low probability,” said Wise. “[CWD is] new enough here. The density of prion is just not high enough to really see it in … water or the soil samples out on the refuge.”

But collecting data could still provide a helpful baseline, Wise said. Although, his department studies the implications for wildlife, not for humans.

Experts point to the high concentration of elk at the refuge as a stage ripe for disease spread. Over 11,000 elk congregate in close quarters each winter near the northern edge of town. There, they subsist on alfalfa pellets dolled out on the largest of 22 feedgrounds in Wyoming. Other states such as Montana have banned the controversial practice and asked Wyoming to do the same to keep ungulates healthy.

CWD’s epicenter is thought to stem from northern Colorado, where the first case was discovered in 1967. Since the disease made its way to Wyoming nearly two decades later, wildlife managers have found it at five of the 21 state-run feedgrounds.

CWD was first confirmed in the Jackson herd in 2020, after an elk tested positive in Grand Teton National Park.

For the Jackson herd, Wise said experts generally believe the long-term prognosis points to population decline for the country’s largest migratory elk herd.

“What that effect is going to be, it could be very minute,” Wise said. “It could be large. We don’t know.”

An abrupt end to feeding also risks the longevity of Jackson’s famous herd, which draws visitors from all over the world. Proponents of feedgrounds, such as outfitters, don’t want to see elk die of starvation, either. Elk plan managers are yet to announce any drastic changes in response to the refuge’s first positive test.

America’s Minutes-Stories of America 250
Yellowstone

90 Second stories of the Revolution, the Founding and Wyoming’s place in the American story.

America’s Minutes-Stories of America 250
Yorktown

90 Second stories of the Revolution, the Founding and Wyoming’s place in the American story.

Lawmakers on the Joint Revenue Committee reviewed 11 different property tax bills from this past year’s budget session but failed to pass. Now, the committee is eyeing a revival of some of those bills, as the lawmakers await to see the results of the People's Initiative vote in November. That’s a ballot initiative, brought by voters, that seeks to reduce property taxes in the state by 50%.

Committee members passed motions requesting the Legislative Service Office (LSO) to draft five new bills, four of which would be based on bills from the 2026 legislature.

•  The first draft request is a revival of SF 110, which would change the assessment rates for owner-occupied residency vs other residency types. This past budget session, this bill made it through the Senate. It died on third reading in the House. 

• The second draft request is based on HB 147,  which would remove the current 25% property exemption and keep a 4% cap in place if the People’s Initiative passes in November. This bill died in the Senate after a Committee of the Whole failed to consider the bill last session.

• Next is HB 73, which changes how fair market value is assessed. This bill failed very early on in the legislature, failing to win an introduction vote in the House. 

• And a request to draft HB118, a bill to eliminate the assessment of residential property taxation. This bill also failed very early on in the legislature, after a failed introduction vote.
• Additionally, LSO was requested to draft a new bill that would make it so the current 25% property tax exemption requirements mirror the long-term homeowner standard.  

Dixie J. Huxtable, an assessor for Converse County, said she believed some people were waiting to take advantage of current tax breaks as they wait to see what happens with the People’s Initiative.

“I think a lot of people are just holding off to find out what happens with the People's Initiative, to be honest,” said Huxtable. “That's the discussion. They want to see what's coming out of that people's initiative so that they don't have to call and revoke an application and start over again.”

Sen. Bob Ide (R-Casper) asked if the passage of the People’s Initiative would “streamline the confusion.”

“That's just part of the confusion that's already out there,” said Huxtable. “Because they're not sure where that plays, and to be honest, we don't know because we only know what was in statute already.”

There has also been pressure on the county and local side to keep up with questions and requests from taxpayers. Huxtable said her office has had a jump in overtime due to the number of people being called in to help taxpayers navigate potential property tax reductions.

“We've had overtime probably more than ever before in the assessor's,” said Huxtable. “Not because they got stuck out in the field in a rain storm, but because they had to come in on a weekend to process the last batch of exemptions. They came in so they could get it in on time.”

Huxtable added that traffic to their offices had grown "exponentially", including dealing with a few frustrated members of the public.

Sen. Cale Case (R-Lander) asked Ken Guille, the administrator of the Wyoming Department of Revenue property tax division, if the taxpayer had any way of understanding these changes in code on the “granular” level.

“Folks don't know how it's impacting their little fire district,” said Guille. “Some [districts] they rely on minerals and less on property tax, but there are some fire districts in the county I come from that 100% rely on residential property tax because that's pretty much what's in their district.”

Rep. Jayme Lien (R-Casper) pushed back some, suggesting the granular level was somewhat impossible to explain to the individual taxpayer as local budgets can reallocate money at any time. She also asked Guille if “individuals have the opportunity to go to their treasurer's office and ask for a printout of how their taxes are spent?” to which Guille agreed.

The committee is meeting again on the last day of August and the first day of September. The People’s Initiative will be on the ballot for voters on Nov. 3.

This reporting was made possible by a grant from the Corporation For Public Broadcasting, supporting state government coverage in the state. Wyoming Public Media and Jackson Hole Community Radio are partnering to cover state issues both on air and online.

The Carbon County Library system grappled with a 53% operating budget reduction in fiscal year 2026. That was in part because of a law passed last year that provides a 25% exemption on the first $1 million of a property’s market evaluation. Much of the library system’s budget comes from property taxes. Staff hours were cut by more than half, and building hours were reduced. Now, a statewide measure on the November general election ballot could increase the property tax exemption to 50%.

The 25% property tax exemption was enacted in part to give Wyoming residents relief from property tax increases put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic. As the housing supply chain dwindled and homebuyers sought cheaper real estate out West, Wyoming housing valuations surged, and so did property taxes.

“It's not fair that the people who pay property taxes have to be the ones that bear all the brunt of our economy,” Cheryl Aguiar, a state committeewoman who helped spearhead the ballot initiative, told Wyoming Public Radio in 2025. "Everybody should bear the brunt of our economy."

Since the 25% reduction in property taxes took effect, Carbon County saw a $947,000 drop in property tax revenue, meaning that public services, such as museums and libraries, were given smaller operating budgets.

Since the 1970s, people have moved here to avoid high property tax states and take advantage of mineral severance levies that keep other taxes low. As inflation continues to grow, reaching its highest peak since 2023 in May this year, people are looking to save money wherever they can.

The Carbon County Library System expects operating costs to be around $500,000 after reducing hours this year. Typically, 55% of that comes from the county, with the rest coming from grants, municipal contributions, savings and community donations. But even after significant cuts, the libraries plan to dip into their savings to stay afloat. If the budget gets reduced further in fiscal year 2027, the savings will likely dry up, and all but the Rawlins branch will likely close.

“We're able to make it through this fiscal year, and so, now we're looking at what's going to happen next fiscal year,” said Adelaide Myers, chair of the Carbon County Library Board. “Since we got our budget from the county, they've told us, ‘If you think this is bad, wait until you see what next year's budget's going to be.’”

While not nearly as large as Carbon County’s budget change, Platte, Hot Springs and Converse counties also incurred sizable losses from the 25% property tax reduction.

But libraries aren’t the only entities that will see impacts from a potential 50% property tax exemption. K-12 public education is expected to incur a $686 million deficit by 2030. Healthcare has also suffered, as 18 hospitals in special districts depend on property tax revenue for some income. State property taxes also support essential services like police and fire departments, water treatment, and road maintenance.

“I honestly believe that reducing property taxes by 50% without providing some sort of backfill, say, from the state's rainy day fund, would be catastrophic for the whole state,” Myers said. “Maybe not so much for Gillette and Jackson, but it would be catastrophic for rural Wyoming, full stop.”

Other states have also adopted tax-cutting agendas, but have found ways to make up for the lost revenue. In 2024, Iowa signed a nearly $1 billion tax cut into law, but utilized its reserves to pay for most of the deficit. Washington state recently implemented a millionaires’ tax that would account for its regressive tax system.

The Wyoming Legislature hasn’t proposed any revenue-raising measures to counteract the property tax loss so far. Last year, a house bill proposed raising sales tax in most counties, but it didn’t pass. Another bill, considered in the same legislative session, would have taxed solar and nuclear energy sources in the state. It also didn’t pass.

Myers said the future of Carbon County libraries is uncertain, but she believes their fate depends on the people.

“A lot of people don't realize the benefits that libraries bring, even if they're not personally a library user,” Myers said. “It's one of those things that has a civilizing effect. It creates a more literate electorate. But when they're [people] tantalized with another few hundred dollars in their pocket, that's a really simple thing.”

Myers and the Library System Board of Directors have put out a call to action asking people to donate to libraries, mobilize around candidates who are against the initiative and vote out those in favor of eliminating property taxes altogether. She also pointed to voting in favor of the 5th Penny, an optional sales tax that adds one cent to every dollar spent in the county. She said these are necessary because “philanthropy is not a sustainable model to fund public services.” Because of how many public services rely on these taxes, Myers feels the message is urgent.

“Because it's not just libraries. If this ballot measure passes, then all these conversations are moot.”

The ballot initiative to raise the property tax exemption will be on all of Wyoming's ballots during the general election on Nov. 3. More than 50% of those voting in the general election would need to vote for the exemption for it to pass. It will be the first time a citizen initiative will be voted on in 30 years.

Residents of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota received a large donation thanks to the Pinedale community. The Pinedale Roundup reports Bill Johnson collected furniture, appliances, and other household items from High Country Suites as the hotel completed renovations. A crew of volunteers trucked it to the reservation. With the help of the Oyate Teca Project, nearly 500 families benefited from the donation.

Four new statues have been unveiled in downtown Rock Springs. The Rock Springs Rocket Miner reports the bronzes celebrate individuals who have contributed to the city’s history and heritage. The long-term vision is to expand the project along Broadway Street.

He spent 15 years acting, directing and stage managing, largely in New York City.McDonald eventually found work in Denver’s Elitch Gardens theatrical company. By 1933, he had moved on to Hollywood. The first Warner Brothers film he directed was The Murder of Dr. Harrigan. Most of the Roy Rogers and Gene Autry films of the era were under his direction.

McDonald received high praise from actors and the press. Actors called him “kind and considerate”. The Showmen’s Trade Review said, “McDonald’s direction is perfect, spacing the laughs and heart tugs in an expert manner.” The cigar smoking McDonald went on to direct for TV including Wyatt Earp and National Velvet.

To learn more, see the Frank McDonald papers at UW’s American Heritage Center.

Two Gillette boys recently reeled in the catch of their lives. The Gillette News Record reports 12-year-old Hensley Johnson and 11-year-old Axel Tilton were at Fishing Lake before the sun was up. Shortly after 9 a.m., they caught something big. For 10 minutes, they battled a 42-inch tiger muskie, breaking three lines before pulling it to shore. The fish was the largest many passersby had ever seen from the lake.

A University of Wyoming professor emeritus of anthropology has been named to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. Robert Kelly is only the second UW faculty member to receive this honor. The Academy provides independent advice to the federal government and other organizations on matters related to science, engineering, and health.