Wyoming
They Have No Basis: Rock Springs City Attorney Fires on Unfounded Corruption Claims – SweetwaterNOW
ROCK SPRINGS — The Rock Springs City Attorney has become annoyed with continued, baseless allegations of corruption within the city.
“I, along with these other individuals, swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and uphold the law, which I have done,” City Attorney Richard Beckwith said at Tuesday night’s Rock Springs City Council meeting. “And I would be more than happy to sit down in a court of law and swear to that under oath. Anytime.”
Discussion initially started when Shirley Cukale, a resident who often approaches the Council during the public comments portion of its meetings, questioned the Council about the city’s request for proposal process works. Cukale has alleged corruption occurring within the city, though hasn’t brought forward any information to the Council supporting her allegations.
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“Nobody has given me evidence,” Mayor Max Mickelson said Wednesday morning. “If someone had evidence and didn’t bring it forward to me … I would be frustrated.”
Cukale alleged former Rock Springs Mayor Tim Kaumo had gotten some city contracts and claimed Councilwoman Jeannie Demas did not abstain from votes involving Kaumo as she had previously served with him on the Council during Kaumo’s most-recent period as mayor. Mickelson immediately responded to Cukale, saying Kaumo has retired and no longer works for JFC Engineering. Cukale doubled down on her allegations involving the former mayor, even claiming she spoke with an unnamed prosecuting attorney about charging him and alleging nothing came of that discussion.
Sweetwater County Attorney Daniel Erramouspe told SweetwaterNOW he does not recall speaking with Cukale regarding corruption allegations but if there was a specific allegation that had some validity, he would contact the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation. He said people claiming corruption happens and isn’t new to him. If he receives a claim about specific incidents, he contacts law enforcement for an investigation.
“When I heard about the Kaumo bid allegations, I contacted DCI to investigate,” Erramouspe said
Kaumo and the city were investigated by the Wyoming DCI and the FBI in a corruption probe near the end of Kaumo’s third term as mayor, which led to him initially being charged with six misdemeanor counts of official misconduct and one misdemeanor count of conflict of interests in 2022. Kaumo pled guilty to one count of official misconduct and one charge of conflict of interest in 2023 and was ordered to pay $5,000 in fines.
Mickelson said the city’s processes were investigated as part of that probe, to which Cukale shook her head in disagreement.
“That’s not true,” she claimed.
“It is true,” Mickelson responded.
Cukale continued making accusations against Kaumo and JFC Engineering’s contracts until Mickelson cut her off again.
“You’re certainly entitled to your opinion,” Mickelson said.
Not only the city, but all of the citizens of Rock Springs deserve much more than what you are giving them with these false accusations of corruption. They have no basis. You have no evidence and I am personally sick of it.
Richard Beckwith, Rock Springs City Attorney
Beckwith then spoke and addressed Cukale and Councilman Rick Milonas and recent claims of corruption. Near the start of the year, comments Milonas allegedly made about city employees while at a local grocery store were publicly questioned by Mickelson, with Milonas publicly saying he wasn’t sure if city employees were corrupt or not.
Beckwith said the FBI and Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation thoroughly investigated the city’s procurement process and didn’t find evidence of wrongdoing by the committee in that investigation. Beckwith said he fully cooperated with and participated in the investigation.
“I, myself, was personally questioned for several hours, as were the other two individuals sitting with me at this table right now,” Beckwith said. “I would ask (Cukale) and I would ask Mr. Milonas, that if you have any evidence at all that any one of us three have been involved with any corruption at all, we’d like to hear it now. Or if you have any evidence at all that the procurement process was legally fouled in any way at any time by any one.”
Beckwith further said unless Milonas and Cukale are willing to appear in court and swear under oath, that they stop wasting the city’s time with the allegations.
“Not only the city, but all of the citizens of Rock Springs deserve much more than what you are giving them with these false accusations of corruption. They have no basis. You have no evidence and I am personally sick of it,” Beckwith said.
Wyoming
Wyoming authorities call on Rocky Mountain Power to explain role in massive November power outage
by Dustin Bleizeffer, WyoFile
The massive, multiple-utility power outage last fall that left some 250,000 customers across parts of Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana without electricity was the result of miscommunication and inadequate procedures during planned maintenance that required de-energizing a power line in southcentral Wyoming, according to a report.
The Nov. 13 incident left thousands of homes and businesses without power for 9.5 hours — longer, in some cases — and knocked out a coal-powered generator outside Glenrock. The unit at the Dave Johnston Power Plant remains offline, leaving Rocky Mountain Power to backfill some 300 megawatts of electricity — enough to power about 225,000 homes.
Without expressly assigning blame to any one party, the report — conducted by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation — indicates a series of communication breakdowns between PacifiCorp (parent company of Rocky Mountain Power), the Western Area Power Administration and, to some degree, electrical grid coordinating teams.
While it’s unclear whether authorities such as the North American Electric Reliability Corporation might pinpoint fault and assess penalties, the Wyoming Public Service Commission has called on Rocky Mountain Power to appear at a hearing scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Wednesday. The commission wants to hear from the utility about “the specifics and details of the event and report,” a public notice announced, and it “may consider and take any action that is in the public interest.”
The hearing at the Public Service Commission’s office located at 2515 Warren Avenue, Suite 300, in Cheyenne, will also be livestreamed at this link.
What happened
According to the 49-page report published in June, PacifiCorp and the Western Area Power Administration were coordinating maintenance on their respective systems that, together, required temporarily de-energizing PacifiCorp’s Aeolus–Clover 500 kilovolt line, which runs east-west and is anchored, in part, by a substation near Medicine Bow.
The effort also required curtailing some local wind energy from feeding the grid, according to the report. But on the day of the planned maintenance, Nov. 13, there was confusion about whether the Western Area Power Administration would scrap its work, so wind energy wasn’t curtailed as originally planned.
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Wind turbines near Cheyenne poke into a colorful sunrise in January 2025. (Tennessee Watson/WyoFile)
The report indicates that modeling tools might have failed to accurately measure local grid conditions, so when the power line was de-energized, “power flow rapidly redistributed throughout the northeast portion” of the local grid. “Within six seconds,” according to the report, “an electrical island formed and collapsed, causing widespread effects across that portion of the interconnection.
“The disturbance,” the report continues, “culminated in the loss of more than 4,800 [megawatts] of generation from coal, natural gas, photovoltaic and wind resources.”
The cascading power failure began at about 12:45 p.m. on a Thursday, dragging down portions of service territories operated by Rocky Mountain Power, Black Hills Energy, Montana-Dakota Utilities and some rural electric co-ops.
The report points to failures in communication, process deficiencies and inadequate modeling tools. Wind energy was not “identified as a contributing factor,” according to the report. It credits both battery storage and wind energy throughout the impacted area for supporting “a faster frequency recovery across the interconnection” and for providing “readily available capacity during system restoration.”
This article was originally published by WyoFile and is republished here with permission. WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.
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