Wyoming
Wyoming awarded largest investment in broadband internet infrastructure to date
![Wyoming awarded largest investment in broadband internet infrastructure to date Wyoming awarded largest investment in broadband internet infrastructure to date](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/b525df4/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1080x567+0+256/resize/1200x630!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Ff2%2F18%2Fa8b244164ac68aac41cdea094540%2Funtitled-design-8.jpg)
A White House initiative to provide internet access to all Americans has cleared Wyoming for the largest federal investment in broadband yet.
The Biden-Harris administration has been working with states to create proposals and map data for a massive broadband build out. Wyoming was approved to receive over $347 million in grant money to work toward “internet for all” in the state. The approval means the state can now request access to the funds and get started making its proposed statewide broadband service a reality.
“That is $347 million to help connect over 39,000 homes and businesses in the state,” said Courtney Dozier with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).
The goal is to create a network of connectivity across the state that ensures Federal Communications -Commission (FCC) regulatory broadband speeds. That means at least 100 megabits per second for downloads and 20 megabits per second for uploads.
Dozier expects Wyoming will have “shovels in the ground” by 2025.
Where’s all the construction?
The Biden administration had received criticism that the “internet for all” initiative, or the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, hadn’t connected any homes since its announcement in 2021.
Republicans and Trump’s appointee to the FCC, Brandon Carr, have pointed to bureaucracy and mandates within the BEAD program that place regulatory pressure on private companies and slow the build-out. However, the NTIA says it’s a massive project and a lot of money to hand out with proper preparation.
“With this historic level of investment. $42 billion from Congress and the Biden-Harris administration that we’re not likely to get again. We need to come up with a plan to connect everyone,” said Dozier.
Wyoming, like other states, had to plan and complete a detailed map of where internet connection exists, and where it does not. A map of underserved (slow internet speeds) and unserved (very slow speeds or no connection) areas was necessary.
“We have been working really closely with states and territories to receive their proposals that they submitted on what they’re going to do to accomplish this goal,” said Dozier. “How are they going to spend this money and make sure that at the end of the day, everyone in Wyoming that’s currently un- and underserved … has that access at the end of this program.”
Wyoming last year was pre-approved for the funds so the state could incorporate federal investments in the planning stage. Now that Wyoming’s plan is finalized, $347,877,921.27 in funding can begin to be put into action.
$300 million alone won’t be enough
While this is the largest federal investment made in Wyoming for the purpose of broadband connectivity, it’s by no means the only. In a state as vast as Wyoming, full connection is an expensive endeavor.
In 2018, the Wyoming state government set aside some $10 million for the Wyoming Broadband Advisory Council (part of the Broadband office), funds that would help start a mapping project for the state and promote broadband expansion.
In 2019, the U.S. Department of Agriculture began the ReConnect Loan and Grant Program, which allowed state governments, cooperatives and corporations to apply for development of broadband services in rural areas that might otherwise be too expensive for market-incentivized building to occur. Wyoming saw funding from that program in 2020 and 2022
The U.S. Department of the Treasury has given Wyoming over $70 million in competitive grant funding from the Capital Projects Fund for last mile broadband connection. This program awarded five companies $70 million for development in the past. Visionary Broadband was recently awarded another allocation of these funds by the Wyoming Business Council Broadband Office for the additional fiber project in Cheyenne.
Despite all these investments, the act of completed, working, high-speed connections will take time. Dozier said the administration and the federal government is ready to keep working on this project well into the future.
“This is a huge priority for you and so we’re going to continue to dedicate the kind of time and resources to land the program over the next five to six years.” said Dozier.
Fiber in my backyard?
In previous interviews with WPR, former head of the Wyoming Broadband Office, Elaine Zemple, said, “I don’t think we will reach 100 percent. But it’ll be in the high 90 percent,” in response to the federal goal of “internet for all.”
This was for two reasons. One being the difficult, vast and undeveloped terrain of Wyoming. And two, the privacy wishes of those who want to disconnect as much as possible.
The NTIA appears understanding of some Wyomingites’ desire to unplug – or choosing to not receive access in the first place – so long as the reasoning is there.
“If you’ve built a hunting lodge in the middle of [Wyoming], in the middle of nowhere, because you want to disconnect, we’re not going to force you to get internet service,” said Dozier.
However, she said an objection of some kind would have to be made.
“[Maybe] a broadband serviceable location that does not want it. Maybe they have religious objections. Maybe there’s other objections. Because don’t forget, too, that the person living in that home might not always be living in that home.”
The Biden administration would like to see fiber laid out as much as possible, alongside other broadband components made here in the United States,although some of those restrictions were recently lifted. The fiber focus did not come without criticism, including in Wyoming, but the administration appears open to working with states to use alternative technologies.
“Based on that calculation and the priorities for the program, it is a kind of fiber preference,” said Dozier. “We are working with Wyoming and every state and territory to support them pushing out the most reliable technologies as far as they can, while ensuring that everyone is getting access to high speed, affordable, reliable Internet, which may take on various different forms.”
Some of those technologies are hybrid networks or fixed-wireless connections that can be used to more cost-effectively get high speed service around mountains and out to rural, small communities.
Public involvement
Dozier stressed that the public should be involved in this process. Part of Wyoming’s map-making process included talking with nonprofits, local governments and internet service providers about where the internet can or should be built.
But that doesn’t cover everyone, according to Dozier. She says the public still needs to voice their concerns, as they have been offered to do so in the past.
“[Continue] to engage with your state broadband office, with your local governments, is going to be key to the success of the program,” she said.
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Wyoming
Pig in a poke…and it doesn't make Virginia ham
![Pig in a poke…and it doesn't make Virginia ham Pig in a poke…and it doesn't make Virginia ham](https://cdn.county10.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/mug1-2.jpg)
Wyoming
Your Wyoming Sunrise: Monday, August 19, 2024
![Your Wyoming Sunrise: Monday, August 19, 2024 Your Wyoming Sunrise: Monday, August 19, 2024](https://cowboystatedaily.imgix.net/sunrise-8-19-24.jpg)
Today’s Wyoming sunrise was captured at Glendo by Rob Dickerson. Rob writes, “Beautiful sunrise at Glendo. Running out of summer pretty fast…..it’s all downhill from here.”
To submit your Wyoming sunrise, email us at: News@CowboyStateDaily.com
NOTE: Please send us the highest-quality version of your photo. The larger the file, the better.
NOTE #2: Please include where you are from and where the photo was taken.
NOTE #3: Tell us about your sunrise. What do you like about it?
NOTE #4: Only horizontal photos will be considered.
Wyoming
Democrats are dwindling in Wyoming. A primary election law further reduces their influence.
![Democrats are dwindling in Wyoming. A primary election law further reduces their influence. Democrats are dwindling in Wyoming. A primary election law further reduces their influence.](https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_nbcnews-fp-1200-630,f_auto,q_auto:best/rockcms/2024-08/240818-democrats-dwindling-wyoming-wm-233p-21760e.jpg)
In some far reaches of rural America, Democrats are flirting with extinction. In Niobrara County, Wyoming, the least-populated county in the least-populated state, Becky Blackburn is one of just 32 left.
Her neighbors call her “the crazy Democrat,” although it’s more a term of endearment than derision.
Some less populated counties have fewer. There are 21 Democrats in Clark County, Idaho, and 20 in Blaine County, Nebraska. But Niobrara County’s Democrats, who account for just 2.6% of registered voters, are the most outnumbered by Republicans in the 30 states that track local party affiliation, according to Associated Press election data.
In Wyoming, the state that has voted for Donald Trump by a wider margin than any other, overwhelming Republican dominance may be even more cemented-in now that the state has passed a law that makes changing party affiliation much more difficult.
Tuesday’s primary will be the first election since the law took effect.
In Niobrara County’s grassy rangelands and pine-spattered hills adjoining Nebraska and South Dakota, it’s not easy being blue.
A paralegal for the Republican county attorney, Blackburn hears a lot of right-wing views around town.
“Normally I just roll my eyes and walk away because I’m fighting a losing battle and I’m fully aware of that,” she said. “Maybe that is why I’m well-liked, because I keep my mouth shut 10 times more than I want to.”
Not that she’s politically shy. She flies an LGBTQ+ flag in support of her lesbian daughter at her house in Lusk, a ranching town of 1,500 and the Niobrara County seat.
In political season, Blackburn stocks up on Democratic political signs to replace those that get swiped. She speaks approvingly of policing reform, taxation for government services and the transgender social media celebrity Dylan Mulvaney.
Maybe because she’s open about those views — and far too outnumbered to put them into action — Blackburn really does seem well-liked in Lusk, where she recently served nine years on the Town Council.
“I won two elections here. Even though that’s nonpartisan, people still knew I had left-leaning values,” she said.
Nationwide, Democrats account for fewer than 3% of voters in three counties this year, up from one county in 2020 but down from seven in 2016. There were none with such a low percentage of Democratic registrations in the presidential election years of 2012, 2008 and 2004, according to the AP data.
The most Republican counties in recent years are concentrated in Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. The most Democratic areas, meanwhile, are much less one-party-dominant.
The District of Columbia, where 77% of voters are Democrats, ranks second for Democratic dominance. First is Breathitt County, Kentucky, which through tradition is 79% Democratic but not to the core. Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance has family there and in 2020 the county went 75% for former President Donald Trump.
Niobrara County was not always quite so Republican. It had more than twice as many Democrats, 83, in 2012, and in 2004 there were more than four times as many, 139.
The Democrats’ struggle in Wyoming mirrors the party’s challenges across rural America, where the party has been losing ground for years.
It wasn’t always this way. Seventy years ago, Democrats were a political force across southern Wyoming, where union mining and railroad jobs were abundant. Now, the party’s only strongholds are in the university town of Laramie and resort town of Jackson.
Meanwhile, as Wyoming Democrats face difficulty fielding viable candidates at all levels, many Democrats have been switching their registration to vote in more competitive Republican primaries, then changing back for the general election.
“You feel skeevy and dirty when you do it. But you do it anyway and you change it back as soon as you can, because you don’t want to start getting the Republican mailings,” Blackburn said.
Republicans decided they’d had enough. The Wyoming Legislature, where the GOP controls over 90% of the seats, passed legislation last year banning voters from changing their party registration in the three months before the August primary.
Party-switching had “undermined the sanctity of Wyoming’s primary process,” Wyoming’s Republican secretary of state, Chuck Gray, said in a statement of approval.
Wyoming’s Republican and Democratic primaries on Tuesday will be the first in modern memory where voters won’t be able to change party affiliation at the polls.
For Democrats, it will be slim pickings. Statewide, obscure candidates who have done little campaigning are unopposed for the Democratic nomination for U.S. House and Senate.
![Pat Jordan, a registered Republican who describes himself as a progressive, looks at a get-out-the-vote display at the Niobrara County Fair in Lusk, Wyo., on July 31.](https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best/rockcms/2024-08/240818-democrats-dwindling-wyoming-wm-232p-b88d31.jpg)
In Niobrara County, no Democrats are running. They aren’t contesting a seat in the Wyoming House of Representatives or an open seat on the county commission, the two major races, or even running for local party positions.
Yet the area had a Democratic state representative not too long ago: Ross Diercks, who is recognized and warmly greeted at the Outpost Cafe, a homey breakfast and lunch spot in Lusk.
A former middle school English teacher, Diercks was a Republican before deciding the GOP didn’t do enough to support public education. He beat a Republican incumbent in 1992 to launch an 18-year run in the Legislature.
Knowing voters personally and keeping up on issues helped him hold office. When he got a C-minus on a National Rifle Association questionnaire, for example, he resolved to improve. For subsequent elections, he scored A’s on the survey.
Many Republican lawmakers are friends. When one from just down the road died, he sang at his funeral.
Then in 2022, Diercks temporarily switched parties to vote in the GOP primary against Harriet Hageman, who was challenging then-Rep. Liz Cheney for the state’s lone House seat. How many other Democrats did the same is hard to count, but Diercks was far from alone. Hageman, the daughter of the lawmaker he sang for at his funeral, nonetheless won the race by a wide margin.
The new law keeping Diercks and others from switching their registration so easily has him exasperated with the GOP.
“How far are they going to go to limit one’s ability to vote? If it really comes down to purifying the party, on a voting level all the way up to the elected officials, pretty soon there isn’t going to be anyone left who’s pure enough to be in the party,” Diercks said.
Truck driver Pat Jordan supports many left-leaning goals, including universal healthcare, but said he only registers as a Republican.
“The best way to participate in meaningful change is to try to sway the dominant party,” said Jordan, who lives in Niobrara County. “You know, we need to have a government that serves the people, all of them, not just Republicans and not just rural and not just urban and not just Democrats — and definitely not just the rich and the wealthy.”
Last winter, dozens of locals gathered outside to honk and cheer as one Democrat left town. But they weren’t cheering as Ed Fullmer was headed off for good.
Fullmer was on the high school boys basketball team bus as they left for the state championship. They lost, but Fullmer coached the Tigers to their best record in a decade, 20-8.
He said people know his views but rarely put him on the spot about politics.
“Most people don’t want to dive into those type of discussions,” he said. “They respect you for what you do, how you work.”
Blackburn, for one, intends to hold her political ground, even as it shrinks around her.
“I am who I am, and I have the views that I have,” she said. “And I don’t care if it bothers people or not.”
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