A number of Wyoming legislators wrote a letter to Governor Mark Gordon at the end of May expressing their frustration with his veto of Senate File 13 and their desire to “heighten the Wyoming government’s reaction to the lawless Biden administration’s attacks on our state’s sovereignty and our citizen’s way of life.” After receiving a response from the governor, the legislators wrote the following reply:
Governor Gordon,
We are grateful for your timely response to our May 22 letter. We only wish you would act with such haste when defending Wyoming’s sovereignty against the predations of the federal government.
It is clear that you are aware that the Biden Administration is engaged in a coordinated effort to kill coal, oil, gas, and grazing– an effort made possible by the unconstitutional centralization of power in the federal executive branch combined with decades-long complacency on the part of Wyoming’s executive branch.
In your letter, you mentioned the importance of facts. The facts here are really quite simple.
Each time Wyoming’s sovereignty is challenged, our leaders at best engage in lethargic legal challenges led by other states with an accompanying press junket meant to appease concerned Wyomingites, and at worst wave the white flag and roll over, hoping no one notices.
When the people of Wyoming acting through their elected representatives attempt to protect themselves with legislation like 2019 House Bill 251 and 2024 Senate File 13, you thwart these efforts with the swipe of a pen and promise to do it yourself. Your efforts are leading the Biden Administration to believe that Wyoming is not serious about defending itself from their diktats.
You promised you’d defend Wyoming’s access to Asian coal markets, but your delay of over a year in putting pen to paper and into the courts squandered precious time, and in the end resulted in the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear what was otherwise an airtight interstate commerce claim.
As you decry Biden’s pursuit of a carbon-neutral America while pushing Wyoming to become “carbon-negative,” the radical bureaucrats in charge see your fence-sitting as an open invitation to make Wyoming Ground Zero in its 30x30 war.
As the State that proudly powers America, Wyoming is deserving of a swift, serious, and vigorous legal army. According to your own Attorney General, there is a dearth of expertise on federal land and water law in the office. You crow about allocating $300,000 to your Wyoming Energy Authority to go towards legal challenges of Biden’s new rules– as Governor of Wyoming and formerly serving in a leadership role of the Sierra Club, you well know that this does not come close to what it would take to secure the experts necessary to successfully and forcefully fight the federal government.
If you genuinely believe that a $300,000 remittance to your Energy Authority is enough to fight a battle of this magnitude, you either completely misunderstand the severity of the situation we find ourselves in (which is bad), or you are attempting to convince the public that you are fighting when you really aren’t (which is worse).
When fighting an enemy this massive– and funded with our own tax dollars– we need all hands on deck. We are disturbed by the fact that your office neglected to alert the people of Wyoming of the Bureau’s draft rules last summer. As a guardian of our way of life, and as a Cooperating Agency aware of the entirety of the rulemaking process that has landed us here today, you had every opportunity and obligation to invite your fellow Wyomingites to engage in this process– but you didn’t. Your office was among a mere fourteen commenters to engage in the public comment period that took place over ninety days. This is in stark contrast to the public comment period for the Bureau’s Resource Management Plan disaster for the Rock Springs Management Area, which the Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Agriculture Committee was alerted to by the Bureau. If you recall, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus was the first and loudest to raise the alarm, and received a great deal of criticism for doing so until it became evident to you and your allies in the press that the Bureau’s plan was catastrophic. When you declined to alert the public to the Bureau’s plans in the Powder River Basin, 14 comments were made. When the Wyoming Freedom Caucus alerted the public to the Bureau’s Rock Springs plans, thousands were made.
The people of Wyoming expect results from their elected officials, not excuses. Failure to successfully combat the Biden Administration’s scheme to kill coal won’t only jeopardize the people of our State, but the millions of Americans who rely on us for power.
We urge you to save your angry, bitter rhetoric for the real enemy: the Biden Administration. We are ready in every way to work with you against it.
Sincerely and for Wyoming,
Rep. Bill Allemand (House District 58), Rep. Abby Angelos (House District 3), Rep. John Bear (House District 31), Rep. Jeremy Haroldson (House District 4), Rep. Ben Hornok (House District 42), Rep. Chris Knapp (House District 53), Rep. Tony Locke (House District 35), Rep. Chip Neiman (House District 1), Rep. Pepper Ottman (House District 34), Rep. Sarah Penn (House District 33), Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams (House District 50), Rep. Allen Slagle (House District 2), Rep. Scott Smith (House District 5), Rep. Tomi Strock (House District 6), Rep. Jeanette Ward (House District 57), Rep. John Winter (House District 28)
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