WYOMING

Kanye West attracts thousands for worship service

CODY — Kanye West held an outdoor worship service that attracted thousands of people to the Wyoming city where he owns a ranch.

The Billings Gazette reports West held the free event Sept. 29 on the grounds of The Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody.

The center estimates 3,800 people attended the hour-long “Sunday Service” in the Robbie Powwow Garden.

An official says the center was contacted about renting the facility only two days earlier.

West performed with a choir of 80 singers flown from California to Wyoming the morning of the service.

The music included 14 choir pieces focused on worship and nontraditional hymns, as well as reworked versions of songs by No Doubt and Nirvana.

West recently purchased a ranch property south of Cody.

NEW MEXICO

State enters fray over vehicle emission standards

SANTA FE – New Mexico will set its own fuel economy and pollution standards for cars, pickup trucks and SUVs in a break with federal authorities, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced Sept. 24 from New York where she was participating in climate talks with other governors.

The move aligns New Mexico more closely with states including California that are resisting efforts by the Trump administration to revoke independent state authority to set greenhouse gas emission and fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks.

Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, said new state restrictions on vehicle emissions will start with model-year 2022 vehicles, and that New Mexico fuel economy standards will increase to an average of 52 mpg by 2025. She criticized the rollback of federal fuel economy standards by the federal government as counterproductive.

The Trump administration revoked California’s authority to set its own vehicle emission standards – authority the state has had for decades under a waiver from the federal Clean Air Act.

California in turn has sued the Trump administration over its rollback of environmental and clean air regulations.

Thirteen other states, including Colorado, plus the District of Columbia, have adopted California’s vehicle emission standards.

KANSAS

Governor’s warnings open Medicaid expansion review

TOPEKA – Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly has opened a review of options for expanding Medicaid in Kansas with warnings against work requirements and a limited expansion.

Kelly gave opening remarks Sept. 30 at the first meeting of a council she appointed to provide the Republican-controlled Legislature with policy guidance ahead of next year’s expected debate on the issue.

Kelly said she wants the council to develop “guiding principles” for lawmakers. She described work requirements and a limited Medicaid expansion as ideas that haven’t worked well in other states.

The governor took office in January pushing to expand the state’s Medicaid health coverage for as many as 150,000 additional residents. An expansion plan passed the House, but conservative GOP leaders blocked it in the Senate, expressing concerns about its potential costs to the state.

IDAHO

3 arrested for transporting hemp given probation

BOISE – Three truck drivers who were originally charged with felonies for transporting industrial hemp through Idaho have been placed on unsupervised probation.

The three men, who were charged in two separate cases, all had the felony charges reduced to misdemeanors. The Idaho Press reports Ada County Magistrate Judge Michael Oths also gave the men withheld judgments on Sept. 26, which means the convictions won’t show up on their criminal records.

Denis Palamarchuk was arrested in January when he was stopped while transporting a shipment of industrial hemp from Oregon to Colorado on behalf of Big Sky Scientific. Andrew D’Addario and Erich Eisenhart were arrested in 2018 after Idaho State Troopers found that they were driving industrial hemp plants from Colorado to Oregon.

Though hemp products like lotion and food items are sold in stores throughout the state, the plants themselves are illegal in Idaho because Idaho’s anti-marijuana laws are very broadly written.

UTAH

Artist fixes up ghost town near Colorado state line

CISCO – An artist is trying to revitalize an abandoned old railroad town in eastern Utah by refurbishing dilapidated buildings and converting them into residences for artists.

Eileen Muza is the sole resident of Cisco, a scattering of old buildings in the high desert 30 miles west of the Colorado line, KUTV reports. The town was created in the 1880s as a fill-station for a railroad, but died off when Interstate 70 was built a few miles north.

Muza first became fascinated by the town, about 55 miles west of Grand Junction, when she visited it while on vacation. She purchased it in 2015 and left her life in Chicago to move there.

She is fixing up the buildings to honor the town’s history and so other artists can work from them in a residency project she calls “Home of the Brave.”

Her longtime friend, Lauren Calhoun, recently came to visit and help rebuild the buildings that are falling apart. She laughed when she first heard about Muza’s plan to live there, but said it makes sense for Muza.

Muza is still getting used to living without normal amenities, such as running water, but says she loves the solitude.

WYOMING

City council considers downtown parking meters

CASPER — Parking on certain downtown Casper streets could soon be metered if the City Council moves forward with a proposal made by city staff at a work session.

The proposal would put metered parking along four streets downtown and through the Old Yellowstone District and charge people $1 per hour for parking. The meters would only be in effect during certain daytime hours. Police Chief Keith McPheeters suggested they be active from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The issue comes down to one main problem: Business owners say customers can’t get to them because people will park in front of their businesses and stay there all day.

Downtown has been without parking meters since 1992 when meters were removed to stop employees of downtown businesses from playing “musical cars” and moving from parking spot to parking spot every two hours to not be fined, as reported in a 1992 Star-Tribune article.

At the time, there was reportedly less free parking around the city’s downtown. When the city removed the parking meters it also designated a free parking lot.

Now, more than two decades later, the city’s proposal to reinstitute parking meters would in part seek to address the same issue removing them was meant to solve, the difference being that there is now an abundance of unused free and affordable parking downtown.

The idea to reinstitute the meters comes from the parking study commissioned by the city in 2017 and published in 2018. That study found Casper’s downtown had ample parking. Even at peak times, demand never exceeded more than 50% of parking supply, according to the study. But parking spot turnover was an issue, meaning people would park in front of businesses and stay there all day.

McPheeters said the metering would also create a better enforcement mechanism to address parking violations. Currently downtown parking is limited to two hours, but it’s a difficult rule to enforce, McPheeters said. Under this new proposal, the police department could adopt new technologies to enforce the time limits, like license plate readers integrated with the meters.

Even without those enforcement technologies, metering the streets would help with parking turnover downtown, McPheeters said.