Odd bedfellows join in local-control fight over state lands

Wyoming’s county commissioners and an alliance of Casper-area residents want to support Teton County in a lawsuit over local government authority to impose zoning and safety codes on private businesses leasing land from the state.

The Casper Mountain Preservation Alliance joined a group of Teton County homeowners who filed an amicus brief in a long-running lawsuit over state-sanctioned development on a school trust section in Teton County. The Wyoming County Commissioners Association also filed an amicus brief, seeking to argue on behalf of Teton and other counties while defending local codes and regulations.

Involvement of the two groups turns the Teton County spat into an all-Wyoming dustup. State officials sued Teton County to prevent it from enforcing its codes and regulations on state land and won in district court. Teton County is appealing that decision to the Wyoming Supreme Court and others seek to join Teton’s arguments.

Statewide dustup

The Office of State Lands and Investments administers more than 3 million acres of school trust lands scattered throughout every county in the state. The state’s position regarding the private development it permitted on a state land section in Teton County — a glamping operation — is that the county doesn’t have legal standing to impose its own zoning and regulatory codes on the private business. That interpretation applies to state trust lands in all counties, according to the state.

What are state trust lands?

Upon granting statehood in 1890, the federal government bestowed some 4.2 million acres of “ state trust lands ” to Wyoming, which currently manages about 3.4 million acres of trust land. The Wyoming Constitution prescribes that the primary use of those lands, which are scattered throughout the state in a checkerboard pattern, is to generate revenue to support public schools.

The Office of State Lands and Investments commonly leases those lands — often referred to as “school sections” — for grazing and industrial development such as mining and oil and gas drilling.

Like many other local governments, Teton County’s codes protect residents from “unwanted neighboring industrial uses,” and the “risk of burning down,” while also promoting modern safety standards, the County Commissioners Association stated in its filing. “These safeguards are at risk not only in Teton County, but across Wyoming,” the commissioners’ group states.

Citizens for the Responsible Use of State Lands, a Teton County homeowners’ group, also filed an amicus brief siding with Teton County hoping to sway the state Supreme Court. Separately, the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance and The Teton Village Association have appealed issuance of a state permit to operate an air curtain burner — an incinerator to burn slash from a tree-care company — at the Teton school section site.

Natrona County residents jump on board

Hundreds of residents who live near a cluster of state trust lands at the base of Casper Mountain were stunned earlier this year to learn a potential gravel mining operation had been approved for the property without direct notice to neighbors or the county. The mining operation threatens groundwater resources where hundreds depend on shallow water wells, and would essentially industrialize the residential area, they say .

Though gravel mining is in line with Natrona County’s zoning regulations, thousands of residents are urging the state to rescind permits granted to developer Prism Logistics while at the same time demanding the county impose operational limitations via a “conditional use permit” if the state allows the project to move forward.

The Casper Mountain Preservation Alliance joined Citizens for the Responsible Use of State Lands because of “the statewide import of the question presented, and the absence of any party giving voice to the concerns of Wyoming landowners and local citizens,” the brief states. The Powder River Basin Resource Council and Wyoming Outdoor Council also are parties to the organization’s brief.

For too long, it had felt as though others across the state didn’t care — perhaps because the county-state land use battle was perceived as a Teton County issue — or didn’t understand that the same type of conflict with state-sanctioned private use of its trust lands could happen in their backyard, said William P. Schwartz, an attorney representing the Teton County-based Citizens for Responsible Use of State Lands.

“There was not a peep from anybody,” Schwartz told WyoFile. “What happens in Teton county is often viewed as an outlier in so many instances, and not really relevant to the rest of the state. When the Casper thing started to heat up, people started to pay attention.

“I am pleased that we were finally able to get some other people,” Schwartz added.

It is significant, and should be compelling to the court, that the blue-collar community of Natrona County — with a culture and economy rooted in extractive resources — has gathered nearly 20,000 signatures to battle the state on the same basic grounds as Teton County, Casper Mountain Preservation Alliance Chairperson Carolyn Griffith said.

“It doesn’t matter where you’re from — whether you’re from Teton County, Natrona County, wherever — this whole [gravel mining] proposal has enlightened a lot of Wyoming on some of the practices that exist and nobody really noticed because it didn’t affect them,” Griffith said.

Vying for state-county collaboration

Teton County’s own appeal asks the Wyoming Supreme Court to declare that the State Board of Land Commissioners and its permittees are subject to a county’s land use or development regulations on state trust land. The foundation of the disagreement rests on temporary use permits the State Board of Land Commissioners — which is comprised of Wyoming’s top five elected officials — issued to two private companies to operate a storage stable and a glamping hotel on a 640-acre school Trust near Teton Village.

After Teton County sought to inspect the developments for fire safety and other standards, Wyoming sued to block that action and won in district court.

The three briefs total 101 pages, not counting attachments, and focus on the concept of sovereign immunity, a legal construct that protects governments in their official duties. “[B]ecause of ‘sovereign immunity’ the [state believes it] is exempt from compliance with all laws regarding land use, or health/safety regulations such as electrical, fire, or building codes,” Teton County explained in its filing.

“Non-compliance with land use, safety, and health regulations has absolutely nothing to do with sovereign immunity which is appropriate when discussing liability, not land use,” Teton County Chief Deputy County Attorney Keith Gingery wrote. Citing sovereign immunity is a “ritualistic statement…better made in the 1300s rather than in 2024,” the brief states.

The statewide county commissioners’ group agreed. “Private companies leasing or using state-owned land to advance their own commercial interests should not get to exploit governmental sovereignty to shield their businesses from the same local land use regulations that every other private company is subject to,” the group argues.

Wyoming law does not support the notion that private parties are entitled to “the ‘King’s protection,’” Citizens for the Responsible Use of State Lands attorneys wrote. The State Board of Land Commissioners’ sovereign claim is “particularly audacious” because the permits it issued “specifically require them to “comply with all…local laws,” the organization’s brief stated.

The groups cite numerous cases and arguments to support their position. They also challenge the state land board’s decision to issue temporary use permits for the storage stables and glamping rather than special use permits — effectively an end run around the board’s own regulations, they say.

Wyoming’s Legislature authorized the state land board to issue special use permits as long as they comply with other state statutes. There is no legislative authority for temporary permits, the groups argue, so they, too, must comply with statutes.

Those statutes grant local governments control over aspects of development, the groups say in their briefs. That local control includes ensuring that developments meet fire and electrical codes and inspections to ensure compliance.

In Natrona County, the state has argued that the “limited” industrial mining operation proposed there — though it is not subject to a thorough environmental review by the state — is subject to other layers of long-existing state federal regulations that should ensure it doesn’t impede neighboring private property rights or county zoning codes.

If that were the case, Casper Mountain Preservation Alliance’s Griffith said, the landowners’ group wouldn’t be in the legal fight.

“For us to be told, ‘Trust the process,’ well, we’ve trusted the process,” Griffith said. “That’s basically where we are now trying to come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for experts and to pay for attorneys.”

The state has yet to respond to the appeals.

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