When questions arise about the safety of the water and wastewater systems that
Cheyenne residents pay for every month, the public has a fundamental right to
answers. That right is being tested right now.
I recently submitted public records requests to the City of Cheyenne Board of
Public Utilities and the Wyoming Department of Health seeking information about
potential bacterial contamination, including Cupriavidus gilardii, in local
wastewater and water systems in connection with industrial operations such as
data centers. These are legitimate questions about public infrastructure, water
quality, and public health.
The responses were disappointing. The City estimates it will cost approximately
$500 to fulfill the request. The Department of Health estimates $1,340 (after
the statutory minimum) for staff time to review and redact 445 responsive
items. That's roughly five minutes of professional staff time per record. For
comparison, the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality charged just $7 for
a similar volume of records in a related request.
These are not trivial amounts for an individual citizen seeking information
that directly affects the community. While agencies are permitted to recover
reasonable costs for processing complex requests, fees of this magnitude on
matters involving public health and ratepayer-funded infrastructure create real
barriers to transparency.
This situation echoes concerns I raised earlier this year about Cheyenne’s
broken city government system. At that time, I noted how the city often meets the bare minimum
legal requirements for public notice and comment on contentious issues (such
as the purchase of Flock license plate reader cameras and other ordinances),
but falls short of genuine public engagement. The result is a public that feels
blindsided and excluded from decisions that affect their daily lives.
The same dynamic appears to be at work here. Legally, agencies can charge for
staff time spent reviewing and redacting records. But when those charges become
so high that ordinary residents cannot reasonably afford to obtain information
about the systems they fund and rely upon, the system stops serving the public
interest. It instead protects institutions and large projects from scrutiny.
Data center development brings economic activity to our region, and that growth
deserves thoughtful oversight, not obstruction. At the same time, Cheyenne
families and small businesses deserve to know how major industrial users are
affecting the water and wastewater infrastructure we all pay for. When high
fees make that information difficult to obtain, it raises a deeper question: Is
our government structured to facilitate accountability, or has it become more
comfortable limiting it?
The Wyoming Public Records Act is built on the principle that government
records belong to the people. On issues involving public health, environmental
quality, and the expenditure of ratepayer dollars, that principle should be
upheld in practice, not just in statute. Waiving or significantly reducing fees
in cases of clear public interest would be a meaningful step toward restoring
trust. However, the City and the Department of Health have refused to
accommodate either.
Cheyenne and the State of Wyoming can have both economic development and
genuine transparency. But we cannot have one at the expense of the other. When
citizens must pay hundreds or even over a thousand dollars simply to understand
what is happening within their government, something is clearly not working as
it should.
It is time for the City of Cheyenne, the Board of Public Utilities, and state
agencies to prioritize the public’s right to know over procedural and financial
barriers. The people of Cheyenne and the entire state of Wyoming deserve
nothing less.
Exie Brown is a Candidate for House District 9 in Laramie County