and then 
By Exie Brown
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 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 Wyoming deserve nothing less.
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Exie Brown is a candidate for Wyoming House District 9.