12/04/2025
https://www.307wyomingsentinel.com/people-have-stood-22-platte-county-residents-ask-governor-gordon-remove-their-commissioners-after
“THE PEOPLE HAVE STOOD UP” — 22 Platte County Residents Ask Governor Gordon to Remove Their Commissioners After Months of Secrecy, Retaliation and Unchecked Power
Governor Gordon confirms receipt of formal complaints against Platte County Commissioners
By Marie Hamilton and collaborating Sentinel Staff/Editors
Editor’s Note: Some names of residents have been withheld due to legitimate concerns of retaliation from local government officials
CHUGWATER — On a cold December morning, before the sun rose over the Platte County prairies and bluffs, a small group of residents finalized a 50-plus-page complaint about all three Platte County Commissioners to Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon, before sending it electronically and then personally delivering it to his office.
The coffee was hot, the voices low and the stack of printed documents in the center of the table several inches thick. After months of trying to be heard, months of doors quietly closing, agendas quietly shifting, meetings canceled without explanation and citizens quietly intimidated, these residents — ranchers, parents, business owners, retirees — signed their names to something they hoped they would never have to file: a formal request for the Governor of Wyoming to investigate and remove their own county commissioners from office.
22 of them signed.
22 are registered voters or landowners in Platte County.
And every one of them says the same thing: they didn’t seek this fight — the fight came to them.
The 64-page complaint filed December 1, 2025, was not born overnight. It is the result of a months-long effort by residents who felt their county government was slipping away from transparency, honesty and the basic Wyoming principle that local officials must answer to local people. They describe a pattern — not a single event, not a misunderstanding, but a continuous erosion of lawful governance. They point to commissioners who, they say, began to move in the shadows: meeting privately as a quorum, concealing interactions with NextEra Energy, misusing confidential documents, shutting down public comment, retaliating against residents and violating state law in ways that, the complaint argues, cut at the very fabric of representative democracy.
But this is also the conclusion of something else — a quiet, painstaking investigation conducted by The Sentinel itself.
Editor’s Note: Some names of residents have been withheld due to legitimate concerns of retaliation from local government officials
