Listen:
Show Notes:
In this episode of the Freedom Cities Podcast, host Carl speaks with three Wyoming State Senators—Brian Boner (District 2), Chris Rothfuss (District 9), and Dan Dockstader (District 16)—about the bold future of economic development in Wyoming through the lens of Freedom Cities. The conversation explores Wyoming’s unique challenges and opportunities, including how the checkerboard pattern of federal land ownership complicates development and how land swaps could help unlock much-needed access and growth.
Key Points From This Episode:
- Freedom Cities aim to create innovative environments in the U.S.
- Wyoming has significant federal land that can be utilized for new cities.
- Energy production, especially nuclear, is a key focus for Wyoming.
- Regulatory challenges hinder economic growth and innovation.
- Processing minerals locally can enhance Wyoming’s economy.
- Regulatory sandboxes allow for flexible innovation in business.
- VTOL aircraft regulations position Wyoming as a leader in aviation innovation.
- Medical technology innovation is being fostered through state initiatives.
- Wyoming is a pioneer in blockchain and fintech regulations.
- Maintaining state regulatory primacy is crucial for innovation.
- Federal land ownership poses unique challenges in the West.
- Unlocking federal lands can drive economic development.
- Regulatory sandboxes can foster innovation in Wyoming.
- The checkerboard land issue complicates resource management.
- Deregulation is essential for economic growth.
- Freedom Cities could provide a framework for new development.
- Land swaps could improve federal land management.
- Innovative industrial parks could leverage Wyoming’s resources.
Transcript
[INTRO]
Welcome to the Freedom Cities Podcast where we explore bold new ideas and city building and improving regulations in the United States.
[INTRO ENDS]
Today, we are joined by three Wyoming State Senators. So gentlemen, I’d love for you to please introduce each of yourselves and tell me a little bit about your district. So maybe we’ll start on my left here, Senator Dockstader.
Senator Dockstader: Dockstader to their Senate 1616, western side of Wyoming. Diverse district, everything from Jackson Hole tourism to chemical mines and nature of nuclear.
Carl: Great, Senator Boner.
Brian Boner: Senator Boner, Senate District 2. I’d say rural east from part of the state. I have lots of energy activity there, lots of agriculture, a pretty diverse array of different type of energy resources from one of the most active oil and gas basins in the state to a legacy uranium mine. to natural gas in the next few years. providing that base load of spassoil power for our state and for rest of the region. So lots of opportunities in the Senate District 2, lots of ways to innovate if we can get a little deregulation before the state and federal…
Carl: and Senator Rothfuss.
Chris Rothfuss: I’m Senator Chris Rothfuss. I’m a senator for Laramie, Wyoming in Senate District 9. Laramie’s home of the University of Wyoming, Bill Pokes. We have a lot of economic development based on the activities of the university. We have a lot of economic development in technology, engineering, and really trying to find ways to solve the problems that are… described by Senators Doxtetter and Boner for the rest of the state through our School of Energy Resources and other incredible research activities at the University.
Carl: Great, and the three of us have spoken previously about various issues around freedom cities, but in particular here, I kind wanted to drill down on a couple big issues. So one, the importance of federal lands for freedom cities, both preserving federal lands that should be preserved, among other things, national parks, but also the potential to unlock federal lands and sort of maybe make a more sensical, more reasonable management of certain federal lands that are stuck in a very weird pattern out in Wyoming among maybe a few other places in the U.S. So maybe Senator Rothfuss, you could tell us a little bit about this nightmare checkerboard of federal land that we have in Wyoming and maybe how we can fix that and maybe how Freedom Cities will help do that.
Chris Rothfuss: Absolutely, yeah, we struggle in Wyoming with the checkerboard, which is all along the original railroad in the southern part of the state, where sections of land were given to the railroad, the other sections were held as federal land across the entire transcontinental railroad.
That’s still largely in place and as a result we have real challenges around the management of the private property and state property that are the odd sections of the checkerboard because anytime we engage in any activity that influences the federal portion of the checkerboard we end up having to get federal permits. So our entire southern part of the state even though it’s 50 % federal ends up being locked up basically with a hundred percent requirement for permits on that land.
If we could do something like a land swap with the federal government and bring their portion of the checkerboard together, isolated in one federally managed and perhaps managed through Freedom Cities or other projects where we can unlock and have access through federal permitting and then consolidate the other lands in a way that they can be managed either as private land or state land depending on what the ownership is. It would honestly be a win-win-win for everybody. The private sector would benefit, the state would benefit, and honestly the federal government would benefit because it would be much easier for them to manage a 50 % size land mass.
Carl: Great, and you know Senator Dockstader, you earlier spoken with me about some big key issues of legislation that have happened in Wyoming. Wyoming has been a sort of leader nationally, one of the few states leading nationally with what are called regulatory sandbox programs. Could you give me sort of a brief overview of one of these, maybe the medical innovation sandbox, regulatory sandbox, and how that’s gonna help lead, how that’s shown Wyoming is leading in terms of reducing regulatory burdens on innovators in the United States.
Brian Boner: We wanted to look at leading in healthcare and so we created what’s called a Medical Digital Innovation Sandbox and our Department of Health actually has an application for a waiver on it now. It was trying to set up, for example, technology that allows for scanning and things that are just state of the art and work it into our healthcare system with our providers across the state. That’s already on there. Second one, aviation, were creating a sandbox for that. were able to take off landing. Wyoming wants to lead in this area.
Carl: And Senator Boner, think something that would be very interesting from you would be… maybe tell me a little bit about this potential for, or there’s been some discussion about the potential in the past for a sort of a large state level sort of special economic zone or industrial park for the processing of things like hydrocarbons. I think this meshes very well maybe with the idea of a charter city, a charter city sort of, a charter city or in this case in the United States, a freedom city sort of makes this maybe broadens the appeal I would hope. But can you tell me a bit more about this idea of a state level industrial zone for hydrocarbon processing?
Brian Boner: Right, and we’ve been looking at the possibility for years of leveraging the good work we do producing raw materials for our energy industry and just adding value to it. So it’s not that far off what we’re doing currently. But if there’s a way that we could have a general sandbox, for example, or an industrial zone which does have opportunity for deregulation, perhaps in concert with a federal deregulation.
I think that’s an excellent opportunity that leverages the strengths we have currently in our private sector. It leverages our natural resources, which we have in abundance here. And if we just have a little bit of regulatory relief, both at the state level and from our federal partners, that’s something that we’re looking to do. And we’ll continue to develop that idea, especially as this idea gains traction.
Carl: And then what are the three of you most excited about for the potential of freedom cities in the United States?
Brian Boner: Well, I’ll go first. think, you know, we’re looking at, the energy production. We get a sense that we haven’t built anything new in quite some time. We’re talking about replacing coal-fired plants with natural gas, for example, or nuclear. But what about increasing our capacity? What about growing? What about making sure that we can continue to build things the way that we once did? I think that’s something that we try to do every day in this state. But I’d love to have, you know, not just replacing power plants, but building new ones, new capacity. For things like data centers, for AI, for all the demands that we’re gonna have in the decades ahead. And that’s something that Wyoming does every day. We export a lot of energy. We could do a lot more with a little bit of regulatory reduction. I’d like us to look at what we discussed earlier. A centralized area where we could take all the developing energy and make use of a changing world, rapidly changing world. I think that that is the future if we could center it in maybe one or two places in Wyoming, create under the innovation of a digital sandbox, I think we could make this work in Wyoming.
Chris Rothfuss: For me, it offers a great chance and opportunity for innovation where when you’re starting from scratch, we know we have incredible resources, incredible technology, incredible ideas, but it’s hard to integrate that into the existing system. When you start fresh, and think how would we do this if we were doing it a second time? It gives you an opportunity to really improve the qualities of life of people in the state and their communities and really take better advantage of the resources and opportunities that we do have in a way that empowers our public and powers the constituents that we serve. And so there is a tremendous opportunity here. If we can bring down regulations so that things can be sped up and we can let ideas actually come to fruition instead of, you know, die on the vine, we really offer a lot of opportunity in Wyoming to benefit from this type of approach.
Carl: Senators, thank you very much. Thank you for joining the Freedom Cities podcast. For our listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and stay tuned for more conversations on the future of cities.
[OUTRO]
Mark: This is Mark Lutter and thanks for joining the Freedom Cities Podcast, if you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to like, subscribe and stay tuned to more episodes.
