Wyoming DEQ says industrial-siting impact-assistance reports create paperwork burden; recommends changing reporting trigger

Todd Parfit, director of the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, told the Minerals Committee on behalf of the agency that the reporting framework for industrial-siting local impact assistance — enacted in 2022 — has produced many administrative problems for local governments and the state. “The key thing, I think, to to convey here is that all the distributions and expenditures have been consistent with the industrial siting council order and the legislation,” Parfit said. Jenny Staben, administrator working with the Industrial Siting Council, told the committee the statute requires reporting to begin one year after the permit order is issued, which produced roughly 80 county and municipal returns showing only $0 because construction — the event that triggers dispersal — often had not begun. “The disbursement of an impact assistance funds does not begin until construction starts,” Staben said. That timing mismatch, plus a form with automated fields that behaved inconsistently on different…