Interstate Workshop Catalyzed by Targhee Expansion Set for July
More than 20 officials sorted regional responsibility for the interstate workshop across four axes at the June 10 cross-county planning call.
ZOOM — More than 20 officials on a June 10 planning call converged on how to scope the interstate workshop the two Teton Counties are co-funding. They treat the U.S. Forest Service's May 28 draft Record of Decision on Grand Targhee Resort's expansion as the workshop's catalyst, not its subject, and sort regional responsibility across four axes: federal, state, county and municipal, and the resort itself.
The hour-plus planning session, run by the University of Wyoming's Ruckelshaus Institute and the University of Idaho's McClure Center for Public Policy Research, took up two questions: who should be at the table when the in-person workshop convenes, and what the workshop should be designed to produce. By the end of the session, the facilitators had agreed on an in-person workshop with public observation, preceded by one-on-one stakeholder interviews they will conduct in the weeks ahead. Neither the date nor the workshop's length was settled on the call. The workshop is planned for the week of July 20, with specific dates not yet announced.
The June 10 call was the first interstate convening since Teton County, Idaho commissioners voted 3-0 on May 27 to contribute $5,000 toward the workshop, and the first since Forest Supervisor Kim Pierson signed the draft ROD on a 694-acre expansion the day after the BOCC vote. The interstate workshop's total budget is $30,394.
Teton County, Wyoming Commissioner Luther Propst, the only Wyoming commissioner audibly on the call, opened the substantive portion. "It's been clear for quite some time that the impacts that would arise from this federal decision fall into two buckets," Propst said. "Those impacts that are within the conventional scope of an environmental impact or analysis... Wildlife, water quality, wildfire, white bark pine, wolverines. Then there's a whole second bucket of impacts that are not clearly within the framework of the federal analysis, and that's the impacts on these adjoining communities."
Propst then named four axes of responsibility he wants the workshop to disentangle: federal, state, county and municipal, and Grand Targhee Resort itself. On the federal axis: "I don't want to let them off the hook." On the state axis: "We might go to Cheyenne and Boise holding hands to figure out what to do as a region." Local jurisdictions, he said, have their own toolkit. And the resort, he said, "should be responsible for paying their fair share."
Propst cited a longer institutional history than the May 27 BOCC vote alone showed. The two boards held a joint meeting on Grand Targhee impacts in October 2020. In 2021, Teton County, Idaho commissioned the ECONorthwest socioeconomic study, which has anchored the interstate argument since, with Teton County, Wyoming, co-funding. And in April 2024, the two boards met again "about revenue sharing and options along those lines," Propst said. The June 10 interstate workshop, in his telling, is a continuation of that conversation and "much bigger than" the federal decision.
Driggs City Administrator Doug Self surfaced the question of whether the resort itself should be at the table. "I'd also like to see Grand Targhee Resort at the table," Self said, "and I know they're not interested in being at the table if the whole conversation is about the resort." Propst pushed back on the premise. "My impression is that Targhee is the catalyst," he said. The federal decision opens the conversation, he said, but Geordie Gillett, who runs the resort, was right that it "is not something that's the purview of Grand Targhee." Teton County, Idaho Commissioner Dan Powers echoed: "We would love to have his participation," Powers said of Gillett, "but this is absolutely not just a Targhee thing, it's an inter-state thing."
Teton County, Idaho Commissioner Brad Wolfe pressed the revenue argument the board has been working from since the May 27 vote. "The real culprits on Teton County, Idaho are the people who visit the resort," Wolfe said, arguing for "some sort of impact fee of some sort from the resort." On May 27, Wolfe floated a 1- to 2-percent visitor impact fee at the BoCC meeting that would flow from Grand Targhee back to Teton County, Idaho. No one has identified a legal pathway for such a fee, and any interstate mechanism would require action by one or both state legislatures.
Victor City Council member Sue Muncaster proposed two analytical contributions she said the workshop could deliver in a single day. The first was modeling. "If we could model how much growth at Targhee would cause what impacts, that's one idea," Muncaster said. The facilitators said an economist is available to the facilitation team to develop baseline data. The second was a population-ratio metric Muncaster said she recalled from the regional Housing Authority: in Vail, Colorado, roughly 20 percent of housing is full-time occupied; in Teton Valley the figure is closer to 70 percent. "That's something that we want to preserve as Targhee grows into a bigger resort," she said.
Driggs City Council member Sarah Johnston raised the issue of through-traffic. "Nearly everyone drives through the center of Driggs to get to Targhee," Johnston said. "So we'd like to get to a point that we know exactly what to expect as far as impacts on Driggs so we can plan ahead appropriately."
Forest Service representative Jay Pence, on the call alongside Caribou-Targhee National Forest Supervisor Kim Pierson, connected the facilitators' economist offer to Idaho's structural revenue limits. Idaho counties cannot raise tax revenue to keep pace with growth, Pence said, and asked whether the workshop's economic discussion can address that constraint and use comparators like the Lake Tahoe basin. The Ruckelshaus team had already named Lake Tahoe as a primary interstate model.
The group talked through an initial slate of stakeholder bodies to invite to the in-person workshop, on a loose agenda that would have each body present its own perceived impacts: housing, transportation, waste, law enforcement, school districts, dispatch, structure fire, wildfire and emergency medical services, the Forest Service, Grand Targhee Resort, Grand Teton National Park, state and federal representatives, and the offices of the Idaho and Wyoming governors. Wolfe said the workshop can't skip the state axis: "This probably is not going to be resolved without their help."
The 2021 study Propst cited, delivered to both boards in 2022 by ECONorthwest, quantified the structural asymmetry the workshop will reason against. It found the county itself captures no direct tax revenue from each overnight Grand Targhee visitor, while Teton County, Wyoming, captures $11.37 per visitor. The cities of Driggs and Victor, however, both also capture $11.37 per overnight visitor. Idaho counties cannot levy sales, lodging, or excise tax, and a state cap holds annual property-tax growth to 3 percent. The study concluded Teton County, Idaho, "will likely experience only costs" from the resort's growth. The Ruckelshaus and McClure facilitators have a written workshop summary due to both boards by the end of August.
What to watch: The specific dates for the interstate workshop, planned for the week of July 20. The Ruckelshaus and McClure written summary is due by the end of August.