The Cross-State Fire Deal That Works

DRIGGS — Mike Maltaverne still owes Mike Moyer for lunch. He drove over Teton Pass one day for his turn to buy, forgot his wallet, and the Jackson fire chief covered him at Nora's. "Probably still owe you," Maltaverne told him, in front of two counties' worth of elected officials.

At the two Teton counties' July 23 joint workshop in Driggs, Idaho and Wyoming officials worked through how to pay for Grand Targhee's growth. The cross-state fire deal stood out as the one arrangement already working. Maltaverne traced that to a rebuilt relationship; Moyer credited a fire-service culture that puts response ahead of the map.

Teton County, Wyoming, has no fire or EMS facilities and no staff on the Idaho side of the range. Teton County Fire & Rescue, based in Driggs, covers Alta, Grand Targhee, and Teton Pass under a service agreement Wyoming and the Idaho fire district first negotiated in 2021. TCFR runs three stations, unstaffed in Tetonia and staffed in Driggs and Victor, with a full-time career force of about 31, Maltaverne told the room. The 2021 fire deal was a five-year contract; it was renewed before the workshop to run 2026 through 2031, and for the coming fiscal year it pays the district $580,000, with a built-in $20,000 annual increase.

When Maltaverne arrived, about four and a half years before the workshop, he went to Jackson to introduce himself to the sitting Wyoming chief, who sat him down and put him on notice. "The way we got to this agreement was maybe not amicable," Maltaverne recounted being told. "There's some fences to mend here." "I leaned into that really, really hard," Maltaverne said. He met with officials in Teton County, Wyoming, and built ties with Moyer. Of the original negotiation, he said, "I wasn't there. Don't think it was very good."

The two chiefs talk weekly to monthly by text and phone, and take turns driving over the pass for lunch. They plan together for wildfires, weather events, and the large gatherings Grand Targhee draws in summer. Before fire season, Maltaverne said, TCFR goes up to Alta and the resort to meet the people it might have to work alongside in an emergency, and down to patrollers. "We always talk in the fire service about [if you're] meeting for the first time during an emergency," Maltaverne said. "You've kind of done something wrong."

About a year and a half before the workshop, a 100-acre grass fire broke out, and getting a Wyoming engine took one phone call. "As simple as me calling over and saying, hey, Mike, can you send me an engine? And I never had to say anything else. It just showed up," Maltaverne said. Both departments, he said, "tend to worry about things later."

TCFR's EMTs and paramedics hold licenses in both Wyoming and Idaho and keep them current on both sides of the line. "That is a little bit unique," Maltaverne said. "It causes some logistical challenges and some paperwork and things like that, but we manage it, and we've been doing it for a while." Three words were on the screen: "Acta, non verba." He asked the room to guess, then translated: action over words. "If I say I'm going to do something, I do it."

Moyer said fire-service culture sends the closest appropriate agency, regardless of jurisdiction, just as his department works with Grand Teton National Park. "When people call, they don't care who's showing up," he said. "It's that somebody's showing up."

Teton County Idaho Commissioner Dan Powers called the fire arrangement "a great model for something we can do without congressional involvement, without involving legislators," crediting "that willingness to collaborate." "If we can replicate that," he said, "I think we can work out the details." The agenda set no action items, and no vote was taken.

"There's a lot of gray hair in here, which means that a number of us won't be here in 10 years or 5 years," Moyer had said in closing. "So make sure that we're passing that on to that next generation, and they're not starting from zero."

The fire deal runs through 2031. The money and law-enforcement questions the July 23 workshop left open are the harder test of the "willingness to collaborate" Powers praised. Before the room adjourned, Powers proposed forming a few working groups.

Lunch Over the Pass: The Fire Deal Both Teton Counties Already Made Work

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