A year after a proposal to establish a business school in Jackson first surfaced, questions remain unanswered over who conceived the idea and whether influential community members played a role.

Speaker of the House Randall Luthi, R-Freedom, renewed interest in the subject last month when, during a Wyoming Public Television forum, he said the proposal originated with a "group of Jackson businessmen."

These businessmen were talking about the future and were interested in doing something, possibly tied to the University of Wyoming, to help the state, Luthi said.

The forum, hosted by Geoff O' Gara, was broadcast Nov. 10 from Snow King Resort. Jackson attorney Peter Moyer and Senate President Grant Larson, R-Jackson, were part of the panel discussion.

So far Luthi and Larson have refused to disclose the names of any business people they met with in drafting the proposal. They acknowledge that those discussions took place, initially between the interested parties and State Treasurer Cynthia Lummis.

They have referred all questions to Lummis, whom they have long credited as the source of the business school concept. But Lummis denies having such discussions.

"Don't ask me for who's," Larson said in an interview last week. "I don't talk for other people.

"There were Jackson businessmen," Larson said. "I will not tell you who they were."

When asked Monday about his remark on the TV forum, Luthi said, "I will put you right on the horse's mouth," referring to Lummis. "That's who I took all my notes from on the proposal."

Reached at her office Tuesday in Cheyenne, Lummis flatly denied having such meetings.

"I didn't meet with businessmen in Jackson, and that's my only comment," she said, although she later elaborated on the matter when pressed. Lummis said she came up with the idea after a governors' conference, and her staff researched and drafted the proposal.

At issue is the proposed Teton Institute, initially conceived as a graduate business school and executive training center in Teton County. Proponents, chiefly Larson, Luthi and Lummis, touted the proposal as a way to harness the knowledge of retired and working business executives who own houses in Teton County, whom they envisioned as guest lecturers, faculty or donors.

An initial prospectus, prepared by the state treasurer's staff and circulated late last year, called for building a $28 million campus on a 640-acre parcel of state land near Teton Village. After much debate in the Legislature, lawmakers allocated $945,000 in March for a study of the feasibility of the idea.

A steering committee appointed by the Legislature spent six months considering the proposal and eventually recommended creating a Teton Institute to host "premier" summits and conferences in existing facilities in Teton County. But after three years, a "world-class" learning center would have to be built at an unspecified location, at a cost of $46 million, the committee has recommended.

The business school proposal caught most of the community, and the state, off guard. Since news of the plan broke last December, Jackson Hole residents and some lawmakers have wondered where exactly the idea originated.

Rep. Pete Jorgensen, D-Jackson, is calling for answers.

"From the beginning, I've always asked, 'I'd like to understand this. Who are the concept people?'" Jorgensen said Tuesday. "I never, never had anyone identify a concept person."

Jorgensen, who like Larson and Luthi is a member of the legislative oversight board for the project, recalled seeing Lummis in a hotel lobby in Cheyenne roughly a year ago as she talked about the proposal with Teton County commissioners. Afterward, he told her he would like to speak with the "concept people" involved.

"Grass doesn't grow in the dark," Jorgensen recalls saying. "There had to be an origin."

Lummis explained to him that the idea for the business school grew out of the governors' conference she attended. She didn't remember who she had spoken with about the idea, Jorgensen said.

"That's as close as Cynthia ever got to explaining it," Jorgensen said.

A former University of Wyoming trustee who has been skeptical of the business school plan, Jorgensen said he has one question for Lummis: "Who were the Jackson businessmen?" he said.

After the prospectus surfaced, the News&Guide interviewed a host of prominent business leaders and community residents and asked if they had been involved in brainstorming the idea. Among those who denied involvement were Alan Hirschfield, an investor and entrepreneur; Bill Resor, a partner in Snake River Associates whose family is developing 510 acres adjacent to Teton Village and leases the nearby state parcel for ranching; and Foster Friess, an investor and philanthropist whose company, Friess Associates, won a contract from the state earlier this year to manage $80 million in investments.

Allan Tessler, an investor and entrepreneur who served on the steering committee, told the News&Guide he first learned of the business school proposal through media reports.

During the last legislative session, as lawmakers debated the merits of the proposal, Luthi identified Lummis as the "source" of the business school plan, saying he was just the "messenger." Pressed to name some of the backers in the community, Luthi and Larson released letters from two people who lecture at Stanford University, including Robert Grady, an executive with The Carlyle Group who owns a home in Jackson Hole.

In an interview in Cheyenne in February, Lummis explained that she came up with the idea for the business school after attending the governors' conference, as she had told Jorgensen. During this conference, held in New Orleans in 2001, she and a group of other state leaders devised a strategic plan to foster entrepreneurship in Wyoming, she said.

Lummis reiterated Tuesday that this conference was the "genesis" of the business school idea. The strategic plan she and other state leaders devised targeted education, human resources, infrastructure and investment capital as the components needed to spur business growth, she said.

The business school proposal encompassed all four elements, she said. She shared her idea with a "number of people" at the University of Wyoming and former U.S. Sen. Al Simpson of Cody, then sent an aide to top-tier business schools to "validate the concept," she said. She and her staff then drafted the prospectus.

"That's the truth," she said. "That was the origin."

Lummis said she could not recall meeting with any business people in Jackson, although she did float the idea of the business school during a philanthropy gathering hosted by the University of Wyoming in June 2004 at the AMK Ranch in Grand Teton National Park. "Most of the people in attendance were not Jackson business people," she said.

In December 2004, then University of Wyoming President Phil Dubois was blindsided when he learned of the proposal from media reports. Luthi and Larson later apologized for moving too fast and not apprising the university of the plan in advance.

O'Gara, the Wyoming Public Television host, said he was struck during the Nov. 10 show by Luthi's reference to Jackson businessmen. The remark came as Luthi opened the forum by giving a brief history of the project.

"I had never heard that before," O'Gara said. He made a note of it but did not have time to return to the matter later in the program, he said.

Moyer, who was filling in for Jorgensen on the panel, said it was "odd" for Luthi to explain the origin the way he did. Moyer said he had suspected there were influential community members pushing for the business school.

"I wasn't surprised," Moyer said. "I thought it was interesting that [Luthi] mentioned that, without saying who it was."

Moyer joined Jorgensen in calling for a straightforward explanation and list of businessmen who influenced the proposal.

"Why does it have to be so secret?" Moyer said. "The Wyoming way is open and honest. Why is it embarrassing to say who it was?"