As the story unfolded, a cascade of permits and approvals secured by a wealthy and politically savvy development company presented Governor Perry and the state government with little choice but to accept the project or face expensive court action and an eventual loss. John Dutton then emerges as a conservative, even openly reactionary opponent of progress. When elected, he undoes the entire chain of permits and approvals for the project, starting at the state level and extending to the key local county commission approval. In one episode that you may have missed, Governor Perry recruited John Dutton to run and succeed her in order to undo the project, so they had no need to discuss its merits and details in later episodes after Dutton became governor.
In broad terms, the Yellowstone plot line is plausible. Large development projects are commonly so hard to stop because of the political and economic power they have behind them and because, by the time organized opposition emerges, key early permits and approvals have usually been quietly secured.
My brother and I once beat a major toll road project in a fight that spanned more than ten years. A key stage in the toll road fight was when my brother got elected to the city council and as mayor of a small town in order to fight the project.
There was a victory in court on appeal that killed the project, with a fight then ensuing in the state legislature to block revival of the toll road at that level; there were dire threats of personal retaliation from development interests that backed the road; condign humbling of various public officials; and then a final revocation of local planning council approval that ended any prospect of it rising from the dead.
In sum, the machinations over the development project in Yellowstone are credible as storytelling. And so also is your point. My brother still grumbles at how I ended up on good terms with the trial judge who ruled against us and with a member of the US House who was politically treacherous as a state legislator. Unreliable judges and politicians are just part of the ecosystem and it serves no purpose to be forever angry at them.
I guess that is the part I don't understand. With the amount of money involved with those deals, when those permits were handed out, surely a Governor would have been aware of them, and been in the loop regarding their approval. Usually a Governor is in on granting permits, especially when they pertain to the development of a new airport, new Indian casino, hotel, and massive residential housing. I don't understand how Governor Perry was caught off-guard on those things, to the point where the developers had her by the tit, and the State government was forced to go along with it all. That makes no sense to me.
Andrew Cuomo, made a lot of million/billion dollar deals with developers during his terms as Governor. Just in the Syracuse area, he cut deals for two businesses to set up shop there. Buildings were constructed with tax payer funds at no cost to the developers as an enticement to move their business there. The developers backed out, never occupied the buildings, and tax payers got screwed. One of the buildings later sold for $1. It wasn't long after that, that one of Cuomo's top aides, and a couple of the developers were charged with fraud, and sent to prison.
In regards to Yellowstone, if Governor Perry wasn't aware of those permits being issued, then I say she was a pretty incompetent Governor. And if those permits were wrongly issued, then why wasn't the person who approved them held accountable? I don't recall hearing anything on anyone being held accountable for granting those permits, during the five seasons I've been watching the show. There just seems to be a lot of the backstory missing.