Wichita Eagle: State

Kansas business coalition: Allow illegal immigrants to stay, work

JOHN HANNA — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:11 CST

A coalition of business groups will propose Kansas start a new program to help some illegal immigrants remain in the state so they can hold down jobs in agriculture and other industries with labor shortages, coalition representatives disclosed Tuesday.

A spokeswoman for the Washington-based Immigration Policy Council called the proposal unprecedented and questioned whether the federal government would allow such a program, though she was sympathetic toward supporters’ goals. Utah has set up a guest-worker program, but it doesn’t take effect until 2013 and was part of a broader package of initiatives on immigration.

The Kansas proposal also is notable because it complicates the debate over immigration issues in the home state of Kris Kobach, the secretary of state and a former law professor who helped draft tough laws against illegal immigration in Alabama and Arizona.

New documents show more was spent on Kansas Bioscience Authority legal fees

Dion Lefler — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:49 CST

New documents show that the Kansas Bioscience Authority has spent about $122,000 in public funds, nearly twice as much as previously reported, on legal fees for two former executives facing a criminal investigation.

KBA attorney Tariq Abdullah said several pages had been inadvertently excluded from an electronic copy of legal billing records sent to The Eagle on Friday in response to a request filed under the Kansas Open Records Act.

On Saturday, The Eagle reported that the authority has paid $53,671 for former chief executive officer Tom Thornton’s attorneys and expenses, and $10,197 for lawyers for Janice Katterhenry, the former chief financial and operating officer.

Annie Diggs championed women’s right to vote

Beccy Tanner — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:14 CST

This is one in a series of vignettes celebrating Kansas history. The series’ name comes from the state motto, “Ad astra per aspera: "To the stars through difficulties."

Annie Diggs never had the chance to vote in a national election.

She died in 1916, four years before U.S. women earned their right to vote.

Measure proposes Cairn terrier – Toto’s breed – as state dog of Kansas

Beccy Tanner — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 06:35 CST

We’ve got a state insect, bird, song, animal and tree.

Now comes a proposal for a state dog – the cairn terrier, the breed that played Toto in “The Wizard of Oz.”

“Kansas has a state reptile, for goodness’ sakes,” said Brenda Moore of Augusta, obedience chairwoman with the South Central Kansas Kennel Club.

Kansas Day events honor state’s 151st anniversary

Beccy Tanner — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:59 CST

Kansas celebrates its 151st birthday on Sunday.Over the next few days and weeks, Kansans will celebrate with a variety of events.

Here are a few:

Friday

Audit finds Kansas Bioscience Authority’s former leader misspent funds, destroyed documents

DION LEFLER — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:02 CST

The former head of the Kansas Bioscience Authority misspent agency funds and destroyed documents on his computer that had been subpoenaed by a prosecutor investigating the agency, according to an in-depth audit of the state-funded authority.

The audit, by the firm BKD LLP, found that Tom Thornton, the former KBA president, used public funds to fly to Cleveland for a job interview and that employees alleged that he engaged in inappropriate intimate relations in the KBA’s office with an employee who later became his wife.

The report concluded that the couple’s conduct hurt office morale, but quoted a KBA contract lawyer’s analysis that their actions didn’t appear to violate state law because KBA employees are not technically state employees.

Illegal immigrants’ kids cut from food stamp rolls

Eagle news services — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:50 CST

Kansas welfare officials have eliminated or slashed food stamp benefits for hundreds of low-income, U.S.-born children whose parents are illegal immigrants.

The cuts are the result of the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services changing the way it counts household income when determining who is eligible for the food stamp program, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

The Kansas City Star reported that families affected by the change are those that contain a mixture of legal citizens and illegal immigrants. While illegal immigrants are not eligible for the food assistance, U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants can be.

Other key issues for the Legislature

Brent D. Wistrom and Dion Lefler — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:11 CST

Here are some of the major issues legislators will face in the session that begins Monday.

Abortion

After passing a package of anti-abortion laws last year, the Legislature might continue to chip away at Roe v. Wade by shortening the window for women to terminate a pregnancy. Two ideas on the table: ban or substantially restrict abortions after the fetal heartbeat becomes detectable, usually six to seven weeks; put a "personhood" amendment on the ballot that would define human life as beginning at fertilization. In the past two years, voters in Colorado and Mississippi rejected personhood amendments.

On the governor’s agenda

Brent D. Wistrom — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:11 CST

Here’s a quick look at changes Gov. Sam Brownback plans to pursue in the legislative session that starts Monday.

Taxes

Brownback wants to reduce individual state income tax rates and zap some income tax exemptions and credits to create a “flatter, simpler, fairer” tax code. His administration has hushed any further details, saving specifics for his State of the State speech Wednesday night. Income tax is the state’s largest stream of revenue. Democrats and moderate Republicans urge caution, suggesting a reduction could translate to deeper cuts in state services that have already faced big cutbacks. Brownback says his proposal won’t significantly cut state revenue. Meanwhile, Senate President Steve Morris, a moderate Republican, has set up a tax study group that will analyze tax bills and make recommendations to the Senate, which blocked an income tax reduction bill last year.

Kansas GOP presidential caucus to have full slate

MCT Regional News — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 15:07 CST

Kansas Republican presidential caucus participants should see a full ballot March 10.

The deadline for candidates to qualify by paying the $10,000 filing fee is 5 p.m. Saturday.

Kansas Republican Party executive director Clayton Barker said filing documents for former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich arrived around the middle of December, and representatives for three other candidates have said their papers will be sent by special delivery and should arrive this Thursday or Friday in Kansas.

Brownback doesn’t plan to address new gambling vote in legislative session

BRENT D. WISTROM — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 07:46 CST

Gov. Sam Brownback says the legislature shouldn’t try to tackle gambling during the 2012 legislative session because it has too many other heavy issues to deal with.

“We have got a full agenda,” the governor said in an interview with The Eagle. “This is not the time really for us to address gaming issues.”

Brownback’s agenda includes plans to change the state’s tax structure, overhaul the school finance formula and the state pension system, alter Medicaid and construct new water policies. Meanwhile, the legislature must tackle redistricting during an election year.

Love of the land connects Kansans

Beccy Tanner — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 15:32 CST

“The high plains at first gave him an overpowering impression of emptiness. Never before had he beheld such a sky — the cosmic vault of blue appeared to occupy a good three-fourths of the world, making small and unimportant the scattered farm houses with their meager clumps of ragged trees and inevitable windmills. But though the vastness at first oppressed him, eventually it distilled in him a sensation of fetterless freedom which he grew to love almost jubilantly.”

—Paul I. Wellman, in “The Walls of Jericho”

It’s called topophilia.

Retirement plans for state’s hires may change

BRENT D. WISTROM — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 06:35 CST

Future employees in the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System and those who aren’t vested by July 2013 would have 401K-style investments that grow and shrink with the markets under a plan recommended by the KPERS Study Commission on Tuesday.

Sen. Jeff King, a Republican from Independence who co-chairs the commission, said his proposal is the first step of a long process that aims to ensure that the Legislature funds benefits for teachers and government workers and doesn’t create the massive liabilities lawmakers are grappling with now.

The recommendations, approved in 8-3 votes, change nothing for vested employees — those with at least five years of service — and do little to address the $8.3 billion shortfall the system faces. The commission meets again today to discuss plans for vested employees and ways to deal with the shortfall.

With Kansas speech, Obama to follow in Roosevelt’s footsteps

By Beccy Tanner — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 06:42 CST

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin recently appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” encouraging President Obama to be more like Teddy Roosevelt and initiate a re-election effort aimed at rekindling the “Square Deal.”

Perhaps the president and his White House staff took the historian’s advice to heart as the nation’s 44th president is scheduled to arrive in Osawatomie today calling attention to the 26th president’s 1910 stop in Osawatomie, where he delivered what some historians call “the greatest oration ever given on American soil.”

The White House issued a release on Saturday indicating President Obama’s trip to Osawatomie is to give an address on the economy — and how Obama “sees this as a make-or-break moment for the middle class.”

Study: Amtrak service from Kansas City to Texas would take a long time, cost a lot

BRENT D. WISTROM — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 19:22 CST

Passenger rail service from Kansas City to Texas faces a long, expensive and uncertain track, according to a study released Thursday.

Developing daytime service, which would include late morning and early afternoon stops in Wichita, would take about seven years and cost $436 million. An additional $10 million in annual subsidies would have to be shouldered by Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. The service could attract an estimated 256,700 new Amtrak passengers.

A second plan would extend the existing Heartland Flyer route that runs between Oklahoma City and Fort Worth to Kansas City, including middle-of-the-night stops in Wichita. That would cost $136.5 million to develop and take roughly six years before passengers could board. It would cost Kansas and Oklahoma about $4.4 million a year in subsidies and draw 111,300 more passengers to the Flyer route.

Moran, Roberts file bill to allow state inspection of natural gas storage

Dion Lefler — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 21:59 CST

Sens. Pat Roberts and Jerry Moran have filed a bill in Congress to restore state authority to oversee the safety of facilities that store natural gas in underground caverns, in an effort to prevent potentially deadly explosions like the ones that rocked Hutchinson 10 years ago.

Federal agencies have declined to regulate underground storage, leaving Kansas facilities — as much as 270 billion cubic feet of gas — uninspected for the past 19 months.

Roberts’ and Moran’s bill, the Underground Gas Storage Facility Safety Act of 2011, would allow Kansas to restart its program of safety inspections of interstate gas storage facilities. State regulations would be subject to review by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Kansas highway projects announced

John Green — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 06:00 CST

Grants for projects to improve segments of state highways within more than a dozen Kansas communities have been announced by the Kansas Department of Transportation, including projects inside Lyons, Newton, Garden City and Jetmore.

In all, the state will provide $8.7 million toward the "geometric improvement" projects estimated to cost nearly $13 million and slated for construction in fiscal 2014. The cities must provide matching funds to cover the remainder of the costs, based on each city's size.

Among the projects:

Health insurance costs rising more slowly

DION LEFLER — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 10:39 CST

Health insurance premiums for next year are still rising, but the rate of increase may be starting to slow, according to experts in the insurance field.

And the effect of some new benefits under the new federal health care law , which added 1 to 2 percent to this year's rates, could be wearing off as insurers find out that new coverage and benefit mandates are not as costly as they had initially feared.

Health insurance companies who have filed their 2012 rates with the state are reporting between 0 and 9.9 percent increases, said Linda Sheppard, director of accident and health for the Kansas Insurance Commissioner's Office.

Modern houses go up in flames faster

TIM POTTER — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 14:40 CST

If a fire breaks out at your house, even if the smoke alarm alerts you, don't count on more than three minutes to escape, fire officials say. And you might have less time before the gases overcome you, said Bob McLemore, Colby fire chief and president of the Kansas State Association of Fire Chiefs.

You might think you'll have enough time. But if it's 2 a.m. and you're in a deep sleep, the smoke detector battery is dead and the fire's narcotic gases dull your senses, you can be left so disoriented you can't find an escape window only feet from your bed.

The scenario is increasingly possible, fire safety officials say. Homes are burning faster than in years past, they say, because common furnishings are made of combustible synthetic materials.

Military service: A Kansas tradition

BECCY TANNER — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 08:56 CST

Walk into almost any cemetery in Kansas and look at the number of veterans’ graves dotting the landscape.

For more than 150 years —from territorial battles over slavery to the war on terrorism in Afghanistan — Kansans have fought, defended and died for freedom.

In each battle, Kansas men — and now in more recent conflicts, women — stepped up to serve.