Wichita lawmaker, council member fight at pub over management of chemical spill site
An explosive argument between a state representative and a Wichita City Council member brought law enforcement to a Topeka pub Wednesday evening.
Video of the heated exchange between Rep. Ford Carr, a Wichita Democrat, and council member Brandon Johnson shows another Democratic lawmaker, Rep. Henry Helgerson of Eastborough, trying to intervene and being shoved to the floor by Carr.
The incident took place at the Celtic Fox pub across the street from the Capitol during a reception attended by council members, Sedgwick County officials and members of the South Central Delegation.
The argument between Carr and Johnson stemmed from the management of state funds allocated to pay for cancer screenings for residents of the 29th and Grove groundwater contamination site.
Local and state officials have traded barbs over who is responsible for delays in accessing $1.5 million allocated by the Legislature last year. Votes earlier this week by the City Council to provide $125,000 in matching funds and the County Commission to enter an agreement with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment will finally make the money available to local health clinics.
Videos obtained by The Eagle shows Carr and Johnson getting in each other’s faces and shouting insults, including Carr directing a racial slur at Johnson. County Commission Chair Ryan Baty and Helgerson try to get between the two men and separate them. At one point, Carr pushes Helgerson off of him and the 73-year-old falls to the ground, knocking a table over before he’s helped to his feet.
“I’m not going to speak to the incident in Topeka,” Johnson said in a statement Thursday afternoon. “That event will be properly investigated, and the video, and those present can speak to the specifics of what happened and by whom. I don’t want that incident to in anyway distract from the genuine, positive efforts and progress we’re making to for residents to address the vitally needed testing and remediation at the 29th and Grove neighborhoods.”
Carr did not return a call Thursday afternoon. Helgerson, who recently underwent rotator cuff surgery, said he is unhurt but did not want to talk about the incident.
“I had too many Pepsis and I’m not going to say anything else,” Helgerson said. “I didn’t know anybody was filming me falling down drunk from Pepsis.”
A representative from the Topeka Police Department’s record department said officers received a call about a disturbance at the Celtic Fox Wednesday evening but Kansas Highway Patrol officers arrived on the scene first and determined that it was an argument over politics and that nobody wanted to press charges. KHP did not immediately respond to a records request seeking an incident report.
Several other local elected officials who were there Wednesday evening did not respond to requests for comment or declined to comment publicly on an active law enforcement investigation.
Sedgwick County Commissioner Jim Howell, who attended the reception with his wife, state Rep. Leah Howell, chairwoman of the South Central Kansas Delegation, confirmed the argument was over disagreements about how to address the chemical spill.
“Both guys are passionate about the topic,” Howell said. “I think the topic actually deserves a larger news story because I’ve been talking about this, and I’m also very passionate about this, and I believe both of these guys don’t have the right idea on how to solve the problem.”
Kansas House Minority Leader Brandon Woodard, a Lenexa Democrat, said Wednesday that the incident is being evaluated and that no disciplinary decisions have been made.
“We are taking this matter seriously and are committed to resolving it. Our focus remains serving the people of Kansas and advancing policies that meet their needs,” Woodard said in a statement.
Locking in cancer screening funds
Carr and Johnson both serve residents in and around the historically Black neighborhoods where a chemical spill of carcinogenic trichloroethene (TCE) at the Union Pacific Railroad rail yard contaminated a three-mile plume of groundwater in the 1970s or 80s.
For the first time in the 30 years since that contamination was discovered, the Legislature last May dedicated public money to screen residents for cancer after a state health study found that residents living near the spill site were more than twice as likely as other Kansans to have been diagnosed with liver cancer.
The diagnosis rate was found to be particularly high for Black residents in the nearly 2,800 affected addresses — 23.9 cases per 100,000 people compared to 10.9 cases for Black residents statewide.
The Legislature allocated $2.5 million for current and former residents’ screenings, $1 million of which will only be made available if the city, county and private donors can provide matching funds. Getting the first $1.5 million to local health clinics proved more difficult than expected as state and local officials spent months negotiating what money could and could not be used for.
“Things didn’t happen with the same sense of urgency that they should have happened and that they would have happened had this been any other group,” Carr told KMUW last week, saying he blamed city and county officials for the delay.
Johnson and Baty said they wanted to wait to enter an agreement with KDHE until they could ensure their plan for spending state dollars would be useful for the health clinics administering the testing, and a lack of clarity from the state dragged out the process.
Under the terms of the agreement reached between state and local officials, part of the first $1.5 million of state funds can be used to buy equipment, including MRI machines, CT scanners, and ultrasound machines, so that health clinics can administer testing in-house.
“We have gone to the governor’s office multiple times, saying that we have some frustration and are asking for a broader reading, because originally they just wanted only for these tests, which we already had proof of concept didn’t work the way it was supposed to,” Baty said during a Sedgwick County meeting last week.
“So we have begged and begged and pleaded and actually have come to an agreement with the governor’s office, KDHE, and how we feel that we can use this money in a more broader scope.”
The deadline for Wichita and Sedgwick County to provide the remaining $875,000 in matching funds to unlock the other full $1 million from the state is June 30.
This story was originally published January 23, 2025 at 3:18 PM.