House Majority Leader Arlen Siegfreid has introduced a bill to set aside space in the Kansas Statehouse for prayer, meditation and reflection.

The Olathe Republican on Wednesday told the House Federal and State Affairs Committee that the U.S. Capitol and several other states have such chapels for use by all faiths. Siegfreid said the space would be paid for through private funds.

He said Republican Gov. Sam Brownback has offered to allow legislators to use a portion of the space allotted to his office on the second floor in the Statehouse for the chapel. Siegfreid said eventually the chapel would be located in the visitors’ center scheduled to be built in the Statehouse.

Siegfreid said Brownback has offered to help him raise money for the chapel project.

Funeral services are scheduled in suburban Buffalo for an Iraq war veteran who died after getting into a fight in the Kansas town where he was attending college.

Buffalo media outlets report that 27-year-old Nicholas Sardina was found dead last Saturday in his apartment in Lawrence, Kan., where he was attending classes at the University of Kansas.

Police say he had been in a fight at a house party several hours before at another home in Lawrence. Autopsy results are still pending. Authorities say no arrests have been made.

Sardina joined the Army after graduating from Clarence High School and served several tours in Iraq before being honorably discharged in 2008.

His funeral is being held Friday morning at a Catholic church in Clarence, just east of Buffalo.

Kansas City police are looking for two teenagers who a 13-year-old boy says followed him home from school and started a gasoline fire that burned his face and hair.

Detective Stacey Taylor says the boy suffered first-degree burns but no permanent damage in the incident Tuesday afternoon.

Taylor says one of the assailants picked up a gasoline can on the porch of the boy’s home while the other kept the boy from going inside.

Some of the gasoline spilled during a struggle, and the boy says one of the attackers said “this is what you get” before lighting the spilled fuel.

Taylor says the case is not being treated as a hate crime.

Kansas House members have reversed course on a bill passed last week to give cities and counties some $90 million in property tax relief.

The chamber voted Wednesday to reconsider the bill after members learned that it didn’t contain provisions many thought were in the measure to limit property tax increases.

Those provisions were popular among conservatives who were concerned about what they said were stealth tax increases caused by rising property valuations.

Those changes were deleted by an amendment from Rep. Jim Ward, a Wichita Democrat, to add the money for local governments. Some House members said Ward wasn’t clear about his intentions when he offered the amendment.

House leaders said that the tax committee would consider both topics and put them in a new bill.

 A 77-year-old Kansas mail carrier accused of embezzling mail says she didn’t steal it. She just didn’t deliver it.

Federal prosecutors filed a criminal information Wednesday against Dixie Bontrager of Holton, charging her with one count of embezzling first-class mail periodicals, parcels and bulk mail entrusted to her. Bontrager told The Associated Press she intends to plead guilty.

Bontrager says she had been a mail carrier for 30 years until she was dismissed in 2010. Her 115-mile route included Holton and Circleville in northeast Kansas.

She tells The AP that she never gave any thought that it was stealing mail because she never opened anything.

The woman says lot of it was just junk mail like advertising flyers or undeliverable mail. She says some of it dated to 2003.