LINCOLN, Kan. (AP) — The son of a Kansas sheriff was convicted of unintentional second-degree murder in the death of a man he considered his best friend.

A Lincoln County jury convicted 34-year-old Scott Weigel Thursday in the September 2013 shooting death of 21-year-old Keith Ancell.

The Salina Journal reports  the shooting occurred in downtown Lincoln after a night of drinking and socializing. Prosecutors argued that Ancell was shot when he refused to get into a vehicle with friends because Weigel was pointing a gun at him.

Weigel is the son of Lincoln County Sheriff Mike Weigel.

He has been in jail since the shooting.

GIRARD, Kan. (AP) — A former employee of a southeast Kansas bank was sentenced to nearly six years in prison for stealing more than $2.5 million from her employer.

The U.S. Attorney announced 54-year-old Cynthia Bright, of Girard, was sentenced Thursday to five years and 10 months in prison. She pleaded guilty in June to one count of bank fraud.

Bright admitted she took the money over 10 years while she was operations supervisor at Girard National Bank.

Prosecutors say Bright used several methods to steal the money. She wrote checks on her own accounts but altered records so the money wasn’t taken from her account. She also altered records to post checks to other accounts and diverted funds from the bank’s accounts to her own.

By Jim McLean
KHI News Service

TOPEKA — State officials will need to find an additional $40 million to meet rising KanCare costs in the current budget year, according to caseload estimates compiled by the nonpartisan Kansas Legislative Research Department.

KanCare is the name of the state’s privatized Medicaid program.

Also, an anticipated increase in the number of children in the foster care system will require an additional $10.2 million in state funding in the current budget year, which ends June 30.

Gov. Sam Brownback and legislators will need to come up with the additional $50.2 million as they cut spending in other areas to address a projected $280 million revenue shortfall. The fact that there will be only six months remaining in the 2015 budget year when lawmakers go back to work in January will make the task more difficult.

The need for additional KanCare funding is the result of higher enrollment and a new federal tax on insurance companies. The three managed care companies that administer KanCare will be required to pay the tax, a portion of which will be passed on to the state.

“There is nothing we can do other than to write the check,” said Sen. Jim Denning, an Overland Park Republican. “This is going to be a big issue going forward.”

The premium tax, which was created to help fund the Affordable Care Act, is expected to increase next year at the same time that a reduction in the amount of Medicaid funding from the federal government is expected to decrease by $16.2 million

The state will need to increase the amount it expects to spend on KanCare in the 2016 budget year by $76.6 million, according to the KLRD estimates.

Sen. Laura Kelly, from Topeka, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Ways and Means Committee, said increases in KanCare costs are to be expected midway through most budget years. But she said the increases needed this year and next are “hugely problematic” because of the revenue shortfalls caused by the income tax cuts passed at Brownback’s urging.

“We have backed ourselves in a corner with those tax cuts,” Kelly said. “Even before the caseload estimates came out, we were underwater. But we have a responsibility and a moral obligation to respond to these needs, and we’re just going to have to figure out how to do that.”

Approximately 425,000 children, low-income parents, people with disabilities and seniors who can’t cover the cost of nursing home care are enrolled in KanCare.

Brownback and officials in his administration have said they expect the income tax cuts to stimulate job growth and to partially restore state revenues over time. However, the revenue estimates that the governor and lawmakers are required to use for budgeting project that the state will spend through the $380 million balance it had at the start of the budget year and still be $280 million short of what is needed to balance the budget. Next year’s shortfall is projected at $436 million.

The projected shortfalls have some members of the Legislature’s Republican majority talking publicly about revisiting the tax cuts. Denning, who serves on the KanCare oversight committee and as vice chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, has said he wants to “smooth out” additional cuts that are scheduled to take effect and consider requiring some business owners to resume paying personal income taxes on earnings exceeding $250,000.

Jim McLean is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas metal finishing business and its owner are planning to change their pleas to charges accusing them of dumping untreated wastewater into a city sewer system.

A notation filed Thursday shows C & R Plating and its owner, Kevin L. Cline, both of Minneapolis, Kan., have a change-of-plea hearing on Dec. 8 before U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree.

They are accused in a 24-count indictment with submitting fraudulent samples and reports of analysis to conceal the pollution from state environmental regulators.

The indictment alleges the company and its owner violated the Clean Water Act between August and October of last year. Charges include making a false statement to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and illegally dumping pollutants into the Minneapolis sewer system.

Washington – Thursday, following President Obama’s lawless action attempting to grant amnesty to millions illegal immigrants, Congressman Tim Huelskamp (KS-01) issued the following statement:
“On March 28, 2011 and more than 20 other times, President Obama has rightly said that he cannot suspend deportations of illegal immigrants via executive order. Doing so, President Obama said, would be ‘ignoring the law.’ Tonight, he announced he would just ignore it anyway. As a supposed Constitutional law professor, he should and does know better.

Let’s review the history.

Obama has been a DC politician now for nearly a decade. In 2005 and 2006, then-Senator Obama was apparently too busy opining about the ‘lawlessness’ of the Bush Administration to work with a bipartisan Congress and pass comprehensive immigration laws. In 2007 and 2008, with a Pelosi-controlled House and his Democrat Senate, he was too busy running for President to get it done.

Then as the President in 2009 and 2010, he had full control of Congress, but chose to do NOTHING. And for the last four years, he again was called upon to work with a bipartisan Congress but offered no compromises or negotiation or leadership. Instead, he issued a disastrous executive order that created a massive humanitarian crisis on our southern border this summer.

But now, upon an unprecedented defeat at the polls and facing his lowest approval ratings ever, Obama has engaged in a clearly vain and desperate attempt to misuse the Office of the President. I am confident that the American people, who just overwhelmingly rejected his policies only 16 days ago, will see through this crass executive amnesty.

Unlike Obama’s key ObamaCare advisor Mr. Gruber, I know the American people are not stupid. They recognize this monarch-like move is not only inconsistent with our Republican ideals, but reflects the ever-growing arrogance of a President and his Administration that despise the very people they claim to represent – and the Constitution they have sworn to uphold.”