TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republican Gov. Sam Brownback has announced a proposal for ending a renewable energy requirement for Kansas utilities.

The proposal he outlined Monday embodies an agreement between wind energy companies and critics of the green energy rule.

The plan is designed to end an ongoing debate over a 2009 law that requires wind or other renewable sources to account for 20 percent of a utility’s capacity for generating electricity by 2020.

The proposal converts the mandate into a goal.

But legislators would not pursue a new tax on electricity generated from renewable resources. Lawmakers also would rewrite laws dealing with property taxes on renewable energy projects.

Brownback and groups on both sides said the plan would bring stability to the business climate for wind energy companies.

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TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republican Gov. Sam Brownback and groups on both sides are preparing to announce a new proposal for rewriting a renewable energy mandate for the state’s utilities.

Brownback was having a news conference Monday afternoon to outline the measure. Representatives of the wind energy industry and groups opposed to the mandate planned to participate.

A 2010 law requires renewable sources, such as wind, to account for 20 percent of a utility’s capacity for generating electricity by 2020.

Supporters say it has helped develop a flourishing wind energy industry in Kansas.

But the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and the free-market group Americans for Prosperity have pushed for the law’s repeal.

The proposal to revise the law comes with lawmakers considering a proposal to impose a new tax on renewable energy.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas’ secretary of state would have the power to prosecute election fraud under a bill endorsed by a House panel.

The House Judiciary Committee voted 14-8 Monday to advance the bill to the House floor. The measure would increase election fraud penalties to felony charges, and add the secretary of state to the list of officials allowed to bring criminal prosecutions for offenses.

Democratic Rep. John Carmichael from Wichita attempted to attach three amendments to the bill reducing its scope, but all failed. He said in committee debate that he believed it could be used to initiate felony prosecutions against people who did not intentionally break the law.

Republican Rep. John Rubin from Shawnee said the measure is necessary, calling such actions attacks on the state’s democratic institutions.

WICHITA, KAN. – A Derby man pleaded guilty Monday to using Internet service at the church he attended to distribute child pornography according to U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom said.

Delmas E. Rich, 50, Derby, Kan., pleaded guilty to one count of distributing child pornography. In his plea, he admitted he used Internet service at his church, Temple Baptist Church in Wichita, and his work, Alarm Security Specialists in Viola, Kan., because he had no Internet service at home. On Jan. 18, 2015, a Wichita police detective downloaded child pornography from Rich’s computer over the Internet using a file-sharing service.

Sentencing is set for July 20. He faces a penalty of not less than 5 years and possibly as much as 30 years and a fine up to $250,000.

Grissom commended the Wichita Police Department, the Kansas Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force, Homeland Security Investigations and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Hart for their work on the case.

KELLI KENNEDY, Associated Press

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Governors in Kansas and Texas say they’ll join Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s lawsuit against the Obama administration alleging that federal officials are coercing the state to expand Medicaid in order to get $1 billion in federal hospital funds.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback said Monday he plans to file an amicus brief in a fight to protect states’ right to make their own decisions. Scott said Monday that he’d talked with Gov. Greg Abbott, who also pledged support.

The Republican governors point to a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision saying the federal government can’t coerce states to expand Medicaid, which is exactly what he says the Obama administration is doing by withholding hospital funds.

The Obama administration says it’s more efficient to give people money to help buy health insurance than to pay hospitals for caring for the uninsured retroactively.

PARTRIDGE – A Kansas woman was injured in an accident just before 9 a.m. on Monday in Reno County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2009 Nissan passenger car driven by Shaundra R. Davis, 23, Newton, was northbound on Kansas 61 one mile northeast of Partridge.

The vehicle went left of center into the southbound lane hit the guardrail and rolled.

Davis was transported to Hutchinson Regional Medical Center.

The KHP reported she was properly restrained at the time of the accident.

GREAT BEND- Law enforcement authorities in Barton County released details on Monday of a drug arrest.

Police say that just before 1 a.m. on Friday, officers stopped a vehicle driven by John Hiserote, Hoisington, in the 800 block of Jefferson Street for a traffic infraction.

While officers were conducting the traffic stop, the department’s drug-detecting canine, Kia, was deployed and indicated the presence of illegal narcotics inside the vehicle.

The vehicle was searched and officers located several illegal items including methamphetamine, marijuana, and drug paraphernalia.

Hiserote and the passenger, Amanda Decker, also of Hoisington, were both arrested and turned over to the Barton County Jail.

Kia, a 2-year old Belgian Malinois joined the department approximately one year ago. Although Kia is trained in tracking, criminal apprehension, and various other skills, his primary duty at the department is searching for illegal narcotics.

By Ashley Booker

Prenatal care educators and state-level Medicaid officials say it’s not an easy task getting and keeping pregnant mothers in their first or second trimester on schedule for care.

There’s a statewide effort to try to change that, in order to reverse a care deficit that can have dire consequences.

“Expectant mothers who begin prenatal care in the third trimester or receive no prenatal care are three times more likely to deliver an infant with low birth weight and their infant is five times more likely to die,” according to a report by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. In the report published in March, KDHE examined the adequacy of prenatal care for mothers who delivered 38,488 babies in 2013.

There were an estimated 38,805 total live births in the state that year, but information was not available for 317 of them.

The report found that white, non-Hispanic mothers received the highest percentage of more-than-adequate care, while Hispanic and black mothers reported the highest percentage of  inadequate care.

The report states the majority of mothers who received inadequate care did so because of late initiation of care. “If they haven’t presented at the health department for their pregnancy tabs to find out what is available to them, they are kind of flying blind out there,” said Dianne Daldrup, state director of the Greater Kansas Chapter of the March of Dimes.

“It’s really getting them in the door initially that seems to be the biggest gap (of women receiving inadequate care).”  Among the 4,383 mothers who said they received inadequate prenatal care, 51.9 percent were Medicaid beneficiaries, 22 percent were on private insurance and 17 percent were self-pay, according to the report.

In Kansas, Medicaid is called KanCare and is administered by three private insurance companies: Amerigroup, United Healthcare and Sunflower State Health Plan. KanCare serves mainly children, Kansans with disabilities and uninsured expectant mothers.

Although more than half of mothers stating they received inadequate care were on KanCare, Aimee Rosenow, a spokeswoman for KDHE, said the program is helping people get the “right care, at the right time, in the right place.” As the program goes into its third year, she said, the numbers should improve.

“As we go further into KanCare implementation, we anticipate an improvement in the timeliness of initiation of prenatal care among women who are KanCare consumers,” Rosenow said via email. Laura Hopkins, the Kansas president of Amerigroup, said there are many nuances to Medicaid eligibility. Even when a woman goes to the doctor and finds out she’s pregnant and applies for Medicaid, it takes 30 to 45 days to be approved — often the mother may be three to four months pregnant already, Hopkins said.

“That gap in terms of the approval can create a barrier itself in obtaining timely prenatal care,” Hopkins said. Specialized prenatal care When it came to receiving adequate prenatal care in 2013, the KDHE report found Hispanic and black mothers reported receiving inadequate care at rates two times higher than white women.

All three KanCare companies say they don’t receive the ethnicity of their members, or analyze their outcomes data based on race or ethnicity. Instead they focus on providing care to all pregnant women, and provide bilingual services no matter a patient’s background. Daldrup said March of Dimes, a nonprofit dedicated to reducing premature births and infant mortality, is looking at racial and ethnic disparities and where to effectively put efforts and funds so those efforts are best targeted at geographical locations with large disparities in care.

For example, the combined locations of Riley and Geary counties have an army base, she said, where there are a disproportionate number of women coming to Kansas with a spouse or boyfriend. If they get pregnant and aren’t married to someone on Tricare, the military health insurance program, then those women go to Manhattan and Junction City for health services.

“If you look at Riley or Geary County individually, their number isn’t as high as you would want to invest the resources,” Daldrup said. “But because the two of them, they are like one highway exit apart … so that as one cohort group really needs to be addressed together.”

While March of Dimes is helping the community collaborations across the state reach out and target certain populations, she said there are different ways to reach different ethnicities. For Hispanic women, Daldrup said, it’s essential to get the spouse involved, because the husband provides the “gateway, or the permission for the wife to be able to participate in the program.”

“They can’t even go to classes frequently without having the husband go with them for the first class to see what this is all about,” she said.

Daldrup said effectively reaching out to black women often means going through their church, community organizations or even nail and hair salons. One fundamental issue is that although education materials can feature Hispanic, black and white faces and are offered in multiple languages, many health providers are white.

“We don’t have a lot of educators or providers that reflect the community that they are trying to serve,” Daldrup said. “That is a fundamental issue — and there is not going to be a short-term solution for that.”

Programs to help Health care officials in Kansas are implementing programs to reduce pregnancy complication risks, premature delivery and infant diseases that could result from high-risk pregnancies.

Many statewide programs through March of Dimes, as well as the KanCare managed care organizations (MCOs), offer prenatal and postnatal programs, case management, education and incentives for mothers to complete their prenatal visits.  March of Dimes has created a community collaborative model called

“Healthy Babies are Worth the Wait,” which brings together key stakeholders that help a woman during her pregnancy, Daldrup said. By combining the county health department, the local hospital and the obstetrics providers or local federally qualified health centers, she said, the program gets the right people connected so everyone is pointing the pregnant woman in the right direction for care. March of Dimes also provides prenatal education in a program called “Becoming a Mom.”

Seven established sites use the program, Rosenow said, in Saline, Geary, Crawford, Wyandotte, Reno and Lyon counties, and a shared program in Riley and Pottawatomie counties.

A program for Sedgwick County is pending. Daldrup said her organization is working with KDHE to develop a comprehensive system for the “Becoming a Mom” program, among other things. By the end of 2016, the system will transition to a contractual agreement between KDHE and the University of Kansas, Daldrup said. “It’s really getting a lot of traction and attention because we are really bringing all the players together to leverage existing services, not to try to bring in new money, since there is none to be had,” Daldrup said. KanCare MCOs are offering other prenatal programs and initiatives.

They include Sunflower State’s “Start Smart for Your Baby,” United Healthcare’s “Baby Blocks” and Amerigroup’s “Taking Care of Baby and Me.” Miranda Steele, spokeswoman for Sunflower State Health Plan, said the Start Smart program uses case management, education, communication and incentives to give pregnant women prenatal, postpartum and pediatric care. “Sunflower’s case managers use Start Smart to deliver education and help strengthen communication between the pregnant member and her doctor,” Steele said in an email.

Since KanCare started, Sunflower State has covered more than 4,000 annual deliveries. Because of the programs and interventions, low birth weight babies, which weigh less than about 5.5 pounds, decreased from a rate of 9.46 percent in 2013 to 8.96 percent in 2014, Steele said via email.

Baby Blocks provides pregnant mothers with scheduling and appointment reminders, health education for each trimester, and overall ways to promote a healthy pregnancy, said Dr. John Esslinger, Medical Director of UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Kansas.

Once enrolled in the system, United Healthcare reaches out to pregnant women through their cellphones. Esslinger said cell phones are the best form of communication for many members on Medicaid. Jessica Kostner, a spokeswoman from United Healthcare, said in an email that 1,880 mothers have participated in Baby Blocks, and that the program’s response rate is nearly 40 percent, compared to the United Healthcare national average of 36 percent. Baby Blocks also provides incentives for mothers to complete prenatal, postpartum and well-child visits, Kostner said. Incentives include items like diaper bags, baby toys and gift cards, among other things.

“We really felt like it’s a great way to keep people engaged,” said Tim Spilker, president of United Healthcare Community Plan of Kansas. “Again, it’s incentives that really tie into healthy behaviors that moms are really looking for.”

Spilker said at the end of last year, United Healthcare created a program in which community health workers, social workers and nurses go into communities to identify high-risk members and make sure they have the resources they need. The program reaches the top 5 percent of medical care users, which is more than just pregnant mothers, Spilker said.

“They (community health workers) live in the communities, they see folks in the grocery stores and at church; these are real relationships that we are creating in the community, and that’s really critical in terms of really creating change,” Spilker said.

Health of babies “Across the board, everybody’s interest is in saving babies lives, but also trying to get these kids to full-term, healthy delivery,” Daldrup said.

Preterm babies are called “million dollar” babies for a reason, Daldrup said, because their births cost ten times more than full-term babies. Many preterm babies will become healthy productive adults, she said, but others will have learning disabilities and health complications throughout their lifetimes.

Staying at least 39 weeks in the womb allows babies to be healthier, weigh more and develop their heart and lungs, among other organs, she said. Smoking is another issue that affects the baby’s overall health. When women smoke during their pregnancy, their babies often are low in birth weight, are delivered preterm and have many health issues, including breathing problems.

“It’s not enough to get mom to quit smoking during pregnancy,” Daldrup said. “They need to stay quit, and they need their spouse or whoever they are living with to stop smoking as well, because it really has a huge impact on these kids.”

The Healthy People 2020 initiative has set a national goal of increasing the percentage of pregnant women who initiate prenatal care in their first trimester from 70.8 percent in 2007 to 77.9 percent in 2020, according to the KDHE report.

While Kansas surpassed that goal by reaching 79.4 percent in 2013, Rosenow said there’s always room for improvement. “We wish that we could have 100 percent of our babies born healthy and our mothers healthy, but until we reach that goal we have a lot of work to do,” she said. “We know that every life is significant.”

Ashley Booker is an intern for KHI News Service in Topeka, a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor team.