BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — A plaque has been unveiled at an Alabama airport where a Kansas boy died when he was hit by a falling flight information sign.
The Kansas City Star reports that officials at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport unveiled the plaque last week. It honors Luke Bresette, of Overland Park, Kansas.
Luke who was 10 years old in March 2013 when he was crushed inside a renovated section of the airport. His family, returning home from a trip to Destin, Florida, was walking by when the free-standing flight information board toppled over. Two of Luke’s younger brothers also were hurt.
Luke’s father, Ryan Bresette, says the family appreciated the airport’s gesture. He described the plaque as “absolutely beautiful.”
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — A suburban Kansas City man has been sentenced to more than five years in prison for embezzling more than $6 million.
The U.S. attorney’s office says 46-year-old Kenneth Voboril, of Overland Park, was sentenced Monday for wire fraud and filing a false tax return. He pleaded guilty previously.
The Commodity Specialists Company in Overland Park hired him in 2005 to run its subsidiary, TransMaxx, which brokers trucking deliveries.
Voboril admitted through his plea to creating fake companies and billing CSC for deliveries that never occurred.
SALINE COUNTY – Law enforcement authorities in Saline County are investigating a suspect in connection with illegal firearms and drugs.
Just after 8:30 p.m. on Friday, Saline County Sheriff’s Deputies were sent to East North Street, just east of Simpson Road to check on a possible accident.
When they arrived, deputies found a 2002 Toyota Camry with extensive damage to the driver’s side of the car.
Patrick S. Bryan, 21, Salina, told police said the car rolled into a ditch after he tried to avoid hitting a deer.
Bryan and three teenage passengers in the car were not hurt. They pushed the car onto its wheels and tried to drive on but the car was disabled.
The teens told police that Bryan had pulled the emergency brake and lost control of the car. He also reportedly got out a rifle and began firing it.
Deputies did recover a sawed off rifle and a sawed off shotgun.
Both had the serial numbers grounded off. Small amounts of marijuana and drug paraphernalia were also recovered.
Bryan was booked into the Saline County Jail on requested charges of reckless driving, false information or report concerning an accident, defacing identification marks on a firearm, criminal discharge of firearm from a public road, three counts of endangering a child, contributing to a child’s misconduct, and possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia.
USD 489 Superintendent Dean Katt has announced his intention to leave the Hays school district at the end of the school year.
Katt plans to accept a job with the Independence, Mo., school district in human resources, pending Independence Board of Education’s approval Tuesday night.
“I plan to … work here through the end of June,” Katt said. “Hays has been very good to me. It’s been the most rewarding job I’ve ever had. It’s the best job I’ve ever had, but also the hardest.”
Katt took the position as interim superintendent in September 2013, following the retirement of Will Roth.
During his tenure, the district has worked toward a bond election that is likely to occur this fall and corrected years of a mismanaged district budget, inheriting a budget crisis he called “self-inflicted” in his first month on the job.
“A lot needed done, and I think we did a pretty good job with a great team of people working here,” Katt said.
Katt spent a portion of his youth in Ellis and is a graduate of Fort Hays State University. After teaching in Deerfield and serving as principal in Holcomb, he also has worked as superintendent in Scott City and Ottawa.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Abortion rights organizations, students and Kansas House members are rallying against legislation banning access to reproductive health care.
Representatives from Planned Parenthood, Trust Women and United for Reproductive & Gender Equity are pushing a House bill that would repeal a ban on so-called telemedicine abortions.
We met with Representative Highberger to talk about access to reproductive health services this morning! #kslegpic.twitter.com/8eNz00Y9KV
The measure would allow women to undergo medically-induced abortions without a physician being present. Katie Knutter, a representative from Trust Women, says the bill would help save time and money for many women who travel several hours to reach her clinic in Wichita.
Monday’s rally comes after hundreds of anti-abortion advocates rallied outside the Statehouse last month on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
It’s a staple of college life, and in a college town like Hays, pizza delivery has a hard time not being popular. Now that popularity is being reflected in a major upgrade for Domino’s, 2505 Vine St., as they transition tonight, Feb. 8, from their former location at 501 Vine St.
Construction plans for the new Domino’s Pizza location at 2505 Vine St.
Not only will the location be more convenient, it will bring some changes to the restaurant that are not typically associated with the 56-year-old pizza franchise.
“The new store will feature a 4,000 square foot pizza theater design which allows flexibility for a number of elements otherwise unheard of when it comes to the ‘traditional’ Domino’s store. Highlights include a comfortable lobby, open-area viewing of the food preparation process and the ability to track carryout orders electronically on a lobby screen,” according to a press release for the opening of the new location.
The new location will also feature big screen TVs, mobile charging stations and free Wi-Fi.
“We are so excited to offer our customers an even better, more interactive experience,” said Jeff Maddox, owner of the Hays franchise. “Now customers can actually watch and track their pizza being made, each step of the way.”
Maddox currently owns five locations throughout Kansas and has a long history with the company, working with Domino’s Pizza since 1987.
Daniel Brown, longtime Hays resident, currently serves as general manager in the Hays location after working through the ranks the last few years. He has visited the new site frequently during the construction and is excited to get moved into the new store and offer expanded services that will be provided in the new space, including full-service dining.
“We’re gonna have a little bit of service at first and then play it by ear,” Brown said. “The first few weeks…we’ll actually have people come to the table, take their order, just like a sit-down restaurant.”
If that feature proves favorable to diners, it may become permanent in the location.
While the new location will be ready for food service, the store plans to go through a soft-opening, allowing staff to learn the flow of the new location.
“We’re just going to quietly move,” Brown said. A grand opening is planned for around the first of March.
“We’ll actually open (the old) store until 10 p.m., then we will shut it down and everything, the food and (operational equipment) will be moved that night. Tuesday morning at 10 a.m., this (new) store will open.”
The move should make the location more prominent in town, and Brown is hopeful residents that have traditionally chosen other pizza options in Hays, will give Domino’s a chance to show how much things have changed.
“Even in that location I get a lot of people saying I don’t eat there, because of where it is at,” he said.
Domino’s Pizza stock has soared after a re-inventing of the brand in late 2009.
Locally, the move is a big change and fits with the overall Domino’s Pizza company’s process of reinventing itself in the last few years.
Domino’s Pizza launched a massive overhaul of the business in late 2009, known as the “Oh Yes We Did” campaign, which reworked the entire system. Since then the company has almost doubled its net income and stock prices in the company have soared from trading under $3 before the launch to trading around $110 today.
Since the ownership change a few years ago of the Hays location, and the re-launch of the brand, Brown said sales have been trending up and the new location is likely to help bring even more traffic to the restaurant.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas Senate committee has approved a bill that would balance the state budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1.
The measure approved Monday by the Ways and Means Committee would eliminate a projected deficit of nearly $200 million in the $16.1 billion budget for the next fiscal year.
The committee’s 9-2 vote sends the bill to the full Senate for a debate that could occur by the end of this week.
The bill includes many of Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s proposals to help close the budget gap by juggling funds and capturing unanticipated savings.
The GOP-dominated committee also found an additional $32 million in savings in a program that provides death and disability benefits to the families of state workers.
Photo by KHI News Service Susan Mosier, secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, said the agency needs “mitigating actions” as it works through a computer system transition and faces a backlog of Medicaid applications.
Kansas Department of Health and Environment Secretary Susan Mosier said last week that she’s open to ideas, including presumed Medicaid eligibility for nursing home residents, as the agency struggles with an application processing backlog.
When asked about a temporary lifeline for nursing homes drowning in uncompensated care while the department works through a computer system transition, Mosier said it was a “good concept” and that she liked the idea. She said she would discuss it with Mike Randol, director of KDHE’s Division of Health Care Finance.
“We need to have mitigating actions,” Mosier said. “We are mitigating, but other ideas are welcome so that we can take care of people, because that’s the ultimate goal.” ‘
Hobbled by a broken system’
Mosier’s words came as a relief to nursing home representatives frustrated by months of agency inaction as their members’ bills pile up.
“We’re very supportive of that idea,” said Cindy Luxem, president and chief executive of the Kansas Health Care Association, which represents for-profit nursing homes.
“Something just needs to happen. The folks in our homes are getting the care, but it’s truly not fair. These folks have such a low margin anyway, and we’re expecting these caregivers to do so much with so little.
Basically people are looking the other way to say, ‘We’ll get you paid eventually.’” Deb Zehr, president and chief executive of LeadingAge Kansas, which represents nonprofit nursing homes, said her organization’s facilities are for frail seniors who need around-the-clock care.
Delaying admittance while they wait months for Medicaid applications to be processed results in suffering and even the possibility of death, she said.
“The state needs to act immediately, but they are hobbled by a broken system and a backlog of 10,000 cases,” Zehr said. “The only way to help seniors needing nursing care now is to grant presumptive Medicaid eligibility for those with pending cases, as well as to seniors applying for Medicaid before KDHE has the backlog cleared.”
Nursing homes groups trace the Medicaid problems to June when the state began to use the Kansas Eligibility Enforcement System, or KEES, to process applications and renewals. Accenture, a state contractor, created KEES.
After the system’s long-delayed rollout, state workers who use KEES were forced to learn dozens of workarounds — some of them 10 or more steps long — to make it function.
A backlog began to form, and after KDHE took over all eligibility processing last month it burgeoned to almost 10,000 applications.
Medicaid in Kansas is a privatized program known as KanCare, and it serves mainly elderly and disabled Kansans and pregnant women and children. By last month, organizations that represent those groups reported that applications that used to take seven to 10 days to process were taking three months or longer.
And some said Kansans who had been on Medicaid for years were being dropped with little or no warning because their renewals hadn’t been processed. Nursing homes were hit particularly hard because many of their residents rely on Medicaid payments after they exhaust other funds.
Luxem said some of the nursing home companies she represents have forwarded to her “tremendous accounts receivable” that she has shared with KDHE this week.
“The folks at KDHE right now are really trying to be helpful, and actually we understand that maybe a few of the things are starting to get un-logjammed,” Luxem said. “But it sure is a drag (that) we need to raise this kind of fuss just to get the system to work.”
Reaching out to legislators
After KDHE took over all Medicaid processing, Kansans who were having problems were told to call a single 800 number for the KanCare Clearinghouse, a KDHE outpost run by state contractor Maximus.
But individual Kansans reported hours-long wait times on hold and unreturned messages — the same problems a 2008 audit revealed about Maximus when it ran the children’s health care program help line for the state.
Ray Flickner, who received about two weeks’ notice that his 84-year-old mother’s Medicaid was about to expire, said he received no help from the KanCare Clearinghouse until he contacted his state legislator, Rep. Mark Hutton, a Wichita Republican. His mother’s Medicaid coverage since has been restored. “I’m glad I got it taken care of, but I worry about the other folks who don’t know that’s an option,” Flickner said.
Haylie Colby, a social worker at the University of Kansas Cancer Center, said she was successful in getting 64-year-old leukemia survivor Ellen Brannan’s coverage restored only after enlisting the help of Rep. Barbara Bollier, a Mission Hills Republican.
But Colby is working with another patient from Wichita who needs a bone marrow transplant due to multiple myeloma and has been waiting on Medicaid coverage since August.
“They’re ready to proceed, but she doesn’t have insurance so they can’t, really,” Colby said. “Medically, she’s ready to go.” Colby welcomed news of a possible amnesty or presumed eligibility for nursing home residents.
“That’s excellent, that’s huge,” Colby said. “That’s the most vulnerable of all of us.”
System still an issue
Mosier said KDHE is bringing on more staff and redoubling its training to try to speed the Medicaid processing. Once KDHE gets caught up, she said the application process should improve.
“We’ve got an effort that we started in October in terms of eliminating the backlog,” Mosier said.
“Eliminating the backlog is what will solve many, if not all, of these issues.” The agency’s information technology experts and Accenture are working to make KEES more user-friendly. However, internal documents show that problems with the system continue.
A document dated Jan. 25 provided to KHI News Service by an employee who works with the system and requested anonymity listed 67 “Defect Resolutions” stretched over five pages. Another release of fixes is scheduled for mid-February.
In an email sent Thursday to dozens of KDHE and Accenture employees, including Mosier, Jenifer Telshaw, KDHE’s head of KEES production, outlined a problem that was keeping employees from accessing KEES and the document scanning software that feeds information into the system.
“We have reports that staff cannot access KEES or ImageNow,” Telshaw wrote.
“It has been verified that KEES is available but it appears that there (is) a connection issue. We are currently investigating the issue and will let you know when the issue has been resolved.”
The processing delays, while causing problems for Medicaid-eligible Kansans and their providers, have been a small revenue boon for the state at a time when budgets are tight.
Gov. Sam Brownback’s supplemental budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 assumes $3 million in Medicaid savings “as enrollment eligibility continues to lag since implementing KEES.” Zehr said her organization had taken note of that budget provision and its implication that the issues with Medicaid processing could drag into 2017.
“If the administration truly believes that these delays are going to last up to another 17 months, they will be saving money on the backs of humans in crisis,” Zehr said.
Andy Marso is a reporter for KHI News Service in Topeka, a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor team. You can reach him on Twitter @andymarso
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The chairman of the Kansas House Education Committee says it’s unlikely that any action will be taken on a bill that would force the consolidation of more than half of the state’s school districts.
Republican state Rep. Ron Highland, who chairs the committee, says that after a heated hearing on the bill Wednesday, it’s unlikely to go anywhere soon.
The Lawrence Journal-World reports that even if the consolidation bill passes, its supporters prefer to call it a “realignment” bill because it only calls for consolidating administration, not schools.
Baldwin City is among the school districts that would be forced to merge or consolidate with another district in Douglas County if the bill were to pass. The district’s superintendent, Paul Dorathy, says he’s had a number of parents contact him with concerns about potential consolidation.
K-State Athletics
MANHATTAN, Kan. – Freshman Dean Wade earned Phillips 66 Big 12 Newcomer of the Week honors for the second time this season after scoring a career-tying 17 points in the win over No. 1 Oklahoma.
Wade, who won the weekly honor on Dec. 7 after hitting the game-winning jumper at Georgia, becomes the 10th Wildcat to earn multiple Newcomer of the Week honors in the same season and the first since Marcus Foster in 2014. Overall, it marks the school’s 30th Newcomer of the Week honor since the inception of the Big 12 in 1997, including the fourth under head coach Bruce Weber.
The 6-foot-10, 225-pound forward from St. John, Kan., Wade helped K-State to a 1-1 record this past week against consecutive Top 10 opponents, including an 80-69 win over the top-ranked Sooners. It marked the school’s fifth win over a No. 1 team, including the fourth at Bramlage Coliseum (1990, 2010, 2011 and 2016).
Wade responded to his first time coming off the bench against No. 1 Oklahoma, tying his career-high for the third time with 17 points on 7-of-11 field goals, including 3-of-6 from 3-point range, to go with 7 rebounds, 3 assists and 1 steal in 27 minutes. It marked the first time since his sophomore year of high school that he hadn’t started a game and the first in his 23-game K-State career. He also tied season-highs for 3-pointers (3) and assists (3). He also scored 17 points in wins against Columbia (11/16/15) and Georgia (12/4/15).
For the week, Wade averaged 11.0 points on 64.3 percent shooting (9-of-14), including 50 percent (3-of-6) from 3-point range, to go with 4.5 rebounds and 1.5 assists in 26.5 minutes per game.
The Wildcats’ rebounding leader (5.8 rpg.), Wade is the only true freshman to rank in the Big 12’s Top 20 in rebounding this season. He ranks second on the team in offensive (53) and defensive (80) rebounds and blocked shots (14), while he is third in scoring (10.2 ppg.), double-figure scoring games (12), field goals made (82) and attempted (186) and free throws made (54) and free throws attempted (84).
K-State (14-9, 3-7 Big 12) concludes its two-game homestand on Wednesday night, as the Wildcats host No. 13/15 Baylor (17-6, 6-4 Big 12) at 7:15 p.m. CT on ESPNews. Tickets are priced at $12.50 with the Wildcat4Pack, in which, fans can purchase four general admission seats for just $75.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas secretary of state’s office says the number of businesses in the state grew by 5 percent last year.
Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s office reported Monday that Kansas had about 179,000 businesses at the end of 2015. That’s about 8,600 more than at the end of 2014.
Kobach’s office noted that a record of nearly 17,300 businesses formed in Kansas last year.
Republican Gov. Sam Brownback has pointed to annual records for new business formations each year since 2011 as a sign that his tax-cutting policies are boosting the economy.
But the secretary of state’s report also showed that a growing number of businesses also dissolved, withdrew or forfeited their right to remain active in Kansas. More than 15,600 did so last year, up slightly from 2014.
U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) has announced that he will visit Phillipsburg as part of his Kansas Listening Tour on Friday, Feb. 12.
Area residents are encouraged to attend and share feedback with Sen. Moran on the critical issues facing Kansas and the nation. The issues Sen. Moran focuses on and the work he does in Washington, D.C., are largely based on the conversations he has with Kansans during these town hall meetings.
Moran will be at the Huck Boyd Community Center, 860 Park Street, from 2:30 p.m. t0 3:30 p.m. Friday.
