CLARK COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a southwest Kansas high school teacher for alleged unlawful sexual relations.

Just after 7a.m. Monday, deputies arrested 25-year-old Elizabeth Wilczek on a Ford County warrant, according to the sheriff’s department.  She is a member of the teaching staff at USD 219 in Minneola, according to the school web site.

Wilczek was being held in the Ford County jail. Authorities did not release details on bond or when she might make an initial court appearance. The Ford County Attorney will now determine charges in the case.

SEDGWICK COUNTY —Law enforcement authorities are investigating a suspect on criminal damage allegations after an arrest in connection with damage at a mall.

Just after 7p.m. Friday, a citizen notified an off-duty police officer working security at Towne West Mall in Wichita that a man was near a light pole and appeared to be cutting wires, according to officer Charley Davidson.

The suspect then drove away in a gold colored sedan. Officers responded to the area, located the vehicle traveling southbound and conducted a traffic stop in the 500 Block of West Street, according to Davidson.

The suspect later identified as 43-year-old Rodnee Cain fled from the vehicle and was taken into custody after a brief foot-chase.  Police also contacted a 16-year-old male driver and a 17-year-old passenger in the vehicle.

An investigation revealed six light poles in the Mall parking lot had been damaged, according to Davidson. Authorities in Wichita and across the state continue to see an increase in copper theft.  Caine is being held on requested charges that include six counts of destruction of property, aggravated weapons violation and outstanding warrants.

Cain also have four previous convictions that include criminal threat, taxation and drugs, according to the Kansas Department of Corrections.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Kansas’ solicitor general on Monday called on a federal appeals court to reinstate the state’s law requiring people to provide proof of citizenship before they can register to vote, saying problems with how it was enforced during the three years it was in place are fixable.During a hearing before a three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Salt Lake City in a case with national implications for voting rights, Judge Jerome Holmes questioned attorneys for the state and for plaintiffs who succeeded in getting a lower court to overturn the law, which was in effect from 2013 until 2016. He pointed to evidence that it kept more than 30,000 people from registering to vote even though nearly all of them were citizens.

Solicitor General Toby Crouse said there were problems with the way the law was implemented, but he argued that the state should be able to ensure that ballots are cast legally and called on the court to resurrect the law.

“The rollout is problematic and concerning and should be improved, but that’s not a reason to undermine the law and strike it down as unconstitutional,” he said.

Dale Ho, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project, disagreed. He said cases where people can’t find their birth certificate or afford a new one are inevitable, and the Kansas law contains few fail-safes to ensure citizens can cast a ballot.

“The difficulties of implementing a law like this, which is unique in the country, are baked into the statute,” he said.

The judges didn’t indicate when they might rule.

The legal fight has drawn national attention as Republicans pursue voter ID laws aimed at preventing in-person voter fraud, including by people who are in the country illegally. Many experts say such voter fraud is extremely rare, and critics contend that the Republican-led efforts are actually meant to suppress turnout from groups who tend to back Democrats, including racial minorities and college students.

The law was championed by former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who led President Donald Trump’s now-defunct voter fraud commission and was a leading source for Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally may have voted in the 2016 election.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, supported the legislation when she was a state senator but opposes resurrecting it. Kobach, who is an attorney, personally defended the statute in the courts while he was secretary of state. Kansas’ Republican attorney general, Derek Schmidt, has taken up its defense during the appeal, saying in an emailed statement that the law was passed by large bipartisan majorities in the Legislature.

“The Legislature is free to repeal the statute if it is no longer favored, but as long as the law requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote remains on the books, we think it, like other duly enacted state laws, deserves a full and vigorous legal defense,” Schmidt said.

Kansas argued in court filings that it has a compelling interest in preventing voter fraud. It contended its proof-of-citizenship requirement is not a significant burden and protects the integrity of elections and the accuracy of voter rolls.

Critics countered that the documentary proof-of-citizenship law was “a disastrous experiment” that damaged the state’s voter rolls, disenfranchised tens of thousands and eroded confidence in the state’s elections.

The National Conference of State Legislatures has counted 35 states that have laws requiring some form of identification at the polls, but the Kansas voter registration statute at issue goes further by requiring people to provide documents such as a birth certificate, U.S. passport or naturalization papers before they can even register to vote. Arizona is the only other state with a similar law in effect, but it is far more lenient and allows people to satisfy it by writing their driver’s license number on the voter registration form. Proof-of-citizenship laws in Alabama and Georgia are not currently being enforced.

Judge Robinson found that between 1999 and 2013 a total of 39 noncitizens living in Kansas successfully registered, mostly due to applicant confusion or administrative error. That is .002 percent of the more than 1.76 million registered voters in Kansas as of Jan. 1, 2013. Eleven of those 39 noncitizens voted.

The registration law took effect in January 2013. In the three years before the appellate court put it on hold, more than 30,732 Kansans were not allowed to register to vote because they did not submit proof of citizenship. That figure represented about 12 percent of voter registration applications.

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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A federal appeals court will hear arguments Monday over the constitutionality of a struck-down Kansas statute that had required people to provide documents proving their U.S. citizenship before they could register to vote.In a case with national implications for voting rights, Kansas faces an uphill battle to resurrect the law once championed by former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach , who led President Donald Trump’s now-defunct voter fraud commission.A three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked Kobach in 2016 from fully enforcing the law, calling it “a mass denial of a fundamental constitutional right.” The issue is back before the appellate court after U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson struck it down last year and made permanent the earlier injunction.

“Kansas was the tip of the spear of an effort to make it harder for people to register under the guise of protecting elections from a nonexistent epidemic of noncitizen voting. Those efforts haven’t stopped as this case illustrates, and I think this case will be closely watched,” said Dale Ho, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project.

The legal fight has drawn national attention as Republicans pursue voter ID laws they say are aimed at people who are unlawfully in the country. Critics contend such efforts amount to voter suppression that target Democratic-leaning minorities and college students who may not have such documentation.

Kobach, a conservative Republican, was a leading source for Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally may have voted in the 2016 election.

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said in an emailed statement that the statute was enacted by large bipartisan majorities in the Legislature.

“The Legislature is free to repeal the statute if it is no longer favored, but as long as the law requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote remains on the books, we think it, like other duly enacted state laws, deserves a full and vigorous legal defense,” Schmidt said.

Kansas argued in court filings that it has a compelling interest in preventing voter fraud. It contended its proof-of-citizenship requirement is not a significant burden and protects the integrity of elections and the accuracy of voter rolls.

Critics countered that the documentary proof-of-citizenship law was “a disastrous experiment” that damaged the state’s voter rolls, disenfranchised tens of thousands and eroded confidence in the state’s elections.

The National Conference of State Legislatures has counted 35 states that have laws requiring some form of identification at the polls, but the Kansas voter registration statute at issue goes further by requiring people to provide documents such as a birth certificate, U.S. passport or naturalization papers before they can even register to vote. Arizona is the only other state with a similar law in effect, but it is far more lenient and allows people to satisfy it by writing their driver’s license number on the voter registration form. Proof-of-citizenship laws in Alabama and Georgia are not currently being enforced.

Judge Robinson found that between 1999 and 2013 a total of 39 noncitizens living in Kansas successfully registered, mostly due to applicant confusion or administrative error. That is .002 percent of the more than 1.76 million registered voters in Kansas as of Jan. 1, 2013. Eleven of those 39 noncitizens voted.

The registration law took effect in January 2013. In the three years before the appellate court put it on hold, more than 30,732 Kansans were not allowed to register to vote because they did not submit proof of citizenship. That figure represented about 12 percent of voter registration applications.

By STEPHEN KORANDA 
Kansas News Service

Republicans in the Kansas Senate seem ready to end a long-running lawsuit by complying with a court ruling that said the state sends too little money to local school districts.

The Kansas House? Not just yet. It’s advancing a plan that would continue adding school spending for another year, and only another year.

That sets up a potential fight between the two chambers and threatens Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s hopes for a plan to finally settle the court battle and carve out increased funding for public schools for several years to come.

Leaders in the House want to mix conservative policies with a funding plan that only boosts spending for the coming fiscal year. They’d also strip away future funding increases already in state law.

Senators have approved a bill mirroring Kelly’s plan for a multi-year funding hike, which many lawmakers hope could end the lawsuit.

“It is our best attempt to provide a reasonable solution for the Supreme Court,” Republican Sen. Molly Baumgardner said last week when pitching the bill to her fellow senators.

In a way, the Senate vote marks a change of fortune for Kelly. Republican leaders have blasted and blocked many of her major proposals. But Kelly’s school funding plan, based on numbers from the Department of Education, has garnered bipartisan support.

The Senate sent the bill to the House on a 32-8 vote with support from Democrats, moderate Republicans and conservatives such as Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning.

But House Speaker Ron Ryckman said he has concerns the boost in school funding would leave lawmakers unable to fund other services like roads and mental health care.

“We have to balance everything out and not always do what is politically easy to do,” Ryckman said. “We need to protect other core functions of government.”

The House will continue to work first on a proposal introduced last week, Ryckman said.

That bill includes an initial injection of cash for local school districts, but it cancels future funding increases and mixes in some controversial policies. For instance, it would let bullied students transfer to private schools on the state’s dime. Letting students use public money for private schools already draw criticism from a teachers’ union and school districts.

The Kansas Supreme Court mostly signed off on a funding boost lawmakers approved last year. But the justices said that previous spending plan needs to be adjusted for inflation. Kelly’s bill offers that added money.

Rep. Tom Sawyer, the Democratic Party leader in the House, wants to simply approve the Senate plan and move on. He said the House Republicans’ bill reopens the entire school funding debate.

“That causes all kinds of problems with the court,” Sawyer said. “Do the Senate bill. Get it behind us. Fund our schools the way we should.”

A committee will continue work this week on the House plan.

If the House approves its bill, the two chambers will have to find a compromise between proposals that have a wide disparity in funding and policy ideas.

Kelly will stay out of the fight for now and won’t pitch her plan to House lawmakers.

“They would prefer just operating on their own,” Kelly told reporters.

The issue is further complicated by a group of dozens of school districts, including the four that sued the state in the latest lawsuit, that now say even the bill approved in the Senate falls hundreds of millions of dollars short.

Baumgardner said lawmakers can’t afford what the school districts want without crippling the state budget.

“A $900 million price tag over four years will be devastating to our state,” she said during the Senate debate.

Republican Sen. Kevin Braun said if the Senate bill doesn’t satisfy the high court, it’s time to change the state constitution so courts can’t weigh in on school spending. He’s not interested in another round of fighting over a funding increase.

“This is not an opening bid,” Braun said. “This is a final offer.”

Stephen Koranda is Statehouse reporter for the Kansas News Service Kansas. Follow him on Twitter @kprkoranda.