TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Two new Republican leaders in the Kansas Legislature want to move quickly to repeal an income tax break for more than 330,000 farmers and business owners.
The policy under fire was championed by Republican Gov. Sam Brownback and passed by lawmakers in 2012.
Assaria Republican and House Taxation Committee Chairman Steven Johnson says he hopes a bill to repeal the break can be passed within weeks of lawmakers convening on Jan. 9.
Overland Park Republican and incoming Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning also would like to see a quick repeal to help address the state’s budget problems. Repeal is expected to raise about $260 million a year.
It’s getting harder to fill teaching positions in Kansas, especially in rural and urban districts.
In a report released in August, KSDE talked about the challenges the state faces to make sure there is a reliable source of teachers in the future and how to maintain a veteran teaching corps. “Kansas isn’t experiencing a greying of the profession but actually a greening,” said the report.
But there’s a new program at Kansas State University to help fill the need.
It used to be pretty easy to at fill open jobs for elementary teachers in Kansas.
But the Kansas State Department of Education (KSDE) says even that’s getting harder.
“While we generally don’t think that there’s a shortage of elementary teachers, in point of fact, there is in Kansas and that need is also growing nationwide,” says K-State College of Education Professor Thomas Vontz.
So Kansas State developed a one year, online program so those with an undergraduate degree can get a masters in elementary teaching.
Even though its online, all students will start student teaching in January.
K-State says it developed the program this year because lots of college graduates were looking to change careers.
“The college frequently receives inquiries from college graduates who want to become teachers but there has been no path available to them, other than the bachelor degree in education,” College of Education Dean Debbie Mercer said in a statement.
Vontz says many of his student see teaching as a way to give back. “You can make a tremendous difference on a kid. You can establish habits as well as ideas that will last a lifetime.”
In all, Vontz says, the initial class had 49 students, several in other states.
For people willing to spend a year teaching within a 50-mile radius around Dodge City, Garden City, Great Bend, Liberal, Wichita, Topeka or Kansas City there’s financial help.
About half of the initial class was eligible for $6,000 fellowships from the Board of Regents, Vontz says.
Sam Zeff covers education and is co-host of the political podcast Statehouse Blend Kansas. Follow him on Twitter @samzeff.
NEOSHO COUNTY – One person died and three injured in an accident just before 3p.m. on Friday in Neosho County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2008 Chevy Colorado driven by Trez Caleb Martinez, 17, Chanute, was northbound on U.S. 169 seven miles south of Chanute.
The vehicle rear-ended a 2007 Pontiac Vibe driven by Lee L. Heisz, 47, Portage, WI., that was stopped behind a 2005 Chevy 3500 driven by Chase Patrick Coomes, 17, Erie, that was stopped in the northbound lane of U.S. 169 awaiting to make a left turn onto 130th road.
The collision pushed the Pontiac into the ditch.
Heisz was pronounced dead at the scene and transported to Frontier Forensics.
A passenger in the Pontiac Heisz, Carol Lynn Heisz, 46, Portage, WI., was transported to Freeman Health System.
Martinez and Coomes were transported to Neosho Memorial Hospital.
Lee Heisz was not wearing a seat belt, according to the KHP.
TOPEKA – As required by a federal court order, the Department of Defense Friday released another round of documents related to its plans to close the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and relocate detainees to the U.S. mainland, according to Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt.
The latest batch of documents – the fourth group released since Schmidt filed a federal lawsuit in July to obtain them – shed little new light on the federal administration’s plans to relocate detainees to the U.S. mainland, possibly to Fort Leavenworth. The 52 pages of documents released today are almost completely redacted except for a few page headings. The visible headings show that the documents relate to matters such as “Previous CONUS Sites Considered for DoD Detention Operations”, “One-Time Costs for Disposition of [redacted] Detainees Held at GTMO”, and “Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) Recurring Costs [redacted] Detainees Disposition of Detainees Held at GTMO.”
Notably, the documents show that cost estimates for relocating detainees were dated as recently as December 2015.
“We remain committed to preventing the illegal relocation of detainees to Fort Leavenworth in the waning days of the Obama Administration,” Schmidt said. “Although this batch of heavily redacted documents reveals little new substantive information, it once again confirms that the administration was actively planning for relocating detainees to the U.S. mainland as recently at one year ago. We will maintain heightened vigilance at least through the presidential transition on January 20.”
Schmidt’s lawsuit that is compelling release of the planning documents is State of Kansas, ex rel. Derek Schmidt v. United States Department of Defense, in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas, Case No. 16-cv-04127. The documents released today, along with documents previously released pursuant to court order, are available at https://bit.ly/2f7Ty8Z.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Records obtained by The Associated Press show that a Mexican national accused of raping a 13-year-old girl on a Greyhound bus in Kansas had been deported 10 times and voluntarily removed from the U.S. nine other times since 2003.
Three U.S. Republican senators demanded this month in a letter that the Department of Homeland Security provide immigration records for 38-year-old Tomas Martinez-Maldonado.
That man is charged with felony rape in the alleged Sept. 27 attack aboard a bus in Geary County in north-central Kansas, where he is now in jail.
Defense attorney Lisa Hamer declined to comment. David Trevino, Martinez-Maldonado’s immigration attorney, said that many immigrants have multiple entries without legal permission because they have family members in the U.S.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced a new policy designed to allow farmers to take land out of a conservation program early if it is to be transferred to the next generation of farmers.
Agriculture Deputy Under Secretary Lanon Baccam says beginning Jan. 9, the USDA will offer an early termination opportunity for certain Conservation Reserve Program contracts.
Baccam made the announcement at the Joe Dunn farm in central Iowa near Carlisle. Dunn is the father-in-law to Iowa native and former U.S. Marine Aaron White, who with his wife, are prospective next generation farmers.
Baccam says the chance to give young farmers a better opportunity to succeed makes perfect sense.
Normally, early termination of a CRP contract requires repayment of all previous payments plus interest. The new policy waives this repayment if the land is transferred to a beginning farmer or rancher.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Authorities say a 19-year-old man has been charged in a deadly shooting during a botched Wichita drug deal.
Andrew Bull made his first court appearance Thursday in Sedgwick County District Court. He is jailed on $100,000 bond on charges of first-degree murder and distribution of marijuana in the death of 23-year-old Charles Hawkins. Public defender Mark Rudy didn’t immediately return a phone message from The Associated Press seeking comment.
Police say Hawkins was killed last week when he pulled out a gun and attempted to rob Bull during a drug deal. Police say Bull also was armed and shot Hawkins, who died after being taken to a hospital.
KANSAS CITY (AP) — A 33-year-old female hippopotamus has been euthanized at the Kansas City Zoo.
The Kansas City Star announced that the zoo announced the hippo’s death Thursday. The hippo, named Labor Day, had experienced a months-long “period of illness and decline in quality of life.”
A medical investigation is expected to take several weeks. Labor Day and another hippo, named Liberty, came to the Kansas City Zoo in 1995 when an area of the zoo featuring African animals opened.
Photo by America’s Health Rankings/United Health Foundation A recent report shows that fewer Kansans reported that their physical health was poor for at least two weeks of the past month than residents of Missouri. But that perception may have more to do with employment, poverty and education than with disease, according to a public health researcher.
By Meg Wingerter
While Kansans’ perceptions might make the state appear to be a picture of health, they are about as likely to develop health problems as the rest of the country.
The report found Kansas was near the middle on deaths from heart disease and cancer. The state also was close to average when it came to the number of residents with diabetes, which can cause other health problems such as blindness and kidney failure.
Across the border in Missouri, however, residents’ views of their health aligned more closely with their outcomes. The state ranked 41st in the country on residents’ reports of physical distress, cancer deaths and deaths from heart disease, and 39th on the diabetes rate.
So are Kansans overly optimistic about their health and Missourians stuck in despair? It isn’t that simple.
Poor health means different things to different people, said Shervin Assari, a research investigator in psychiatry and public health at the University of Michigan. In the case of Kansas and Missouri, different perceptions may have more to do with employment, poverty and education than with disease, he said.
“These factors are all heavily influencing health,” he said.
People who live in or are surrounded by poverty perceive their health as worse than more affluent people, even if they have similar medical conditions, Assari said. People with higher incomes and more education tend not to rate their health as poor until they are seriously ill, he said.
That doesn’t mean that poor health is all in low-income people’s heads, however — in the United States, they generally do have more chronic conditions than more affluent people, Assari said. They just may have a lower threshold for determining when those conditions affect their health.
Economic factors might explain why Kansans are feeling better. The state’s unemployment rate hovered between 4 percent and 4.3 percent in 2015, when researchers collected the data on health perceptions. Missouri started 2015 with a 5.4 percent unemployment rate, though it dropped to 4.4 percent over the course of the year.
None of those factors alone has a massive effect on people’s health perceptions, but they seem to build on one another, Assari said. So a person with a high income and a college degree may see his health substantially differently than someone in poverty who never finished high school.
Perceptions of health also vary based on age, gender and race, Assari said.
People who are older, male or white who say they are in poor health are at a high risk of death, he said, because they typically didn’t perceive their health as poor until they were extremely sick. But people who are younger, female or black or Hispanic tend to rate their health as poor earlier, when they experience conditions that aren’t life-threatening, like pain or depression, Assari said.
A young person with a medical condition might consider it to be a sign of poor health, but an elderly person with the same condition might shrug it off as part of aging, he said.
“It’s a comparison of expectations,” he said.
Meg Wingerter is a reporter for KHI News Service in Topeka, a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor team. You can reach her on Twitter @meganhartMC
LIBERAL, Kan. (AP) — A southwest Kansas man is charged in a shooting that left one person dead and another wounded.
John Ramon, 19, Liberal, made his first court appearance Thursday on charges of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder and cruelty to animals. He is jailed on $1 million bond.
Liberal police say a 24-year-old man was killed and a 29-year-old was hospitalized with serious injuries after the shooting on Tuesday. The names of the victims haven’t been released.
Ramon’s next court appearance is scheduled for Feb. 9.
It’s not immediately clear if Ramon has an attorney. The Seward County prosecutor’s office didn’t immediately return a phone message from The Associated Press.
Video surveillance shows the suspect and vehicle- courtesy Wichita Police
SEDGWICK COUNTY – Law enforcement authorities in Sedgwick County are investigating an armed robbery and asking for help to identify suspects and the vehicle.
On the morning of November 16, the Speedy Cash, at 3133 East Douglas, was robbed, according to a social media report.
Two unknown suspects made entry through the roof and confronted two employees at gunpoint.
The suspects took cash and then fled the business.
The vehicle is a white GMC Savannah cargo van. It may have a temporary tag. One of the windows on the passenger side was broken out and covered with plastic. There appears to be an area on the hood on of the vehicle where paint is missing.
There is additional damage and paint missing on the rear door of the van as well as damage to the driver’s side door.
If you see this vehicle, please call 911.
For any additional information on this case, you can call WPD Robbery section at (316) 268-4496 or Crime Stoppers at (316) 267-2111.
