WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The proposed $12.2 billion merger of Kansas-based Westar Energy with Missouri-based Kansas City Power & Light could be at the mercy of Missouri utility regulators whose staff has recommended the deal be rejected.
Great Plains Energy, parent company of KCP&L, says it doesn’t need Missouri’s permission for the purchase, which would combine operations to serve 1.5 million customers on both sides of the state line.
The Wichita Eagle reports that the Missouri Public Service Commission’s staff is concerned that the merger would lead to layoffs and harm Great Plains’ credit rating, leading to higher costs for customers.
James Owen, acting director of Missouri’s Office of Public Counsel, believes the commission staff will file a challenge against the deal. If not, his office will.
MEDFORD, Okla. (AP) — Three small earthquakes have been recorded in northern Oklahoma during the weekend.
The U.S. Geological Survey reports the strongest was a magnitude 3.1 quake recorded at 7:22 a.m. Sunday six miles east of Medford, 77 miles south of Wichita.
No injuries or damage are reported.
The agency also recorded a magnitude 2.7 quake six miles southeast of Waukomis at 8:13 a.m. Sunday and a magnitude 2.7 temblor 12 miles northeast of Helena at 10:22 p.m. Saturday.
The number of magnitude 3.0 or greater earthquakes has skyrocketed in Oklahoma, from a few dozen in 2012 to more than 900 last year. Scientists have linked the increase to the underground disposal of wastewater from oil and gas production and state regulators have asked producers to reduce wastewater disposal volumes.
For the past 12 years McCreery has served as the director of the Office of Equal Opportunity, Ethics and Access at Illinois State University – photo Univ. of Kansas
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — The University of Kansas has hired a new director for its office that investigates complaints of discrimination and harassment.
The Kansas City Star reports Michael “Shane” McCreery will begin his new role as head of the office of Institutional Opportunity and Access. He was selected from what school officials called a strong applicant pool and will start his new role on Sept. 1.
The university is facing three lawsuits stemming from claims by two members of the women’s rowing team that they were sexually assaulted by the same former football player.
In addition to suits by each woman, the parents of one of the women also sued the school for falsely advertising its campus is safe.
HUTCHINSON— Two of the four young men convicted of being involved in the robbery of a Kwik Shop in Hutchinson were sentenced Friday.
Karl Koenig and Drake Lindsay, both 19, waived their rights to a preliminary hearing and then entered pleas involving the Kwik Shop robbery as well as the burglary of a smoke shop.
They entered pleas to aggravated robbery and conspiracy to commit burglary. All other charges were dropped.
Judge Trish Rose sentenced Lindsay to five years and six months in prison while Koenig received a sentence of six years and seven months because of past criminal convictions for burglary and criminal damage.
Both men apologized for the crimes and to the victim saying they didn’t mean for her to get hurt.
Kurt Koenig was sentenced last week by Judge Tim Chambers and was given two years, 10-months in prison after he entered a plea to conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery. He was the one who drove the vehicle for the other three and never actually entered the store.
Dakota Ney also entered a plea to conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery is scheduled for sentencing on Aug. 19.
The four were involved in the robbery of the Kwik Shop at 43rd & Plum on January 27.
Lindsay
It was Ney that forced the clerk to open the drawer and give money while the other two stole cigarettes and other items. He is also the one who knocked the victim to the floor, using a taser device on her and kicking her. She still suffers from those injuries and appeared in court with a walker.
Hutchinson Police Detectives executed two search warrants where they found a large amount of the stolen property from the Kwik Shop robbery and items from the burglary of the smoke shop, which occurred a few days after the robbery on February 1.
A billboard from last year along the Kansas Turnpike trying to recruit Kansas teachers to apply in Independence, Missouri. A new report released Tuesday shows the problem of teachers leaving the profession in Kansas is not getting better. CREDIT KCUR
By SAM ZEFF
The number of teachers leaving Kansas or simply quitting the profession has dramatically increased over the last four years.
The annual Licensed Personnel Report was released Tuesday by the Kansas Department of Education. While it was provided to the Board of Education meeting in Topeka Tuesday, the report was buried in board documents and not addressed by either staff or the board.
The report shows that 1,075 teachers left the profession last year, up from 669 four years ago. That’s a 61 percent increase.
The number of teachers who left the state doubled in the last four years, from 413 in 2012 school year to 831 in the last school year.
“When you’re under attack almost continually and called lazy and overpaid and incompetent of course you’re going to leave the first chance you get,” says Mark Desetti, the top lobbyist for the Kansas National Education Association (KNEA). “It’s just shocking to me.”
The number of teachers who are retiring has also been steadily increasing over the last four years. In 2012, 2,084 teachers retired. Last year that jumped to 2,693. Still that’s a 22 percent hike.
While the state Board of Education did not discuss the report, which in past years has generally been part of the agenda, Chairman Jim McNiece talk about the growing problem of teachers leaving the state as the meeting opened.
McNiece told the board about a conversation he had with the chair of the Nebraska State Board of Education. “He wanted to say thank you to Kansas for sending so many teachers to Nebraska,” McNiece told his board colleagues. “Ouch. Big Ouch.”
Some educators have been worried about teachers leaving the state or the profession for a long time. “The trend started years ago but has clearly accelerated,” says Mark Tallman from the Kansas Accociation of School Boards (KASB).
The problem of teachers fleeing Kansas came to light a year ago when the Independence School District in Missouri bought two billboards touting open jobs in the district. Not only was there data on teachers leaving Kansas but data from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) that showed the number of license applications from teachers with a Kansas address had doubled since 2011.
“We have spent out time in the Legislature tearing teachers down and then wondering why they don’t want to teach anymore,” says Desetti from KNEA. “We need to reverse that trend.”
State Rep. Melissa Rooker, a moderate Republican from Fairway, agrees that lawmakers are partly responsible. “You’ve got just this constant refrain in the Legislature from a certain faction that our schools are failing. That we need good teachers not all these bad teachers. They don’t have a right to their political voice,” she says. “It should come as no surprise that there’s a morale problem and an ensuing brain drain exodus.”
The state board did discuss a report from a blue ribbon panel on how to retain teachers in Kansas. That report was released last month and accepted by the board today.
It showed what the panel called a “greening” of the profession. Almost a quarter of all teachers in Kansas have less than four years experience and 40 percent have less than nine years in the classroom. The blue ribbon report also said that fewer students are majoring in education.
The panel made 60 recommendation including better pay, improved mentoring and just a general improvement in how teachers are treated in the state.
The Board of Education took no action on any of the recommendation. It created another committee to address the concerns.
All agreed it will take a statewide effort to improve teacher retention. “Local Chambers of Commerce, they’ve got a role to play. Community infrastructures and governments have a role to play,” says Ken Weaver, Dean of Emporia State University’s Teacher College and co-chair of the blue ribbon panel. “There’s a lot of opportunity for partnerships. Lot of opportunity for relationship building.”
Sam Zeff covers education for KCUR, which is a partner in a statewide collaboration covering elections in Kansas. Follow Sam on Twitter @SamZeff.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — State documents show that thousands of Kansas government employees would face rising health insurance premiums under fee schedules developed for 2017.
The State Employee Health Plan administered by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment applies to workers throughout state government and includes people employed at public universities and colleges.
Under basic health policies available through Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas and Aetna, monthly rates for individual policies with low- and high-deductible plans would rise 9 percent. The monthly cost of health insurance for state workers in the employee-and-children plans would also increase 9 percent.
The Topeka Capital-Journal reports rates for health insurance policies for full-time workers also increased during the 2016 year.
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas court says parental rights should be terminated for a woman accused in 2012 of binding and blindfolding two of her children.
The Kansas Court of Appeals agreed Friday that Deborah Gomez’s parental rights should be terminated.
Gomez, and her husband, Adolfo Gomez, were arrested after police found two of their children blindfolded and bound with duct tape in a Lawrence parking lot. The couple said they were traveling from Illinois because they believed the world was ending. The children were taken into state custody.
Both parents later pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of endangering a child. Deborah Gomez served about six months in jail.
The Lawrence Journal World reports (https://j.mp/2beVtZj ) that the appeals court rejected her claim that she should have her parental rights restored.
Black Lives Matter/All Lives Matter meeting in Topeka on Friday-photo courtesy WIBW TV
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A meeting between community members and Topeka police ended abruptly when participants yelled at the police chief.
The Topeka Capital-Journal reports about 200 people attended the Friday meeting, which ended about halfway through the scheduled program.
Police Chief James Brown was interrupted as he read his remarks noting the police department’s efforts to engage with the community, touting community policing officers’ work and recent “coffee with a cop” events.
A man sitting at the back of the room laughed loudly and interjected comments as Brown spoke. A woman then also stood up and began yelling, while attendees asked her to calm down, and a man asked her to stop cursing.
A pastor appealed for calm, but finally announced the meeting had ended when order couldn’t be restored.
Police on the scene of the January 2015 bank robbery, carjacking -photo courtesy KSHB
KANSAS CITY – A Kansas City man who was shot by police officers was sentenced in federal court this week for bank robbery and using a firearm in an attempted carjacking, according to Tammy Dickinson, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri.
Steven Marquain Davis, 30, of Kansas City, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Dean Whipple to 12 years in federal prison without parole.
On Nov. 19, 2015, Davis pleaded guilty to bank robbery and to using a firearm during a violent crime (carjacking). Davis admitted that he used a simulated bomb to rob the Commerce Bank at 922 Walnut St., Kansas City, Mo., on Jan. 9, 2015. Davis entered the bank between 4:10 and 4:20 p.m. Davis, holding a remote control device, approached a teller counter and placed a black duffel bag on the counter. The remote control was described as having a red wire wrapped around it, similar in appearance to the remote used on remote control toys. Davis told the teller “gimme everything” and that “it’s” on the side of the building, which the teller believed referred to a bomb because of the remote he was holding. The teller placed $29,689 in the black duffel bag.
Black duffel bag with nearly $30K dollars from the bank-photo courtesy KSHB
After Davis left the bank, he approached a 2012 Suzuki Grand Vitara on Petticoat Lane, mid-block between Main Street and Walnut Avenue. Davis pulled on the door handle and ordered the driver to open the door. When she refused, he pointed a handgun at her and again stated, “Open the door.” He began banging on the window of her vehicle with the handgun and she drove away from the area.
A witness confronted Davis in the street. Davis pointed a handgun at the witness and stated, “What are you looking at?” Davis tried unsuccessfully to get into two other cars in the area before multiple police officers arrived on the scene. Davis pointed a handgun at the officers, who then fired at Davis and wounded him before taking him into custody. Investigators collected $29,690, a remote device and a Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver from the scene where Davis was arrested.
FBI agents located a device that was designed to look like a bomb in the southwest area of the bank lobby. FBI and Kansas City, Mo., Police Department bomb technicians responded and rendered the device safe.
ANDOVER, Kan. (AP) — A construction worker has died after being electrocuted at a Kansas work site.
Authorities say 38-year-old Darrell Harden of Kansas City, Missouri, died Friday when he was working at a site in Andover.
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration says he suffered fatal injuries when the lift truck he was operating came into contact with overhead power lines.
The Wichita Eagle reports that when emergency crews arrived they found him unconscious, near the truck, with power lines on the ground nearby. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
SHATTUCK, Okla. (AP) — The Oklahoma Highway Patrol says a Kansas man was killed when he crashed a stolen sport utility vehicle he was driving while leading police on a high speed chase in northwestern Oklahoma.
The OHP says 30-year-old Zachary Ramos of Liberal, Kansas, was dead at the scene of the crash Friday on a county road near Shattuck.
A police report says Ramos was leading Shattuck police and Ellis County deputies on a chase on U.S. Highway 283, then onto a county road. The report says Ramos lost control of the SUV and it overturned several times and crashed into a tree.
Ramos was thrown about 30 feet from the vehicle.
The OHP says the SUV had been reported stolen to Woodward police.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The proposed $12.2 billion merger of Kansas-based Westar Energy with Missouri-based Kansas City Power & Light could be at the mercy of Missouri utility regulators whose staff has recommended the deal be rejected.
