OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) — Authorities are investigating lighting as the possible cause of a suburban Kansas City house fire.

The Overland Park Fire Department said in a news release that the fire started shortly before 2 a.m. Wednesday. The release says neighbors reported that they believed the home was for sale and vacant. No one was hurt.

Firefighters evacuated residents from neighboring homes while they worked to extinguish the blaze. The neighbors told firefighters that there were possible lighting strikes in the area before the fire.

By JIM MCLEAN

An effort to roll back a controversial business tax exemption is among the budget-balancing proposals that lawmakers will take up in the final weeks of the 2016 legislative session.

Several key Republicans, including many self-described conservatives who voted for Gov. Sam Brownback’s income tax cuts in 2012, are openly supporting bills to either reduce or eliminate the exemption as legislators return Wednesday to wrap up the session.

A trio of Senate conservatives, Jim Denning and Greg Smith, both from Overland Park, and Jeff King, from Independence, are sponsoring a bill that would partially roll back the exemption.

And Sen. Forrest Knox, a conservative Republican from Altoona, said recently that he too “is open” to either modifying or repealing the exemption. During a recent meeting with constituents,

Knox said he voted for the tax cuts believing that owners of limited liability companies and sole proprietorships still would be required to pay some taxes on their pass-through or non-salary income.

“That was my understanding, but it turned out that wasn’t the law,” Knox said. In fact, the law exempted more than 330,000 business owners and farmers from state income taxes, reducing collections by approximately $250 million a year.

Opposition on two fronts

An effort to repeal the business exemption spearheaded by Rep. Mark Hutton, a Wichita Republican, failed in the closing weeks of the 2015 session. With more support from conservative Republicans,

it appeared this year’s repeal bill stood a better chance. But that might not be the case. For varying reasons, opposition remains strong.

Brownback and many of the Legislature’s conservative Republican leaders are opposed to making any changes in the tax cut law, which they insist is making Kansas more attractive to businesses and job creators.

Last week Brownback dispelled rumors that he was open to a partial rollback of the business exemption, telling the Wichita Eagle that he believes a “tax increase” of any kind would worsen the economic trends depressing key segments of the Kansas economy. “We’ve got a global commodity falloff,” Brownback said.

“You’ve got slow growth rates in the country.

And to exacerbate that with a tax increase I don’t think is the right way to go.” Facing opposition from the governor and legislative leaders, the lawmakers pushing the bills to modify or repeal the exemption will need support from Democrats and moderate Republicans.

But getting them on board also is proving difficult.  Sen. Laura Kelly, from Topeka, is the top Democrat on the Senate’s budget-writing committee.

She rejects out of hand a bill scheduled for a hearing at 9 a.m. Thursday in the Senate Committee on Assessment and Taxation that would partially roll back the exemption. Senate Bill 508 — from Denning, Smith and King — would re-impose the tax, but only on 70 percent of a business owner’s pass-through income.

Kelly also doesn’t support a House bill that as currently written would repeal the exemption and use the proceeds to reduce the sales tax on food. She said even if it is repurposed to help balance the budget,

it wouldn’t generate enough revenue to fix the problem. “There are a number of legislators who are not interested in another short-term patch,” Kelly said.

Many moderate Republicans have similar concerns. Rep. Tom Moxley, a Republican who owns a ranch near Council Grove, favors closing the exemption even though he is among those benefitting from it.

“I am one of those blessed by the governor who does not pay Kansas income tax,” Moxley said.

“But my employees do. How fair is that? It obviously is not fair. It’s nuts.” But like Kelly, Moxley said repealing the exemption would be another in a series of financial Band-Aids.

“The state will still be bankrupt, it will just be slightly less bankrupt,” Moxley said.

“You’ll still be borrowing to pay next year’s bills.” Both Moxley and Kelly said a more comprehensive proposal is needed — one that rolls back the tax cuts and restores balance to the state’s tax system. “We need a broader tax structure,” Moxley said. “We need everybody carrying their weight.”

Election-year politics 

Many lawmakers, Kelly said, are not willing to put themselves on the line for a tax increase that doesn’t fix the problem and which if passed would likely be vetoed. In addition, she said,

Democrats and moderate Republicans who voted against the tax cuts aren’t interested in “bailing out” lawmakers who supported them.

She views the current repeal effort as an attempt by tax cut supporters to mollify voters concerned about the toll that persistent revenue shortfalls are taking on education, highways and social programs.

“A number of the proposals that we’re seeing are knee-jerk reactions to the governor’s poor polling,” she said.

“But I think there has been enough damage done over a long enough period of time that people will recognize political showmanship when they see it.”

Kansas started the 2014 budget year, the first full year of the tax cuts, with $700 million in reserves. Revenue shortfalls the following year forced the governor and lawmakers to use all of that cash and resort to a series of revenue transfers that included taking more money from the state highway program to balance the budget.

Lawmakers then ended the 2015 session by passing large increases in sales and cigarette taxes to bolster revenues and stabilize the budget through 2016. But the shortfalls continued. And now the governor and the Legislature must find a way to handle a $290 million projected shortfall.

Repealing the business tax exemption could be a part of the solution.

But Moxley and others believe it is more likely that the Legislature will make quick work of the wrap-up session and force Brownback to balance the budget. If that happens,

Moxley said, he expects the governor will implement the second of three budget-balancing options he proposed last week.

It would take another $185 million from the highway program — forcing a two-year delay in major projects — cut $34 million from state university budgets and delay to 2018 a $99 million payment scheduled to be made this year to the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System.

Jim McLean is executive editor of KHI News Service in Topeka, a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor team.

Large hail and heavy rain dominated the weather across central and eastern Kansas on Tuesday evening.

Hail as big as grapefruit was reported Kansas and areas from Manhattan to Emporia reported more than 3 inches of rain. Many areas of Sedgwick County including the city of Wichita reported golf ball size hail and over 2,5 inches of rain.

Many areas of the state were under flood watches and warnings on Wednesday morning.

Winds approaching hurricane force raked communities from Nebraska and Missouri to Texas.

Uprooted trees, downed power lines and roof damage were reported in parts of Texas and Oklahoma. No deaths or injuries were reported.

The nation’s midsection is facing another day of foul weather after a series of storms brought huge hail and high winds, but not as many tornadoes as had been feared.

The Nation Weather Service Storm Prediction Center said 60 million people from the

Gulf Coast to the Midwest east to North Carolina and Virginia should be alert for strong storms on Wednesday. The nastiest weather was predicted for an area from Houston north into part of Iowa.

-The Associated Press Contributed to this report

 

 

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The FBI says a man’s body found in charred ruins of a Kansas motel room after a shootout that injured three federal agents is that of the robbery suspect they were trying to arrest.

The FBI said Tuesday the body was identified as 28-year-old Orlando Collins, and the preliminary conclusion of the coroner is that Collins fatally shot himself. Toxicology tests are pending.

The Saturday night shootout at the Country Club Motel in Topeka injured two deputy federal marshals and an FBI agent who were part of a fugitive task force. The FBI says its agent remained hospitalized Tuesday in good condition.

Authorities trying to arrest Collins came under fire as they approached a motel room, from which a fire then erupted.

The fire’s cause has not been released.

Americans lose roughly $100 billion gambling each year, and with fans expected to wager more than $100 million on this weekend’s Kentucky Derby, the personal-finance website WalletHub has released an in-depth report on 2016’s Most Gambling-Addicted States as well as a collection of fun facts about the first leg of the Triple Crown.

In order to determine the states where the gambling problem is most prevalent, WalletHub’s analysts compared the 50 states across 13 key metrics. The data set ranges from “presence of illegal gambling operations” to “lottery sales per capita” to “percentage of people with gambling disorders.”

Gambling Addiction in Kansas (1=Most Addicted, 25=Avg.):
22nd – Number of Casinos per Capita
23rd – Number of Gaming Machines per Capita
37th – Lottery Sales per Capita
11th – % of Adults with Gambling Disorders
40th – Number of Gambling-Related Arrests per Capita
18th – NCPG (National Council on Problem Gambling) Affiliation

For the full report, visit:
https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-addicted-to-gambling/20846/

WACO, Texas (AP) — Pilgrim’s Pride has ordered a massive recall of cooked chicken products after consumers and federal meat inspectors found contamination by such foreign material as wood, plastic, rubber and metal.

The recall of more than 4.5 million pounds of fully cooked chicken products announced Tuesday is an expansion of a recall of almost 41,000 pounds of cooked chicken nugget products announced April 7. A statement from the U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture says the recall involves products bearing the establishment number “EST.20728” inside the USDA inspection mark.

The items were shipped nationwide for institutional use, and records from the Waco, Texas-based company show schools purchased the products through Pilgrim’s Pride commercial channels.

No confirmed reports of adverse reactions from consumption of the products have been reported.

SALINA – Law enforcement authorities in Saline County have closed an investigation into a Sunday morning shooting death.

An investigation has determined the shooting was accidental, according to Salina Police Captain Chris Trocheck.

Just after 6:30 a.m., Bryant Sanchez, 28, was showing a .40 caliber handgun he had recently acquired other individuals in the driveway of a home in the 1900 block of Dover Drive in Salina.

The gun discharged and struck Sanchez in the head. He was transported to Salina Regional Health Center where he died.

No additional details were released.

By MEGAN HART

One of the governor’s options to patch a hole in the state budget includes a $35 million cut from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, a move a hospital group says could harm its members.

Gov. Sam Brownback laid out three proposals to patch the budget hole last week after revenue projections for this budget year and the next were lowered by $350 million. One of the options includes the $35 million KDHE cut.

Budget Director Shawn Sullivan said the cut likely would force KDHE to reduce payments to the three managed care organizations that administer KanCare, the state’s privatized $3 billion Medicaid program. The companies likely would pass on those cuts to doctors and hospitals in the form of lower reimbursements, he said.

Medicaid already has lower reimbursement rates than Medicare and private insurers for many procedures, said Cindy Samuelson, spokeswoman for the Kansas Hospital Association. Hospitals often take a loss when treating Medicaid patients, she said.

The association couldn’t estimate the impact of potential cuts without more specific information, Samuelson said, but any reduced reimbursements would harm hospitals.

“We do not think it is a good idea to cut Medicaid provider payments at a point in time we have struggling hospitals in our state,” she said in an email. “As an alternative, the governor should be exploring expanding KanCare to help address the state’s budget shortfall, support KanCare providers and to help working Kansans.”

Cassie Sparks, a spokeswoman for KDHE, said the department is “evaluating the options available to reach the budget proposal.”

Two of the KanCare managed care organizations — Amerigroup and Sunflower State Health Plan — declined to comment on the possible effect of cuts to KDHE. A spokesperson for the third, UnitedHealthcare, couldn’t be reached for comment.

Kansas legislators return Wednesday to the Statehouse to wrap up the 2016 session.

Megan Hart is a reporter for KHI News Service in Topeka, a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor team. You can reach her on Twitter @meganhartMC

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas lawmakers have again refused to audit the Department of Children and Families to determine if the agency discriminates against same-sex couples in adoption or foster care cases.

The Legislative Post Audit Committee on Tuesday voted 5-4 along party lines not to approve the audit. Rep. Jim Ward, a Democrat from Wichita, sought the audit after several same-sex couple alleged last year that the agency had discriminated against them.

The Lawrence Journal-World reports Wednesday’s vote came after DCF Secretary Phyllis Gilmore issued a statement denying the discrimination allegations. She says the agency has no policies or documents related to same-sex or non-traditional families.

Ward countered that substantial anecdotal evidence shows blatant discrimination against same-sex couples. He called Tuesday’s vote “shameful.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Police say a 5-month-old baby has died while taking a nap in bed with his mother.

The Wichita Eagle reports that police say it was the seventh time this year that a child has died while sleeping in the same bed as someone else. The practice is called co-sleeping.

Kansas Infant Death and SIDS Network director Christy Schunn says babies are safest sleeping alone, on their backs in a clutter-free crib. Some parents view co-sleeping as a way to bond with their children. But experts say adult beds can be dangerous for babies because blankets and pillows can suffocate them.

COLUMBUS, Kan. (AP) — Cherokee County commissioners have voted to appeal a Shawnee County judge’s decision that upheld how Kansas awarded a license for a state casino being built in Crawford County.

The Joplin Globe reports that commissioners voted 2-1 on Monday to authorize spending up to $20,000 in legal bills on the appeal.

Commissioners Pat Collins and Robert Myers continue to support a proposal for Castle Rock Casino Resort that didn’t get chosen to be built in Cherokee County.

In a March decision, Judge Larry Hendricks denied petitions for judicial review that sought to restart the casino selection steps.

Kansas Crossing Casino and Hotel, a $70.2 million project, is expected to open in Crawford County next March. Casino officials have said it would create more than 300 jobs.

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The Latest on severe weather predicted in the central and eastern U.S. (all times local):

3 p.m.

The National Weather Service has issued a tornado watch in an area spanning four states and encompassing Dallas, Oklahoma City and Wichita, Kansas.

Forecasters are warning of a “particularly dangerous” widespread event that could subject some areas to grapefruit-sized hail, a few intense tornadoes and damaging winds with isolated gusts as high as 80 mph.

A tornado watch encompassing North Texas, western central Texas and most of Oklahoma is expected to last until midnight. A tornado watch in central and eastern Kansas and southern Nebraska is set to expire at 9 p.m.

Forecasters warn the storms could form rapidly in the next few hours as they roll from west to east.

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2:30 p.m.

Storms with rain, lightning, hail and high wind are creating problems across Missouri.

The National Weather Service says a strong storm is heading east across the state, reaching the St. Louis area in mid-afternoon. Winds of 67 mph were reported at Spirit of St. Louis Airport in suburban Chesterfield.

Power lines and trees were down in several counties, and heavy rain was falling. There are no reports of injuries in eastern Missouri.

In the mid-Missouri town of Columbia, lightning caused a garage fire.

Much of the St. Louis area is under thunderstorm watches and warnings through much of Tuesday evening.

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2 p.m.

Schools in large sections of Kansas have canceled classes and extra-curricular activities to prepare for potentially dangerous storms packing tornadoes, rain and hail.

Wichita State University closed all of its locations at noon Tuesday and postponed baseball and softball games scheduled for Tuesday evening. Schools and other organizations stretching from Arkansas City to Topeka also canceled many after-school activities.

And officials at McConnell Air Force Base evacuated aircraft at the base in Wichita as a precaution. The planes and support personnel were sent to Washington and North Dakota.

The National Weather Service office in Wichita says the storms are expected in the Wichita area Tuesday afternoon and could continue past sunset, carrying possible hail of 3 inches or larger and the potential for nighttime tornadoes.

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1 p.m.

Winds gusting up to 60 mph have downed trees and caused some damage in a central and northern Missouri.

Fire Battalion Chief Michael Hawkins says the winds also damaged a roof at a plumbing company in Sedalia, 90 miles east of Kansas City. No injuries have been reported

Kansas City Power & Light says about 2,700 homes and businesses in Sedalia are without power.

Strong winds and some minor flash flooding have been reported in Clay County in northern Missouri, where winds of up to 60 mph damaged two docks at Smithville Lake.

The National Weather Service says storms early Tuesday brought torrential rains and hail ranging from 1 to 1.5 inches in Kansas City and other northwest Missouri towns, stretching north to St. Joseph.

___

12:45 p.m.

Forecasters say the Dallas-Fort Worth area is now in the path of a potentially dangerous storm system that could bring damaging winds, big hail and tornadoes to the central U.S.

The Storm Prediction Center’s latest forecast, issued at midday Tuesday, extends the moderate risk south to include the Dallas area along with much of Oklahoma and Kansas. In all, more than 53 million people live in areas with at least a slight risk of severe weather Tuesday, including those on the East Coast facing a separate storm system.

Storm Prediction Center Meteorologist Stephen Corfidi says the system moving through Tuesday afternoon and evening could produce giant hail and large tornadoes. He says North Texas is now the area most at risk for damaging winds.

An advisory from the center predicts a “widespread multi-episode significant severe-weather event.”

___

11:30 a.m.

Some Oklahoma residents are taking steps to secure property from tornadoes, fast-sweeping winds and potentially damaging large hail.

George Eischen says he spent Tuesday morning moving vehicles off the lot at his Chevrolet dealership in the small town of Fairview, about 100 miles northwest of Oklahoma City.

Forecasters are predicting giant hail the size of grapefruits could fall on parts of the Great Plains on Tuesday.

Eischen says he has been lining the new vehicles “bumper to bumper” inside the shop and even the lobby to protect them from the hail, which he calls “the real enemy of the car dealer.”

The 51-year-old Eischen says the town of Fairview has never been hit by a tornado, but it is close to the sites of two large earthquakes recorded earlier this year.

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9:45 a.m.

Officials have removed aircraft from a Kansas military base to prevent them from being damaged during expected heavy storms.

McConnell Air Force Base spokesman Colby Hardin says the aircraft are being sent to Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington, and Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota.

The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, is forecasting severe storms with the possibility of tornadoes and large hail Tuesday, including in the Wichita area. McConnell is about 9 mile southeast of Wichita.

The aircraft and support personnel will return when conditions are safe. The air base is open for business Tuesday.

McConnell currently houses mostly 1950s-era KC-135 refueling tanks. That fleet is being replaced by new KC-46A tankers, which are scheduled to begin arriving next year.

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8 a.m.

The Storm Prediction Center says nearly 50 million people are at risk for severe weather.

Forecasters say giant and destructive hail is likely in parts of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas on Tuesday. The latest forecast says “significant” tornadoes are also possible in those states, but baseball-sized hail or larger will be more widespread.

In the east, Washington, D.C., is now considered at slight risk for damaging winds and hail on Tuesday, along with Baltimore and Philadelphia.

Forecasters say the storms are expected to hit Tuesday afternoon and evening.

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6:50 a.m.

Stormy weather in the eastern U.S. could bring damaging winds to Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania, where voters are casting ballots in primary elections.

The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, says Philadelphia and Baltimore are at a slight risk for severe weather Tuesday. Forecasters say a storm system — separate from the one taking aim at Great Plains states — could bring isolated severe thunderstorms, hail and powerful wind gusts to the Mid-Atlantic on Tuesday afternoon and early evening.

Polls close in the three states at 8 p.m. Voters in Rhode Island and Connecticut also cast ballots Tuesday.

___

6:15 a.m.

A handful of Oklahoma schools have preemptively canceled classes Tuesday in light of an ominous forecast that’s predicting dangerous tornadoes and giant hail for parts of the Great Plains.

Mid-Del Public Schools in the Oklahoma City suburb of Midwest City called off classes, saying that the safety and security of students and staff was the top priority. That district, along with others across Oklahoma, implemented new tornado safety plans following the 2013 twister that killed seven schoolchildren in Moore.

The Storm Prediction Center says much of the central U.S. is at risk for severe weather Tuesday, including tornadoes and grapefruit-sized hail. In all, nearly 37 million people are at a slight risk or higher for severe weather Tuesday.

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1:20 a.m.

School districts and authorities are bracing for the possibility of a severe weather outbreak that could bring powerful, long-track tornadoes and large hail to the Great Plains.

The weather on Tuesday could include heavy winds, tornadoes and hail as large as baseballs or softballs. The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, says the most dangerous weather will likely take aim at an approximately 70,000-square-mile area stretching from southern Oklahoma to southern Nebraska.

In all, nearly 37 million people from the Rio Grande River in South Texas to Omaha, Nebraska, and the western regions of Missouri, Arkansas and Iowa are at a slight risk or higher of experiencing severe weather Tuesday.

In the east, a separate storm system could bring thunderstorms, strong winds and hail to Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., but the risk of severe outbreaks is low.

GIRARD, Kan. (AP) — A mother is charged with aiding her son and another man in a southeast Kansas jail escape.

The Pittsburg Morning Sun reports that 57-year-old Marlene Louise McAfee, of Arma, is jailed in Crawford County on $50,000 bond.

After her son, Shaun Steven Simpson, and fellow inmate Steven Ray Barnes escaped Saturday from the Crawford County Jail, surveillance video from a nearby hospital showed them getting into McAfee’s sport utility vehicle and leaving.

Authorities continued searching Tuesday for the men. The 33-year-old Simpson was being held on kidnapping and other charges, while the 26-year-old Barnes was jailed on a parole violation.

McAfee said at a bond hearing Monday that she is “cooperating with everyone.” Her attorney, Jason Wiske, didn’t immediately return a phone call from The Associated Press seeking comment.