DETROIT (AP) — General Motors says it will replace some key engine parts to stop oil leaks that have caused over 1,300 fires and four recalls of older cars.
But parts aren’t available yet, so GM is still recommending that the cars be parked outside until they can be repaired.
The company tells dealers it will replace the front valve cover and gasket with improved parts under two recalls announced earlier this year.
The recalls cover about 1.4 million cars with 3.8-liter V6 engines from 1997 through 2004. Included are the Buick Regal, Oldsmobile Intrigue, Pontiac Grand Prix and the Chevrolet Impala, Lumina and Monte Carlo.
Oil can seep through gaskets under hard braking, drip onto the exhaust manifold and catch fire. Previous repairs on most of the cars didn’t stop the leaks.
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — A University of Kansas information session about guns on campus has drawn a crowd of more than 200 students, faculty and staff.
The Lawrence Journal-World reports that the University Senate organized Tuesday’s event. Under state law, public universities in Kansas must allow concealed weapons on campus beginning July 1, 2017. But policies that will guide implementation of the law have yet to be written.
During the meeting, many speakers expressed fear of mass shootings, of accidental firearm discharges, of arguments escalating into shootings, of a loss of academic freedom, of increased suicide rates and more.
University Senate president Mike Williams, associate professor of journalism, said his goal for university governance was to collect feedback from campus and share it with administrators and state lawmakers.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Consultants have made several recommendations to Kansas lawmakers to save and generate cash, including centralizing the leasing of state office space and having the state transportation department sell off rarely used equipment.
Alvarez & Marsal, which is conducting an efficiency study of state government, presented some of their recommendations Tuesday to the Legislative Budget Committee, the same day the committee heard the state is facing a projected a $170 million shortfall in the next fiscal year.
Other recommendations made by the firm were that the Kansas Department of Revenue should fill 53 vacant revenue officer and 14 auditor positions. The firm also said the transportation department should sell sponsorship rights, generating upward of $1 million a year from sponsorships of traveler assist hotlines, roadside logo sign programs, motorist assist programs and rest stops.
The final efficiency study is expected early next year.
TOPEKA- The Kansas Bureau is in investigating the death of a man while in the custody of Topeka police.
On December 2, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation was asked by the Topeka Police Department to investigate the circumstances of the death of a man while in their custody, according to a KBI media release.
The deceased had been contacted by the TPD as a part of their investigation regarding the complaint of a forgery.
During the course of their investigation, the man complained of chest pains and was taken to the hospital where he later expired.
The KBI is not providing additional details until the investigation is completed.
ATCHISON- A Kansas woman was injured in an accident just before 2p.m. on Wednesday in Atchison County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 1997 Ford Taurus driven by Janice N. Jimenez Saavedra, 21, Atchison, was northbound on River Road a mile north of Atchison.
The vehicle traveled into the ditch. The driver lost control and the vehicle rolled several times.
Jimenez Saavedra was transported to the hospital in Atchison.
She was not wearing a seat belt, according to the KHP.
MANHATTAN- Law enforcement authorities in Riley County are investigating a suspect allegedly involved in a series of vehicle burglaries.
Over the past two weeks, police responded to multiple vehicle burglaries in Manhattan.
Riley County police identified a potential suspect and ask the public for information on the whereabouts of Barrett Stokes, 20, of Manhattan.
police said that Stokes should be considered potentially armed and dangerous.
With the assistance of the Pottawatomie County Sheriff’s Office and tips from the community Stokes was apprehended in Manhattan and is currently at the Pottawatomie County Jail.
MENTOR, Kan. (AP) — Farmers are concerned that bug that is new to Kansas may be capable of harming sorghum crops in Saline County.
A meeting was called in the city of Mentor Tuesday to discuss what are known as sugarcane aphids. Jeff Whitworth, a crop production entomologist at Kansas State University, says the aphids are an invasive species that reproduce rapidly and produce a sticky substance called “honeydew.”
He says the aphids, which were first noticed in Kansas in fall 2014, are “probably” not an immediate threat in Saline County.
Whitworth said that if the sugarcane aphids become a problem early in the season, there are some sorghum varieties that have proven to be resistant to the pests.
The Salina Journal reports that the only hosts detected so far are sorghum varieties, including johnsongrass, shattercane and forage sorghums.
Expanding Kansas’ Medicaid program would generate enough offsetting savings to more than cover the cost of insurance for another 150,000 low-income Kansans, according to an analysis released Tuesday by six health foundations.
The analysis done by Manatt Health Solutions, a national health care consulting firm, shows that expanding Medicaid would lower state costs in several areas by enough to cover the annual $53 million cost of expansion, perhaps with money to spare.
“We think there is enough savings and new revenue that the cost of expansion can be covered through 2020,” said Deborah Bachrach, the lead author of the analysis and a former Medicaid director for the state of New York.
“It’s even possible that the state may be able to generate additional dollars — that is dollars beyond those needed to cover the costs of expansion.” The Affordable Care Act obligates the federal government to cover 100 percent of state expansion costs through 2016 after which it gradually phases down to a permanent matching rate of 90 percent in 2020.
Savings identified
Tom Bell, president and CEO of the Kansas Hospital Association, said the new analysis of Medicaid expansion in Kansas corroborates studies done by his organization. “It says that not only does expansion pay for itself, it could actually help the state budget,” Bell said.
Currently, Kansas spends nearly $30 million a year to cover a portion of the losses sustained by hospitals, clinics and mental health centers for care provided to uninsured patients. And it spends nearly $87 million annually to provide health care to prison inmates and mental health services to uninsured Kansans.
Much of that spending, Bachrach said, would no longer be necessary if Kansas expanded eligibility for its Medicaid program — known as KanCare — to adults earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, which is annually $16,105 for an individual and $32,913 for a family of four. Kansas is among 20 states that have not expanded Medicaid eligibility.
The analysis says expansion also would reduce the number of Kansans seeking disability determinations, which would save millions more. Disability determinations in Oregon dropped from 7,000 to 1,400 in the first year after it expanded eligibility for Medicaid.
In addition, expanding KanCare would increase the $47 million generated by a privilege tax levied on the managed care organizations that operate the state Medicaid program since it was privatized in 2013.
“The potential benefit to the state budget alone indicates that legislators can no longer afford to simply say ‘no’ to KanCare expansion,” the foundation members of Kansas Grantmakers in Health said in a letter sent to Kansas legislators with a copy of the analysis.
The letter criticized Gov. Sam Brownback and legislative leaders for paying millions to a consultant to identify savings and efficiencies while ignoring Medicaid expansion, which they said “could be saving the state millions of dollars right now, while providing more than 150,000 uninsured Kansans health coverage.”
Tom Bell, president and CEO of the Kansas Hospital Association, said the new analysis corroborates studies done by his organization. “It says that not only does expansion pay for itself, it could actually help the state budget,” Bell said.
A group that produces the state’s official revenue estimate, which the governor and Legislature are required to use in the budgeting process, recently lowered its projections for the 2016 budget year by $159 million, even though lawmakers passed the largest tax increase in state history in the 2015 session. When the state closed the books on November, tax receipts topped the revised estimate by $7.7 million but few believe the budget problems have been solved.
Expansion bill in the works
Bell said KHA is working with select legislators to write a Medicaid expansion bill for the 2016 legislative session. “We want to get something introduced early in the session that is based on plans that have been adopted in other red states — states with Republican governors,” he said, noting that several lawmakers have expressed interest in the plan devised by Republican Gov. Mike Pence in Indiana.
Indiana’s expansion plan, approved by federal officials in January, requires beneficiaries to help pay for private coverage by contributing to a Personal Wellness and Responsibility, or POWER, account. The state also contributes to the account, which beneficiaries can use to cover out-of-pocket expenses.
The amount that beneficiaries are required to pay toward their coverage varies based on their income and is limited to no more than 2 percent of their income.
The recent closure of Mercy Hospital in the southeast Kansas community of Independence has prompted some legislative opponents of expansion to take a second look at the issue. However, Brownback and many Republican leaders remain strongly opposed, in part because they say they don’t want to extend coverage to non-disabled adults until support services that help Kansans with disabilities to live independently are provided to all who need them.
Kansans with disabilities currently receive health care through KanCare, but thousands are on waiting lists for support services.
In October, Melika Willoughby, Brownback’s deputy communications director, detailed the governor’s opposition to expansion in an email to supporters. She wrote that the governor believes it would be “morally reprehensible” for the state to provide health coverage to low-income Kansans “who choose not to work” before providing support services to all of the disabled Kansans now on waiting lists.
Rep. Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican who chairs the House Health and Human Services Committee, is among those opposed to any expansion plan that doesn’t also clear the waiting lists.
“The state has a responsibility to provide a health care safety net for the poor, disabled and elderly,” Hawkins recently wrote in the House Republican Caucus blog. “My concern begins when we expand that to able-bodied adults.”
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment, the state’s lead Medicaid agency, has estimated that eliminating the waiting lists for Kansans with disabilities will cost the state about $1 billion over 10 years, more than can be covered by the savings estimated in the Manatt analysis.
Bell and other expansion advocates say the governor’s insistence that any expansion plan sent to his desk also eliminate the waiting lists is a diversionary tactic intended to derail a discussion that is starting to gather momentum.
“We continue to see that as a separate issue,” he said. The Manatt report cost approximately $50,000. It was paid for by the Sunflower Foundation, which jointly released it with the Kansas Health Foundation, the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City, The REACH Healthcare Foundation, the United Methodist Health Ministry Fund and the Wyandotte Health Foundation.
Jim McLean is executive editor of KHI News Service in Topeka, a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor team.
Editor’s note: The Kansas Health Foundation is the primary funder of the Kansas Health Institute, the parent organization of the editorially independent KHI News Service.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A lawsuit against a Kansas ban on a common second-trimester procedure has forced the state Court of Appeals to consider how much the state constitution protects abortion rights.
The full 14-member court heard arguments Wednesday in the state’s appeal of a Shawnee County judge’s July ruling temporarily blocking enforcement of the first-in-the-nation law.
The judge agreed with attorneys for two abortion providers who said that the Kansas Constitution independently protects abortion rights. The state’s lawyers argue that such protections can’t be read into broad language about individual liberty.
The law enacted this year prohibits doctors from using forceps, clamps, scissors or similar instruments on a live fetus to remove it from the womb in pieces. Such instruments are used in dilation and evacuation procedures common during the second trimester.
WASHINGTON (AP) — With an overwhelming show of support, the Senate has passed and sent to President Barack Obama a massive education bill that would return to the states significant control over school accountability and testing.
Obama was expected to sign it.
The bill would continue federally mandated reading and math exams in grades three to eight and once in high school, but the high stakes associated with those exams for underperforming schools would be diminished. States would be encouraged to set caps on overall testing.
States and local districts would be able to determine how to assess school and teacher performance.
The bill would bar the federal government from mandating or encouraging specific academic standards, like Common Core.
The measure would replace the long outdated No Child Left Behind law of 2002.
ELK COUNTY –Law enforcement authorities in Elk County are investigating a suspect involved in a high-speed chase early Tuesday.
The chase ended with one suspect and an Elk County Deputy hospitalized.
Just after 1a.m. on Tuesday, Elk County sheriff’s deputies joined deputies from the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office in a high-speed chase with a stolen vehicle and a suspect who was reported to be armed and dangerous.
Deputies reported the suspect lit items on fire inside the vehicle and threw them at pursuing officers vehicles.
As the chase continued, the suspect caused a collision with a pursuing law enforcement vehicle.
The suspect then lit himself on fire inside the vehicle and caused himself to crash into a field with the vehicle on fire.
The suspect was transported by ambulance to a Wichita hospital where he was treated for minor burns.
An Elk County Deputy was also taken to an area hospital where he was treated and released for minor injuries.
SALINA -Family and friends of 3-year-old Gavin King are searching for the child, who has been missing since November.
Gavin was picked up by his non-custodial mother and an adult male on November 28th and the child has not been returned. They may be traveling in a late 1990’s or early 2000’s blue Chevy or GMC pickup.
It is not known if they are still in the Salina area. They may have traveled to Colorado.
Gavin is about 3 feet tall and has blonde hair and blue/green eyes. He has a red, Lightning McQueen suitcase with him.
If you have any information regarding Gavin’s disappearance or know of his whereabouts, please contact the Salina Police Department at 785-826-7210.
HUTCHINSON — A Kansas man accused of carjacking a woman’s vehicle is in more trouble.
Ricky Smith Jr, 40, Nickerson, is currently jailed for possession of methamphetamine, drug paraphernalia, criminal deprivation of property and no driver’s license.
A Hutchinson woman told police that Smith took her Ford Focus from her residence without permission.
Police were able to locate the vehicle with Smith driving. He told officers he thought he had permission.
During this arrest for taking the vehicle, he allegedly was in possession of the meth and drug paraphernalia.
He also told officers that his driver’s license was suspended.
Smith is also is facing trial on charges of robbery and felony flee and elude.
He allegedly forcibly removed a local woman from her vehicle and then took off.
Police found him in South Hutchinson. Smith is alleged to have led law enforcement on a high-speed chase before he was captured.
His bond in the new case is set at $6,050 and Magistrate Judge Cheryl Allen set a status hearing in the case for Dec. 15 to give the state time to file formal charges.
TOM KRISHER, AP Auto Writer
