Secretary of State Kris Kobach plans to speak this week to two Kansas legislative committees about the state’s new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls.

The Republican secretary of state pushed successfully last year for the law, which took effect Jan. 1. He contends it will combat election fraud, but critics fear it will suppress turnout.

Kobach was scheduled to update the House Elections Committee on the law Monday morning.

He’s set to appear Wednesday morning before the Senate Ethics and Elections Committee.

The state also has a law to require people registering to vote for the first time in Kansas to provide proof of their U.S. citizenship. It takes effect in January 2013 but Kobach wants to make it effective June 15.

Secretary of State Kris Kobach is having a tough time finding support for a plan that would allow the governor to distribute 12 big-game hunting permits at his discretion.

Kobach testified in support of the legislation this past week during a hearing before the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee.

But committee chairman Larry Powell says there isn’t much support for it outside of Kobach’s office. The Garden City Republican says the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism and the governor’s office are against the change.

State wildlife officials currently distributes seven big-game permits a year — one to each of its commissioners. The commissioners generally give them to conservation groups, which auction them off to support their missions.

 

One person was killed and another injured in a rollover accident on I-70 around 5AM Sunday morning, 11.5 miles southeast of Manhattan, KS.

According to the Kansas Highway Patrol, 67-year-old Donald W. Nelson and 63-year-old Lois M. Nelson, both of Junction City, were traveling westbound on I-70 when their vehicle slid off the roadway due to icy conditions, the vehicle then overturned in the ditch.

Donald Nelson was killed in the accident.

Lois Nelson was transported to Stormont Vail Hospital in Topeka with injuries.

Kansas welfare officials have eliminated or slashed food stamp benefits for hundreds of low-income, U.S.-born children whose parents are illegal immigrants.

The cuts are the result of the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services changing the way it counts household income when determining who is eligible for the food stamp program – now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

The Kansas City Star reported that families affected by the change are those that contain a mixture of legal citizens and illegal immigrants. While illegal immigrants are not eligible for the food assistance, U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants can be.

The issue is that the formula now includes the entire income of all members of a household, but calculates food stamp eligibility as if the citizen children are the only people in the household. Previously, SRS counted only a portion if one or more members did not provide proof of legal U.S. residency.

Since the change took effect Oct. 1, food pantries, churches and social service agencies have been inwith questions and requests for food.

“We have families who really are desperate,” said Elena Morales of El Centro, an anti-poverty agency in Kansas City, Kan. “These food stamps were making a difference for families to be able to provide nutritional food for their children, or food at all. . This policy not only hurts these families, it hurts us, too, especially because we’re talking about U.S. citizen children.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Kansas is 1 of only four states opting to use this policy. The others are Arizona, Utah and Nebraska.

“This is not a time, with this economy, when we should be withdrawing help from struggling families with children,” said Stacy Dean, vice president for food assistance policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington. “We have a demonstrated problem of food insecurity in this country and, in Kansas, this policy takes you further away from being able to solve the problem. It exacerbates the problem.”

SRS spokeswoman Angela de Rocha said the old formula gave households with illegal immigrants more benefits than some households with all U.S. citizens.

“Now, all households’ incomes are treated equally,” de Rocha said. “Prior to the policy change . U.S. citizens were being discriminated against.”

SRS data shows benefits were eliminated for 1,042 households from Oct. 1 to the end of 2011, once incomes were recalculated using the new policy. The agency doesn’t know how many U.S. children living in those households no longer receive benefits.

However, an SRS report shows that in the first month, from October to November, 2,066 children dropped from the food stamp rolls in Kansas.

Not all of those children lost benefits because of the policy change on how income is counted, de Rocha said.

“Some were, some weren’t,” she said. “… Families go on and off the program as their income changes.”

Melinda Lewis, a public policy consultant for El Centro who has studied the issue, understands the need to be fair but doesn’t think the change is.

“We don’t want a policy that would put U.S. families at a disadvantage,” Lewis said. “So let’s find a solution. Put a cap on benefits so mixed-status families could never get more than a U.S. family.”

Kansas has released its plan for seeking a waiver from the federal No Child Left Behind education law.

Currently, the law requires schools to meet annual targets as they work toward having 100% of students fare well on state tests by 2014. Struggling schools must take corrective steps. After congressional efforts to change the law failed, President Barack Obama told states last fall they could seek a waiver. A vast majority of states plan to do so.

Under the Kansas waiver, schools could show progress in three ways. One way is to show they are closing the gap between their lowest-performing and highest-performing students.

The state is seeking public input and will submit the plan to federal officials Feb. 21.

Finney County health officials are trying to stem the spread of measles.

Four cases of the highly contagious virus have been reported.

Health officials are urging people to stay home if they are showing symptoms. They say people also need to stay at home if they aren’t immunized and have been exposed to someone who is sick. The quarantine period should last three weeks.

The initial symptoms of measles include fever, runny nose and cough. Three to five days after the initial illness, a blotchy rash occurs beginning at the hairline, moving to the face and upper neck, and then down the body.

Health officials say people who are exposed should call their doctor instead of going to the doctor’s office.

The top Democrat in the Kansas House says the chamber’s Republican speaker shouldn’t resign over forwarding an email about Democratic President Barack Obama.

The email forwarded to fellow Republicans by Speaker Mike O’Neal, of Hutchinson, cites a Bible verse that begins, “Let his days be few.”

House Minority Leader Paul Davis, a Lawrence Democrat, said Friday the email was disturbing. But Davis also said O’Neal’s action in forwarding it to others doesn’t warrant his resignation as speaker or from the House. Davis noted that O’Neal has issued an apology.

The speaker has said the email was political commentary about Obama’s re-election. O’Neal’s office declined comment Friday.

More than 34,000 people — including 4,000 Kansans — put their names on an Internet petition demanding that O’Neal step down from the Legislature.

An 11-year-old boy has been arrested in connection with a school bomb threat in southeastern Kansas.

About 150 students and faculty were evacuated Thursday morning from the Remington Middle School in Whitewater after someone found a printed threat. Classes resumed in the afternoon when a search turned up nothing suspicious.

KAKE-TV reports the middle school student was arrested Friday by Butler County deputies. He’s been charged as a juvenile with aggravated criminal threat.

A 35-year-old Kansas man died after being injured in an accident at a manufacturing plant in northeast Kansas.

Marysville Police Chief Todd R. Ackerman said in a news release that Steven Medina of Waterville died after the accident early Friday at the Landoll Corp. in Marysville.

Ackerman says Medina was hit by a pipe. He was taken to a Marysville hospital, where he later died. Other details of the accident have not been released.

Landoll manufactures trailers, agricultural equipment and forklifts.

A Mexican national living in Kansas City, Kan., has been sentenced to seven years and three months in federal prison for growing thousands of marijuana plants in northwestern Missouri.

U.S. Attorney Beth Phillips says 25-year-old Serafin Rodriguez Gonzalez was sentenced Thursday for conspiracy to grow marijuana. He pleaded guilty June 2.

More than 80 officers from 14 agencies raided two growing sites in in Buchanan and Clinton counties in July 2010, and found a combined 7,000 plants. Prosecutors say each location had a campsite with two tents and a tarp-covered living area.

A 45-year-old co-defendant, Juan Francisco Garcia Palomares, also a citizen of Mexico, pleaded guilty to the same charge and will be sentenced Feb. 2.

A man charged with killing a 14-year-old Great Bend girl wants his trial moved out of Barton County.

The Hutchinson News reports that lawyers for 37-year-old Adam Longoria filed a motion this week for a change of venue. Longoria is scheduled to go on trial March 26 on charges of capital murder and sexual crimes for the August 2010 death of Alicia DeBolt.

The girl’s charred body was found at an asphalt plant near Great Bend where Longoria worked.

Prosecutors have decided against seeking the death penalty, although the capital murder charge remains. Longoria would face life in prison with parole if he’s convicted.

The motion for a change of venue is expected to be considered along with several others at a hearing February 8 in Barton County District Court.

The Kansas Museum of History is planning a fully day of activities January 27 to mark the 151st anniversary of the state’s admission to the union.

The Kansas State Historical Society says events at the museum in west Topeka will be geared to schoolchildren and the general public.

The state’s birthday is actually two days after the events, January 29, a Sunday. Kansas became a state in 1861, on the eve of the nation’s Civil War.

The historical society says events will include music and a scavenger hunt. Historical demonstrations will help visitors make rope, weave on a loom, and play a hand-carved Indian flute.

The museum is promoting a temporary exhibit of maps.