(AP) — Leaders of the University of Kansas are vowing not to give up on a plan to build a new health education center for the university’s medical center, even though Gov. Sam Brownback’s proposed budget does not include funding for the effort.
Brownback’s budget proposals released Thursday did include additional money for higher education. But the Republican governor didn’t add money for a new building at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan.
Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little and Kansas Board of Regents Chairman Fred Logan tell the Lawrence Journal-World (http://bit.ly/LfDgsr ) that they will continue to seek state support for the $75 million building.
The building would allow expansion of the physician training program, as well as use of new technologies to prepare students and other health professionals.
(AP) — Congress has again cut funding for inspections at horse slaughterhouses, the latest blow to efforts to resume horse slaughter in the U.S.
Congress on Thursday passed a $1.1 trillion budget bill that prohibits the Department of Agriculture from spending money for inspectors at equine facilities.
The last domestic horse slaughterhouses closed in 2007, a year after Congress first cut funding for the inspections in an attempt to shutter the industry.
Funding was restored in 2011, and Valley Meat Co. in Roswell, New Mexico, has been fighting ever since to convert its small cattle operation to horse slaughter.
Companies in Iowa and Missouri had also received permits to open last year, but the efforts have been blocked by lawsuits.
(AP) – A former Lindenwood University wrestler charged with knowingly exposing five sex partners to HIV could face more charges after police found dozens of new dorm-room videos showing him having unprotected sex.
Twenty-two-year-old Michael L. “Tiger” Johnson was charged in October with exposing a sexual partner to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. He was initially charged with one count of recklessly risking infection of another with HIV, but four more felony charges were later added. Johnson was kicked out of school the same day criminal charges were filed.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that St. Charles County prosecutors said Thursday police have obtained 32 videos of Johnson. One is of a victim already identified, but it is unclear how many different men are depicted on the other tapes.
Western Kansas farmer Danny Peter committed what some in rural Kansas consider a cardinal sin: He sold his land to a big corporation so it could build a huge hog farm; biggest in the state, in fact.
“We’ve got a couple neighbors that aren’t very happy. But they aren’t paying my bills,” said Peter, who lives 12 miles north of Tribune in Greeley County.
The Ladder Creek farm site in Greeley County is the largest hog-growing facility in Kansas. Photo by Phil Cauthon, KHI.
“As long as they’re controlling the waste, the smell isn’t that bad,” Peter said. “But I guarantee you that anyone living down windfall is going to have some smelly days.”
In 2010, the Greeley County commission voted to approve Seaboard Farms’ request to build a 132,000-hog facility. Seaboard is one of the world’s largest producers and packers of pork. That was the same year Peter sold his ground to the food, transportation and energy giant.
Seaboard, which is headquartered in Shawnee Mission, is among the companies that could possibly benefit from a controversial proposal to relax Kansas laws on corporate agriculture.
Currently, Seaboard and others like it must get permission from county commissioners or win approval from residents at the ballot box before building the massive confined animal operations that in the past few decades have come to dominate U.S. meat production.
Last year the Department of Agriculture and the state’s top ag lobbyists began urging legislators to remove those hurdles while making other changes to the law, saying that would help spur jobs and economic growth.
Though that effort will continue, administration officials and major ag industry lobbyists now say they will not attempt to change the law this year.
“The agency does not intend to pursue consideration of the bills. The ruling from the judicial council deserves full consideration before acting,” said Acting Secretary of Agriculture Jackie McClaskey in an email to KHI News Service.
McClaskey was referring to a forthcoming recommendation to the Legislature from the Kansas Judicial Council on existing corporate agriculture law.
An advisory committee to the council spent several months in the fall reviewing corporate farming laws at the request of Rep. Sharon Schwartz, a Washington Republican who chairs the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, and Sen. Larry Powell, the Garden City Republican who chairs the Senate Natural Resources Committee.
The advisory committee issued a report to the council Dec. 6. The report recommends that Kansas’ corporate ag law be modified to avoid potential conflict with federal interstate commerce laws, but stops short of the sweeping changes sought by the ag department and lobbyists.
Schwartz, one of eight people on the council’s advisory committee, said she plans to discuss the report during the House agriculture committee meeting on Tuesday.
“It will be interesting to see if (the report) generates interest, but at this point in time I don’t see the interest in making any changes. I haven’t really polled the committee, so we’ll see,” said Schwartz, whose family farms several crops and is part of a medium-sized swine cooperative in Washington County.
“Unless there’s a huge push for it, which I haven’t seen at this point in time…it may just sit here. It would have to have the support of the community or from people who have pushed to make a change,” she said.
Change in approach
The Kansas Farm Bureau is one of the major farm groups that pushed last year for passage of corporate farming changes via House Bill 2404 and its upper-chamber counterpart, Senate Bill 191.
Terry Holdren, chief executive and general counsel for the Farm Bureau, said the group still strongly supports the bills, but is taking a new tack this session.
“We have strong interest in continuing to talk about and pursue some sort of fix to the statute,” Holdren said. “I think one of the things we learned last year, and what you’ll see this year, is a stronger effort to lay some groundwork in educating the Legislature about this issue. We had such massive turnover after the last election that there are a lot of folks who have never really experienced this issue.
“This has a lot of history that we all saw last year, and a lot of emotion and strong feeling. I think all of us that are pro-reform walked away and said we need to probably back up and talk to folks and educate them about why it’s important, what we as a state gain.
“You’ll see future efforts, but…we’re going to slow down the train and talk to folks, get a little better education effort, before we move forward on it,” he said.
Holdren said the laws need to be changed, in part, because they are outdated and are stifling business growth.
“Kansas Agricultural Growth and Rural Investment Initiative”
As introduced last session, the so-called “Kansas Agricultural Growth and Rural Investment Initiative” sought to allow any agricultural business entity to operate anywhere in the state.
Current law restricts ownership of certain agriculture operations, principally large swine and dairy facilities. It requires that a majority of partners must be related and at least one of them must live or actively work on the farm. It also limits the number of stockholders allowed in a farming operation to 10 for corporations and 15 for trusts. And it requires all corporate farms with land in the state to make annual reports to the Secretary of State about farming operations.
The bills pushed last year would have removed those provisions.
They also would have removed the provision requiring businesses to gain a county commission’s approval to operate a large swine or dairy operation.
Then-Agriculture Secretary Dale Rodman told legislators that current law was keeping new agribusinesses from coming to Kansas.
If legislators were to approve the changes, it would “send a loud and clear message that Kansas is open for business,” Rodman said.
The administration has not changed its stance on the initiative, said Brownback spokesperson Sara Belfry.
“The Brownback administration is fully supportive of growing the Kansas economy and agricultural community in a safe and responsible manner,” she wrote in an email, indicating that officials view the proposed changes as safe and responsible.
Opponents of the proposal
But opponents say experience in other states has shown that swine and dairy facilities are not significant job creators. And they point to reports that the low-wage, high-turnover jobs that are created can be a net drag on local communities, which can experience increased social service and public safety costs.
Brownback, Rodman and Commerce Secretary Pat George traveled to China in July, stoking some opponents’ fears that an international company could set up a large swine operation more easily, if the law were changed.
The governor’s visit came about six weeks after it was made public that Shunghui International of China had made its offer to buy Smithfield, the largest U.S. pork producer. The federal government approved the merger in September.
Holdren of the Farm Bureau said fears that industry giants such as Shunghui would begin building swine facilities in the state were largely unfounded.
“I know those theories and rumors have been out there, and I guess if you just completely repealed the statute you would theoretically open the state up to anybody, anywhere,” Holdren said. “At the end of the day, though, it still takes a willing seller and a willing buyer to do those deals and by-and-large…most Kansas landowners want to keep that property in their family or in their operation. So, the bigger opportunity that’s created is one to partner with your neighbor, who you’re not related to but you have a farming interest with; or to bring in an out-of-state relative.”
Back in Greeley
Peter — the farmer who sold Seaboard his land and water rights — said he simply had no choice but to sell.
After years of tapping the Ogallala Aquifer to irrigate his crops (mostly wheat and milo), Peter said there was not enough water left for him to plant.
“Everybody else just kept pumping,” Peter said. “I kept thinking the government would come around with a program that would save the water or do something about it, but nobody did anything. This was 10 years ago,” he said. Now, “I’ve got something for something I was going to lose anyway.”
Local residents opposed to the Seaboard operation, he said, are “worried about their drinking water. We were already out of water here. We were going to have to rig up water from somewhere. But Seaboard put a water line into our house, so I’ve got water now — until they run out.”
Others complain about the odor, and some have moved off their land downwind from the facility, Peter said.
“We’ve got a lot of neighbors that aren’t very happy about it. But when the wind blows from the west, I get cattle smell. There’s a dairy right over here and there’s a (cattle) feed yard over here,” he said.
Seaboard has since applied to expand its Greeley County facility to 200,000 hogs which, if approved, would make it the second largest hog-growing facility in the nation.
(AP) – The Liberty School District has paid a former superintendent nearly $1 million to settle his wrongful-termination lawsuit.
The lawsuit Phil Wright filed against the district in July 2009 was dismissed Thursday.
Wright left the district in April 2008, and said at the time he was forced to resign because he refused to falsify documents. He said Thursday that the settlement barred him from discussing his departure.
Liberty school board president Scott Conner said in a statement that the lawsuit was draining funds and administrative time, and the settlement was best for taxpayers and students. The district denied any wrongdoing.
An appeals court judge found the district in contempt of court for refusing to turn over documents to Wright’s lawyers. The documents were never produced.
2013 SJPD Crime Report Click here for a closer look
The final crime analysis numbers for 2013 from the St. Joseph Police Department are available.
Part I crime is down over 6% year to date. Violent crime was up 11%. Two rapes were reported in December compared to 1 in December last year.
New uniform crime reporting definitions of rape were applied this year. Property crimes are down about 7%. Motor Vehicle thefts are down about 17% so far this year.
(AP) – A record number of people flocked to the Kansas City Zoo last year, in part to see a new penguin exhibit.
Zoo officials say 882,194 people visited the zoo in 2013. About 90,000 of those visitors went to the zoo after the penguin exhibit opened in October.
The zoo had hoped to attract 835,000 people last year. Attendance in 2012 was 824,218.
Zoo attendance peaked at 714,367 in 1998, then declined before rebounding and has been rising steadily since 2006. Zoo officials are hoping to meet the 1 million visitors mark by 2016.
The Blacksnake Roller Girls open their new season next month with a special roller derby event at St Joe Civic Arena. And they’re recruiting.
President Liz Manley, AKA NOTORIOUS L.I.Z., tells us there’s a fun theme involved.
“We’re getting ready for our season opener, February 15 at St Joe Civic Arena,” Manley says.
“We’ve called it the ‘Madjammers Tea Party,” so we’re encouraging everyone to dress up Alice in Wonderland Style.”
Manley says they still have a few slots open on their roller derby teams. If you’d like to try out, just show up for practice. They practice at the Firefighters Union Hall on A-highway across from Harley Davidson on Tuesday and Thursday nights from 7pm to 8:30 pm.
Manley says they’ll lend you a pair of skates for the tryout. You don’t even have to know how to skate. She says they’ll train you in all the skills you’ll need.
And, as the saying goes, “it’s like playing speed chess while bricks are thrown at you.” So, as Manley asks, “why wouldn’t you want to play?”
(AP) — The Kansas Highway Patrol says blowing dust caused an 11-vehicle pileup that left three people dead in northwest Kansas.
The crash happened Thursday afternoon on Highway 83 near Rexford, in Thomas County. The patrol says seven tractor-trailer trucks and four passenger vehicles collided. The patrol says high winds and blowing dust reduced visibility to almost zero at the time of the crash.
The victims were identified as 51-year-old Leonard Scott Breeden of Colby; 57-year-old James Ocie Perrott of Perryton, Texas; and 66-year-old Jerold L. Lamb of Florissant, Colo.
The patrol did not release more details on the accident or information on injuries.
(AP) — Leaders of the University of Kansas are vowing not to give up on a plan to build a new health education center for the university’s medical center, even though Gov. Sam Brownback’s proposed budget does not include funding for the effort.
