EL DORADO, Kan. (AP) — El Dorado officials are looking for those involved in an unusual vandalism case at the city’s pool. .
El Dorado police say officers were called to the pool Sunday after the water was dyed a reddish-purple color.
The vandalism caused officials to shut down the pool on Sunday and Monday.
A note was left behind saying the dye wasn’t toxic, would not stain and should eventually filter out.
Police have classified the incident as vandalism, or criminal damage to property.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The CEO of Westar says the utility and Great Plains Energy will file their new merger plan with Kansas regulators later this month.
CEO Mark Ruelle says meetings will be scheduled later this year for a shareholder vote on the proposal.
Ruelle updated investors Wednesday on the second plan to combine the utilities. The Kansas Corporation Commission rejected a proposal in April for the $12.2 billion sale of Westar to Great Plains.
Ruelle says paperwork will be filed with state and federal entities by the end of August.
The Topeka Capital-Journal reports the goal is to complete the agreement in the first half of 2018.
Great Plains Energy, the parent company of Kansas City Power & Light, is based in Kansas City, Missouri. Westar is the largest utility in Kansas.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Kansas’ regulatory medical board is weighing disciplinary action against a doctor who Planned Parenthood self-reported may have violated state law in handling a 13-year-old girl’s abortion.
The Kansas State Board of Healing Arts on Thursday was to discuss a petition alleging Dr. Allen Palmer illegally failed to preserve fetal tissue from the 2014 abortion and submit it to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.
The petition by the board’s deputy litigation counsel says Palmer was a part-time Planned Parenthood contractor solely tasked with performing abortions for patients in their first trimester.
The petition says Palmer’s attorney has insisted his client inadvertently violated the state law and regulations because he wasn’t aware of them.
A man who answered the phone at a Missouri listing for Palmer hung up on the reporter.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The Iowa Utilities Board has voted to deregulate landline telephone service in the state, concluding that there’s enough competition now from cellphones, internet providers and other services to no longer justify forcing wired telephone companies to provide service everywhere.
The deregulation frees traditional wired telephone providers from nearly all customer service requirements and service quality standards.
In ordering deregulation, the board members, all three Republican appointees, sided with the telephone companies and disregarded concerns of the Iowa consumer advocate, which argued that telephone carriers already are turning their backs on some rural customers.
The board said rural areas unprofitable for wired carriers and with poor cellphone service “do not, by themselves, justify continuation of service quality regulation on a statewide basis.”
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas officials have chosen seven school districts to participate in an effort to redesign public education.
The seven school districts participating in a pilot effort were announced Tuesday during a Kansas Board of Education meeting.
The seven districts selected by the department this month will each revamp an elementary school and a secondary school. The changes will emphasize new priorities pushed by the state as it tries to modernize efforts to develop and define successful high school graduates.
The Kansas City Star reports state officials say the rest of the state will eventually join the program.
School districts will be asked to find new ways to promote five principles — developing individual study plans, measuring social and economic growth, improving graduation rates and post-secondary completion and addressing kindergarten readiness.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill is holding another round of town halls in rural Missouri.
McCaskill’s office said Wednesday the Democrat will spend the Senate’s August recess touring the state. She’ll be in cities including Cuba, Potosi, Sullivan and Farmington on Friday.
She has more town halls planned in counties including Barry, Cape Girardeau and Polk.
McCaskill is up for re-election in 2018. She made it a point during her previous campaigns to visit more rural areas in an attempt to make inroads in places where Democrats tend to do poorly.
McCaskill held town halls in Ashland, Moberly, Mexico and other more conservative-leaning central Missouri cities during another Senate break in July.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Eight nearly new kidney dialysis clinics are mostly unused because the state is more than two years behind inspecting and certifying for the clinics.
And another four clinics are waiting to expand because they are waiting for state inspections.
The Kansas City Star reports federal funding for inspectors was reduced in recent years and Kansas has not made up the difference. That’s caused turnover in the health facility inspection force. The backlog for new dialysis centers are by federal law a lower priority than inspections of other types of facilities and existing dialysis centers with problems.
The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services contracts with state health departments to do the inspections. Without inspections, dialysis centers can’t bill Medicare, which covers 85 percent of Americans in kidney failure.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Services for a slain Missouri police officer will begin with a candlelight vigil Wednesday evening.
The Clinton Missouri Police Department says the vigil for Clinton Police Officer Gary Michael starts at 8:30 p.m. at the Henry County Court House.
A visitation is scheduled for Friday from 6-9 p.m. at the Vansant-Mills Funeral Home in Clinton.
Michael’s funeral will be Saturday at 11 a.m. at the Benson Convention Center, with a public viewing two hours before the service.
The 37-year-old Michael was shot to death Sunday during a traffic stop in Clinton, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) southeast of Kansas City. A suspect, 39-year-old Ian McCarthy, was arrested Tuesday evening.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Two nonprofits have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to political action committees working to protect a Missouri right-to-work law that takes effect this month.
The Kansas City Star reports American Democracy Alliance contributed $350,000 to a PAC called Liberty Alliance and $150,000 to another PAC called Missourians for Worker Freedom.
Republican Gov. Eric Greitens’ nonprofit called A New Missouri Inc. donated $100,000 to Missourians for Worker Freedom. A New Missouri Inc. last month gave that PAC $250,000.
The nonprofits aren’t required to disclose their donors. When contributions are routed through a nonprofit to a political campaign to hide the donation’s source, it’s called “dark money.”
The contributions seek to stave off a union-backed effort to put the right-to-work law Greitens signed in February on the 2018 ballot.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Kansas City voters have agreed to raise the local minimum wage, ignoring a law Missouri legislators enacted earlier this year that bars cities from setting their own rates.
Under the proposal approved Tuesday, Kansas City’s minimum wage would increase from $7.70 to $10 on Aug. 24. But it may only be in place for a few days because the new state rules take effect on Aug. 28.
Though largely symbolic because of the state law, the Kansas City vote calls for annual rate hikes starting Sept. 1, 2019. It would eventually reach $15 per hour in 2022.
Advocacy groups also launched a petition drive Tuesday seeking to let Missouri voters decide next year whether to raise the state’s minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2023.
