TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Legislative auditors say Kansas’ data is too poorly documented to find out whether the state’s privatized Medicaid plan is working.

The Kansas City Star reports lawmakers directed their independent auditors in April 2017 to determine KanCare’s effect on beneficiaries’ health outcomes. But auditors last month said data reliability issues prevented them from evaluating the health plan’s effectiveness.

Former Gov. Sam Brownback and his successor, Jeff Colyer, say the plan enacted in 2013 has saved Kansas $1 billion while improving care for 400,000 low-income and disabled residents. But provider groups and health care workers say the program is rife with billing problems, secrecy and finance-based decisions.

Kansas Department of Health and Environment Secretary Jeff Andersen says he’s requested more money to hire more employees and strengthen KanCare oversight, including data verification.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Postal Service reported another quarterly loss on Friday after an unrelenting drop in mail volume and costs of its health care and pension obligations outweighed strong gains in package deliveries.

Amid sharp criticism from President Donald Trump that it is being scammed out of billions by online retailers such as Amazon.com, the Postal Service called for greater freedom to raise stamp prices to help cover costs. It warned of a serious financial situation that prevented it from making much-needed investments in letter and package delivery, saying it could not wait for a task force created by Trump to study the reasons behind its losses at a time of increased competition in the e-commerce age.

That task force, which was established by an executive order signed by Trump last month, will have 120 days to submit a report with recommendations.

The Postal Service has requested that the Postal Regulatory Commission grant it power to raise stamp prices beyond the rate of inflation, a change to its pricing system that would be the biggest in nearly a half century.

“Congress and the commission need to act now,” said Postmaster General and CEO Megan J. Brennan.

The Postal Service’s report shows a net loss of $1.3 billion between January and March, larger than a $562 million loss in the same period last year, due in part to rising fuel costs and added wage expenses as it grows its package business.

The Postal Service notched a 10 percent increase in package delivery, boosted by its business with Amazon and other Internet retailers, but suffered a loss in first-class letters and marketing mail, which together make up more than two-thirds of postal revenue.

Quarterly revenue came to $17.5 billion, up slightly over the same period in the previous year.

Trump in recent months has railed against Amazon, accusing it of not paying enough in shipping costs. He says the Postal Service “loses a fortune” and should charge more for delivering packages, including on Sundays, which Amazon has a competitive advantage in providing goods to people’s homes thanks to a contract with the Postal Service in which its vast network of mail carriers is used for special deliveries.

Trump’s executive order said the Postal Service is on “an unsustainable financial path and must be restructured to prevent a taxpayer-funded bailout.” The task force established by Trump is being assigned to study factors including the Postal Service’s pricing in the package delivery market.

Package delivery has been a bright spot for the Postal Service. Helped by booming e-commerce, it has enjoyed mostly double-digit increases in revenue from delivering packages, though that hasn’t been enough to offset declines in first-class letters and marketing mail.

To become financially stable, the Postal Service is urging Congress to provide it relief from a mandate to prefund retiree health and pension benefits, something that neither the government nor private companies are required to do. The prefunding requirement, put in place by Congress beginning in 2007, has contributed to 11 straight years of financial losses. It has defaulted on the multibillion-dollar prepayments each year since 2012.

“Today’s USPS quarterly financial report shows the Postal Service’s underlying business strength while also indicating the need to address external matters beyond USPS control,” said Fredric Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers. “Congress should address the pre-funding burden it imposed.”

The Postal Service is an independent agency and does not use taxpayer money for its operations.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A special examiner extracted thousands of images from the cellphone of Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens “and none were found” of a woman whom the governor is charged with photographing while she was at least partially naked, Greitens’ attorney said Friday.

As jury selection entered its second day, Greitens’ attorney Jim Martin urged the judge in the Republican governor’s criminal trial to halt the evidence-gathering phase of the investigation that has been going on for four months.

“We believe the time has come to shut this all down,” Martin told St. Louis Circuit Judge Rex Burlison, who made no immediate ruling.

Greitens, 44, faces a felony invasion-of-privacy charge for allegedly taking and transmitting the image in a way that could be accessed by a computer. The penalty for first-degree invasion of privacy is up to four years in prison.

The woman, whose name has not been released by authorities, has testified that Greitens bound her hands to exercise equipment in March 2015 in the basement of his St. Louis home, blindfolded her and removed her clothes before she saw a flash and heard what sounded like the click of a cellphone camera. She has said Greitens threatened to disseminate the photo if she spoke of their encounter but later told her he had deleted it.

It’s not clear whether the cellphone that was examined this week is the same one that Greitens had in 2015.

Greitens has acknowledged having what he says was a consensual affair and has denied criminal wrongdoing, but he has declined to directly answer questions about whether he took the photo. He said the affair started and ended in 2015, as he was preparing to run for governor. Greitens was elected in November 2016.

The trial proceedings began Thursday with potential jurors filling out a questionnaire and, in some cases, answering questions from attorneys. Opening arguments originally were expected to begin Monday, but Burlison acknowledged the process was taking longer than anticipated. He said some people who were supposed to be questioned Friday would instead have to be pushed back until Monday, and that jury selection would continue into Tuesday.

The high stakes in the case were evident during jury selection. One prospective juror who works at the Missouri Department of Transportation was questioned Friday for nearly 30 minutes. The woman said she has read about and heard co-workers discuss the criminal case and other allegations against Greitens, but she said she had formed no opinions.

Defense attorney Scott Rosenblum said to her what he has told many other prospective jurors: “You can’t unhear what you heard.”

Assistant Circuit Attorney Ronald Sullivan accused Rosenblum of “leading questions” and said Greitens’ attorneys were trying to eliminate all jurors except those with absolutely no knowledge of the troubles Greitens faces.

Burlison decided to keep the woman in the pool of potential jurors.

Greitens faces a separate criminal charge in St. Louis of tampering with computer data for allegedly disclosing the donor list of The Mission Continues to his political fundraiser in 2015 without the permission of the St. Louis-based veterans’ charity he founded. No trial date has been set for that case.

The Legislature also is to convene in a monthlong special session May 18 to consider whether to try to impeach Greitens. If the House does so, the Senate then would appoint a panel of seven judges to preside over a trial on whether to remove him from office.

The Senate passed a measure Friday that would allow Republican Lt. Gov. Mike Parson to appoint his own replacement — with the consent of the Senate — if Parson were to take over for Greitens.

The bill, which still needs a final House vote, seeks to clarify a legally murky situation. The Missouri Constitution states that the lieutenant governor takes over if the governor’s office becomes vacant but doesn’t directly address what happens to the resulting vacancy in the No. 2 executive post.

When Gov. Mel Carnahan died in a plane crash in October 2000, Lt. Gov. Roger Wilson took over and later appointed then-Sen. Joe Maxwell to serve the final couple months of the lieutenant governor’s term. But Maxwell’s appointment came after he already had won the November election and thus was due to take office anyway in January 2001. No one challenged his appointment.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Missouri Legislature has voted to raise the age at which suspects are automatically prosecuted as adults from 17 to 18.

The bill, approved by the Senate Thursday in a 32-1 vote, would add a $3.50 charge to all civil lawsuits to help the juvenile justice system absorb more people.

Youth charged with certain serious crimes could still be tried as adults. Currently, Missouri is one of five states to automatically try 17-year-olds in adult courts.

The bill would also allow youth forced into prostitution to have their court records wiped clean.

The bill will next go to the governor’s desk.

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Authorities have arrested a man who escaped from Kansas City, Kansas, police while wearing handcuffs.

Police said in a news release that 21-year-old Deron McAfee was taken into custody Wednesday night without incident. Police said he was being taken into custody for felony charges late Monday when he escaped.

McAfee was arrested in 2016 on suspicion of assault. In 2017, he was booked into jail on suspicion of burglary, theft and resisting arrest.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Persistent budget problems that followed a now-abandoned tax-slashing experiment in Kansas helped kill new cuts this year that were meant to return an unexpected “windfall” to the state from changes in federal tax laws.

Top Republicans pushed Friday — the last day of the GOP-controlled Legislature’s annual session — for passage of a bill that would save taxpayers an estimated $78 million during the state’s next budget year, which begins July 1. It was a response to changes in federal tax laws that will force some individuals and corporations to pay more to the state because the state’s tax code is tied to the federal one.

The Senate passed the bill, 21-19 , early Friday morning, but it failed on a 59-59 vote Friday evening in the House after Republican leaders spent hours trying to cajole reluctant lawmakers to support it. A frustrated Senate adjourned for the year as the House held its vote open in hopes that missing members would return or some no voters would switch to yes.

Top Republicans had on their side business groups and the compelling political argument that the state shouldn’t collect extra dollars from its taxpayers that it hadn’t expected anyway. But legislators had earlier increased spending on public schools to satisfy a court mandate and added spending in other areas of the budget that they felt they had neglected for years.

Over the debate hung the shadow of the income tax cuts former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback engineered in 2012 and 2013, which were followed by budget woes that prompted lawmakers to reverse most of them last year to stabilize the state’s finances. Republicans split on this year’s tax-cutting bill, and critics repeatedly cited the experiment that made Kansas a national example of how not to do trickle-down economics.

“It’s Brownback all over again,” said state Rep. Tom Sawyer, of Wichita, the top Democrat on the House Taxation Committee. “We just got over that nightmare, and people did not want to relive it again.”

Republicans who supported the tax bill said it was unfair to characterize it as a return to the policies of Brownback, who stepped down as governor in January for an ambassador’s post. The proposed cuts were far smaller and, GOP lawmakers said, designed to keep people from paying taxes even higher than lawmakers intended when they approved a $600 million-a-year income tax increase last year.

One major change would have allowed Kansas filers to itemize on their state returns even if they do not on their federal returns, something they cannot do now. The federal changes limited some deductions and raised the federal standard deduction, so fewer Kansas would itemize.

“We have to do something, or this money is stolen from the taxpayers,” conservative GOP Rep. John Whitmer, of Wichita, told colleagues during a meeting of fellow House Republicans meant to build support for the bill. “It’s their money. Let’s give it back to them.”

Other Republicans argued that the real problem was a failure to control spending.

Lawmakers in April approved a new education funding law that will phase in a $534 million increase in spending on public schools over five years to comply with a Kansas Supreme Court ruling in October. The court said the state’s current funding of more than $4 billion a year isn’t sufficient under the state constitution, and it will review the new law in a May 22 hearing.

Legislators also added millions of new dollars elsewhere, restoring some past cuts in higher education, granting pay raises to state workers and attempting to catch up on past shortings of the state’s annual contributions to public pensions.

Some Republicans were quick to note that even without factoring any tax cuts, projections from the Legislature’s research staff suggested that the state could be facing budget shortfalls again within a few years.

“With or without this bill, the spending is in the red,” Senate tax committee Chairwoman Caryn Tyson, a conservative Parker Republican, told her colleagues during a debate on the tax legislation. “It has nothing to do with this bill.”

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TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Latest on the Kansas Legislature’s debate on tax cuts and budget issues (all times local):

5:28 p.m.

Kansas legislators have narrowly rejected a bill cutting income taxes because some lawmakers worried that it would create future budget problems.

The vote Friday in the House was 59-59 on a bill that would save taxpayers an estimated $78 million during the state’s next budget year that begins in July.

The measure was a response to changes in federal tax laws last year that would force some individuals and corporations to pay more to the state. Many Republicans argued that the state should return the unanticipated “windfall.”

But GOP legislators were split. Critics argued that the bill could lead to budget shortfalls as early as next year.

Legislators earlier increased public school funding to meet a court mandate and added money to other parts of the budget.

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3:48 p.m.

Top Republicans are struggling to push a bill cutting income taxes through the Kansas Legislature because some lawmakers worry that it would create future budget problems.

GOP leaders hoped the House would vote Friday on a bill that would save taxpayers an estimated $78 million during the fiscal year beginning in July.

The measure is a response to changes in federal tax laws last year that would force some individuals and corporations to pay more to the state.

The Senate approved the bill early Friday, 21-19.

Republicans are split and Democrats oppose the measure. Critics argue that it would create budget shortfalls as early as next year.

Legislators also have increased spending on public schools to meet a court mandate and added money to other parts of the budget.