TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Top Republican legislators on Wednesday blocked nearly $10 million that Kansas corrections officials argue they need to deal with prison overcrowding and said lawmakers might reject Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s choice to be the prison system’s next leader.

The actions by Republican legislative leaders decrease the number of male inmates that the Department of Corrections can transfer for now to private prisons out of state and halt the agency’s plans to move female inmates into empty space at a juvenile detention center in Topeka.

Top Republicans in the GOP-controlled Legislature did agree to release about $18 million, including money for pay raises for corrections officers. They said they’re still addressing the troubled prison system’s most pressing problems, with future discussions of the other spending still possible.

GOP leaders said they have reservations about the department’s plans to house 600 inmates outside Kansas and worry about conditions in private prisons generally. They questioned whether the juvenile correction project was legal and complained repeatedly that Kelly’s administration waited until late April to fully outline its plans.

But recently retired Interim Corrections Secretary Roger Werholtz said, “I think it’s going to make things more dangerous.”

Legislators provided nearly $36 million in additional funds for prisons in the next state budget. However, Republicans worried enough about how it might be spent to require Kelly to convene a meeting of eight top legislative leaders, six of them Republicans, and have them sign off on releasing the bulk of it.

Their meeting Wednesday came with Republican leaders and Kelly increasingly at odds, following her vetoes of two GOP tax relief plans and top Senate Republicans thwarting Medicaid expansion.

It also came less than two weeks after Kelly announced her appointment of Jefferey Zmuda, the deputy director of Idaho’s prisons system, as the next Kansas corrections secretary. He plans to take over in July.

But Senate President Susan Wagle, a conservative Wichita Republican, told Kelly publicly Wednesday that she is not sure Zmuda can win Senate confirmation. A state-court-judge in Idaho criticized Zmuda in a March ruling, saying he had given “disingenuous” testimony in a lawsuit over access to that state’s execution records.

Wagle said she is concerned about transparency issues with Zmuda planning to take over the Department of Corrections. Lawmakers are out of session until January, but Zmuda would be forced to step down if the Senate won’t confirm his appointment.

“He would not be confirmed if we voted today,” Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning, a conservative Kansas City-area Republican, told reporters.

Kelly firmly stood by Zmuda’s appointment. The governor said she and her staff knew about the Idaho judge’s comments and discussed them with Zmuda, and he acknowledged that issues related to the lawsuit were not handled as well as they could have been. She said once lawmakers meet him they will see that he is “eminently qualified.”

“He knows what the problems are here in the state of Kansas and he is up for the challenge,” Kelly told reporters.

The Kansas prison system has been plagued with staffing shortages even as its inmate population has continued to grow. The prison system had multiple riots in 2017 and 2018. Extra funding released by legislative leaders Wednesday will 15.9% pay raises for uniformed corrections officers across the prison system.

Werholtz told legislative leaders Wednesday that since an emergency was declared in February at the state’s maximum-security prison outside El Dorado, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) east of Wichita, employees there have worked more than 2,000 16-hour shifts.

The state has about 10,000 inmates in its custody and the official capacity of its prisons is about 9,900 — after boosting the capacity figures in 2017 by declaring that inmates could be housed two-to-a-cell in much of the system, despite some officials’ past misgivings.

The next state budget included $16.4 million to allow the department to house up to 600 male inmates in county jails or out-of-state prisons. The department is pursuing a contract with a private prison in Arizona that its officials declined to name Wednesday.

But top Republicans on Wednesday blocked $6.6 million of the funds as some of them said they dislike using private prisons. Kelly said it’s not ideal but, “I just don’t think we have much of a choice.”

The department also wanted to move 120 inmates from the state’s prison for women in Topeka to the juvenile corrections center there. Lawmakers set aside $3 million.

The budget says the money was for “renovations.” Department officials said the need for renovations at the juvenile center is minimal and wanted instead to spend the funds on staff and programs. GOP legislative leaders concluded that the budget law wouldn’t allow it and blocked the funds, stopping the project altogether.

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JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri utility regulators have approved the acquisition of a large wind energy project by a Chicago firm.

The decision Wednesday by the state Public Service Commission was a necessary step for Invenergy to buy the rights to construct the proposed Grain Belt Express power line.

The project initiated by Houston-based Clean Line Energy Partners would carry Kansas wind energy on a 780-mile path across Missouri and Illinois before hooking into an electric grid in Indiana that serves eastern states.

Missouri regulators earlier this year reversed their previous denials and gave the green light to the project. Missouri legislators then tried but failed to prohibit eminent domain for the project.

But the project still needs regulatory approval in Illinois, where an appeals court last year overturned the state’s previous approval.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A Montana man dubbed the AK-47 bandit and accused of holding up banks in several states over a five-year period has been sentenced in a Nebraska federal court to 35 years in prison.

Richard Gathercole, of Roundup, Montana, received the maximum sentence Wednesday after pleading guilty in March to bank robbery. The 41-year-old Gathercole admitted during that plea hearing to using an AK-47 while robbing a Nebraska City bank in 2014. Gathercole also pleaded guilty to the 2017 carjacking of a farmer in Kansas that led to his arrest in Lexington, Nebraska.

As part of his plea deal, Gathercole won’t be prosecuted by other jurisdictions for other violent crimes, including shooting at a Kansas state trooper in 2017 and bank robberies in California, Idaho, Iowa and Washington state from 2012 to 2017.

Some of the crimes had passed the five-year federal statute of limitations.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri revenues continue to exceed expectations for the year.

State Budget Director Dan Haug on Wednesday announced fiscal year-to-date revenues increased by 2.1% as of May. That’s compared to the same time frame last year.

Gov. Mike Parson and lawmakers were banking on a 1.7% increase compared to last fiscal year.

The state’s fiscal year runs from July to June.

Revenues were down considerably earlier this year.

Budget and revenue officials cited changes to withholding tables that meant employers withheld less from workers’ paychecks for income taxes. That meant employees had to pay a bigger chunk of their taxes in April, instead of in smaller payments throughout the year.

Missouri lawmakers raised concerns that taxpayers wouldn’t make up the difference in time. But revenues appear to have bounced back.

By DAN MARGOLIES

Nine nursing homes in Kansas and 14 in Missouri are among nearly 400 nationwide with a “persistent record of poor care” whose names had been withheld from the public, according to a U.S. Senate report released Monday.

The facilities are not included on a shorter list of homes that get increased federal scrutiny because of health, safety or sanitary problems.

The nearly 400 homes qualify for the federal Special Focus Facility (SFF) program but aren’t selected to participate because of limited resources at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), according to the Senate report.

“Despite being indistinguishable from participants in terms of their qualifications for enhanced oversight, candidates are not publicly disclosed,” the report states. “As a result, individuals and families making decisions about nursing home care for themselves or for a loved one are unlikely to be aware of these candidates.”

Here are the Kansas and Missouri homes that are candidates for the SFF program, according to the Senate report, along with the number of their certified beds. (The bed numbers come from Nursing Home Compare, an online reference maintained by CMS that rates nursing homes based on health inspection reports, quality of care measures and overall staffing.)

Kansas

• Enterprise Estates Nursing Center, Enterprise, 41 beds
• Great Bend Health & Rehab Center, Great Bend, 65 beds
• Woodlawn Care and Rehab, DBA Orchard G, Wichita, 93 beds
• Indian Creek Healthcare Center, Overland Park, 120 beds
• Fort Scott Manor, Fort Scott, 45 beds (This facility closed last year.)
• Pinnacle Ridge Nursing & Rehab Center, Olathe, 94 beds
• Westy Community Care Home, Westmoreland, 43 beds
• Via Christi Village Pittsburg Inc., Pittsburg, 96 beds
• Mount Hope Nursing Center, Mount Hope, 45 beds

Missouri

• Kansas City Center for Rehabilitation and Healthcare, Kansas City, 180 beds
• Crestview Home, Bethany, 92 beds
• Normandy Nursing Center, St. Louis, 116 beds
• Garden Valley Healthcare Center, Kansas City, 156 beds
• Life Care Center of Bridgeton, Bridgeton, 91 beds
• Hillside Manor Healthcare and Rehab Center, St. Louis, 208 beds
• Parklane Care and Rehabilitation Center, Wentzville, 240 beds
• Crystal Creek Health and Rehabilitation Center, Florissant, 158 beds
• Maple Wood Healthcare Center, Kansas City, 150 beds
• Edgewood Manor Center for Rehab and Healthcare, Raytown, 66 beds
• Christian Care Home, Ferguson, 150 beds (This facility is no longer participating in the Medicare and Medicaid programs.)
• Lewis & Clark Gardens, St. Charles, 142 beds
• Redwood of Raymore, Raymore, 142 beds
• Rancho Manor Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center, Florissant, 120 beds

Two Kansas nursing homes and three Missouri nursing homes are in the SFF program:

Kansas

• Serenity Care and Rehab, Overland Park, 145 beds
• Garden Valley Retirement Village, Garden City, 78 beds

Missouri

• Hidden Lake Care Center, Raytown, 112 beds
• St Johns Place, St. Louis, 94 beds
• Green Park Senior Living Community, St Louis, 188 beds

As the Senate report notes, the SFF program “targets those facilities that ‘substantially fail’ to meet the required care standards and resident protections afforded by the Medicare and Medicaid programs.” The program aims to stimulate improvements in their quality of care.

Linda MowBray, vice president of the Kansas Health Care Association, a trade association representing 260-plus Kansas nursing homes, said that SFF program participants are chosen from the poorest performing facilities in the bottom 20% of state inspection surveys.

“The state survey agency identifies two to three facilities from the lowest 20% that have demonstrated a special need for more oversight due to history of deficiencies, staffing levels and/or quality outcomes,” she said.

“They may very well need to be a special focus home,” MowBray said. “But it may be that they are in that bottom quintile because of one particular incident, not necessarily a longstanding history that’s care-related. But some facilities do have a record of having more widespread problems.”

She added: “It’s public information and people need to know it, but I really believe that in Kansas we’re getting our act back together.”

Only 88 nursing homes out of more than 15,700 nationwide are currently participating in the SFF program, according to the Senate report

The program dates to 1987, when Congress enacted the Nursing Home Reform Act requiring nursing homes to maintain “the highest possible mental and physical functional status of residents.” The act also established oversight procedures, including regular surveys and inspections.

Unlike SFF participants, which are required to notify the public of their participation in the program, SFF candidates are not. Adding further confusion to the picture, 27% of the SFF candidate facilities had two stars out of a maximum of five on Nursing Home Compare.

In Kansas, some of the ratings may be dated. The Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services (KDADS), the agency that conducts nursing home surveys, had fallen behind the federal schedule that calls for nursing homes to be inspected at least once a year.

“It’s taken KDADS quite some time to get caught back up with surveys,” MowBray said. “So we’ve had facilities that have gone as long as 24 months between surveys, and we don’t like that, the homes don’t like that.

“Some of the rankings have been hanging around their neck for a long time and they’ve made quite a few improvements since that bad point. But that bad survey’s still hanging out there.”

Dan Margolies is a senior reporter and editor in conjunction with the Kansas News Service. You can reach him on Twitter @DanMargolies.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — The Latest on a dispute between the only Missouri clinic performing abortions and state regulators over license renewal (all times local):

10:25 a.m.

A St. Louis judge is considering whether to grant a preliminary injunction in Planned Parenthood’s effort to retain its right to perform abortions at Missouri’s only clinic that does them.

The one-hour hearing Wednesday focused on technical legal matters. Planned Parenthood attorney Jamie Boyer argued that the state health department regulations that relate to licensing abortion clinics exceed the authority provided by state law.

There is no indication when the judge will rule.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — The fate of Missouri’s only abortion clinic is at stake in a hearing scheduled for Wednesday in St. Louis.

Circuit Judge Michael Stelzer will hear testimony in a hearing on Planned Parenthood’s request for a preliminary injunction that would keep open its abortion clinic in St. Louis.

Missouri’s health department last week declined to renew the clinic’s license to perform abortion procedures, citing concerns about patient safety, including allegations of “failed abortions” and legal violations. Clinic leaders say the allegations are part of an effort by an anti-abortion administration to eliminate the procedure in the state.

Stelzer on Friday issued a temporary restraining order to allow the clinic to continue to perform abortions, at least until a decision is made on the injunction request.

Stelzer ruled Tuesday that four former doctors in training who worked briefly at the clinic are not required to testify at the hearing.

Lawmakers in Missouri and many other conservative states have recently passed new restrictions taking aim at the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized the procedure nationwide. Abortion opponents, emboldened by new conservative justices on the Supreme Court, hope federal courts will uphold laws that prohibit abortions before a fetus is viable outside the womb, the dividing line the high court set in Roe.

A judge is considering whether to force doctors from Missouri’s only abortion clinic to testify in a legal fight over the its license, while anti-abortion protesters demonstrate outside the facility. (June 4)
If the St. Louis clinic closes, Missouri would become the first state since 1974 without a single functioning abortion clinic.

The number of abortions performed in Missouri has declined every year for the past decade, reaching a low of 2,910 last year. Of those, an estimated 1,210 occurred at eight weeks or less of pregnancy, according to preliminary statistics from the state health department.

Missouri women also seek abortions in other states. In Kansas, about 3,300 of the 7,000 abortions performed in 2018 were for Missouri residents, according to the state’s health department. Illinois does not track the home states of women seeking abortions.

If the St. Louis clinic closes, women seeking abortion services wouldn’t have much farther to travel. An abortion clinic is just across the Mississippi River in Granite City, Illinois, less than 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the St. Louis clinic. Planned Parenthood’s abortion clinic in the Kansas City area is in Overland Park, Kansas, just 2 miles (3 kilometers) from the state line. State figures show a handful of Missouri hospitals also perform abortions, but those are relatively rare.

CALVERTON PARK, Mo. (AP) — Authorities say an 11-month-old girl has died after being locked inside a car for 15 or 16 hours in suburban St. Louis.

The Florissant Valley Fire Protection District received a call around 4:30 p.m. Sunday about an infant who wasn’t breathing and found the child unresponsive in Calverton Park. First responders were unable to revive her.

It’s unclear why the child was left inside the car for so long. The high temperature in St. Louis on Sunday was 79 degrees. Police have questioned two persons of interest in the girl’s death.