JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Missouri Department of Corrections owes counties tens of millions of dollars for housing inmates before they’re transferred to state prisons.

The state is about nine months behind with reimbursements, Corrections spokeswoman Karen Pojmann told KCUR radio.

Data provided by the department shows massive outstanding balances. As of 2018, the state owed the City of St. Louis more than $2,500,000 and almost $1,900,000 to Jackson County.

“Every one of us taxpayers is hit with the burden of this, to hold prisoners for the state,” the Jackson County legislature’s vice chairman Dan Tarwater said.

“It’s an unfunded mandate,” he said.

The agency provides reimbursement of $22.58 per inmate per day, although state law specifies a rate of $37. Some county officials say that is not nearly enough.

Cass County Sheriff Jeff Weber said it costs about $65 a day to house a prisoner.

Department Director Anne Precythe told a House Budget Committee in January that it needs to be allocated more money to cover these costs.

“The department receives a $10 million appropriation every quarter and we’re writing $10 million worth of checks in one business day,” Precythe said. “So we’re sitting on go, ready to write it, and when that’s done, we have another 89 days before we get another $10 million.”

It is down to Gov. Mike Parson to decide whether to allocate more money to address the backlog in payments.

Weber, of Cass County, is not optimistic.

“I don’t know what that is, but at the current rate we’re operating, the state will never get ahead,” he said. “We’ll never get these costs caught up and we’re going to keep plunging down that road. And I don’t know what will happen in the future.”

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By CELIA LLOPIS-JEPSEN

In April, the Kansas Supreme Court said the state’s constitution gives women a right to abortion.

That landmark ruling bolsters an ongoing lawsuit to expand access to abortion in Wichita. The case aims to clear the way for a clinic there — unable to find any willing, local doctors — to lean more on physicians in other states.

“People struggle to get access to health care,” Trust Women CEO Julie Burkhart said. “We want to be able to broaden that access for people in Kansas so they can continue to make decisions about their lives and their health care.”

At issue is a state ban on telemedicine abortions — in which a physician isn’t on site at the clinic where a woman takes medication to induce abortion. Instead, the physician consults with her, observes her ultrasound, reviews her medical records and guides her procedure over a remote video connection.

Kansas lawmakers banned telemedicine abortion years ago, but a judge blocked the ban pending a court challenge.

That case is ongoing. But a second lawsuit arose recently because Trust Women fears some state and local agencies won’t follow the judge’s injunction.

The Kansas Attorney General’s Office has argued the years-old injunction isn’t valid anymore and doesn’t apply to all state and local agencies.

The odds of the state winning either of these cases narrowed significantly last month when the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that women have a right to abortion under the state constitution.

The Attorney General’s Office has been arguing in ongoing lawsuits that no such right exists. It withdrew that argument on Wednesday at a hearing in one of the two ongoing lawsuits related to telemedicine abortion.

Wednesday’s hearing was the first in the new lawsuit, which could go to trial by the end of this year.

Trust Women said its staff and physicians already face regular harassment from protesters, and in recent months, they’re facing an investigation by the Kansas Board of Healing Arts, too.

The Board won’t publicly confirm an investigation, what might have prompted a probe and who might be a focus.

Lawyers for Trust Women say the investigation relates to telemedicine abortions, but they declined to elaborate.

Trust Women flies in doctors to Wichita from other states to offer abortions in person there two days a week. It says those hours were too limited, making it difficult for many women to schedule their procedures.

So last October, the clinic added more days by connecting out-of-state doctors to their patients through telemedicine. The clinic stopped at the end of the year for fear of legal trouble.

The clinic has struggled to find doctors based in Wichita. Abortion provider George Tiller — Burkhart’s boss at the time — was murdered at his church in Wichita by an anti-abortion extremist 10 years ago this month.

If it can resume telemedicine abortions, Trust Women hopes eventually to provide abortion in more locations through that means. Namely, remote and rural parts of the state.

Celia Llopis-Jepsen is a reporter for the Kansas News Service. You can reach her on Twitter @Celia_LJ or email celia (at) kcur (dot) org.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A police officer shot and killed a man who fled multiple times when the officer tried to arrest him over the weekend in Kansas City, Missouri.

The man who died was a suspect in an armed carjacking that happened around 12:30 a.m. Sunday.

Police say the armed man had forced his way into a home and took a vehicle. While officers were at the home, the man returned.

The man fled when police tried to arrest him, but an officer caught up with him just south of the home. The man struggled, and the officer fired his gun.

The suspect received first aid and was taken to a hospital by ambulance where he died. The officer wasn’t injured.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri conservation officials say a particularly troublesome invasive fish has been found in the state for the first time.

An angler caught a northern snakehead in a ditch within the St. Francis River levee in April in Dunklin County.

The fish tolerates a wide range of water temperatures, reproduces five times per year and preys on animals that native species eat. It also can survive several days out of water.

It was the first time the fish was found in Missouri and conservation officials say they have no evidence that a population has been established in the state.

The conservation department recommends killing any northern snakehead caught in the Missouri.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — One year after Kansas lawmakers agreed to compensate people who were wrongfully convicted and incarcerated, the state has paid two claims, is negotiating one and is fighting two others.

Kansas agreed to pay $1.1 million to Richard Jones of Kansas City, who spent 17 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of a 2000 robbery that he says was committed by someone who looks just like him. This week the state agreed to pay $1.03 million to Floyd Bledsoe , who spent nearly 16 years behind bars for the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl — a crime that his brother claimed in a suicide note.

Among the remaining claims is one seeking $1.52 million for Lamonte McIntyre , who spent 23 years in prison for a 1994 double murder in Kansas City, Kansas. A local district attorney later called the case an example of “manifest injustice.” No physical evidence was presented and the case was based on allegedly coerced testimony.

The Associated Press obtained records from the Attorney General’s office on the cases through a request under the Kansas Open Records Act and from court filings.

Jones, Bledsoe and McIntyre testified at the Legislature last year in support of a bill to compensate former inmates who have been wrongfully incarcerated. The law provides for $65,000 for each year a person spent behind bars along with health insurance benefits, financial assistance for higher education and various social services.

When signing the bill last year, then-Gov. Jeff Colyer publicly apologized to McIntyre, Bledsoe and Jones — saying “we will make it right.”

But the cases have taken time to wind through the system.

“The law moves slowly, from what I can tell you,” said Cheryl Pilate, one of the attorneys representing McIntyre. She said her dealings with the attorney general’s office have been cordial, adding there is no need to have “an adversarial” hearing in McIntyre’s case.

Sen. Molly Baumgardner, a Republican who helped write the law, said legislators wanted to make sure the process to pay claims was thorough and involved people outside the attorney general’s office.

The state is challenging two claims from former inmates.

Bobby Harper, who spent nearly two years in prison before his 1987 burglary conviction was reversed by the Kansas Supreme Court, is seeking $75,000 and other costs. The attorney general’s office asked a court to reject Harper’s claim because it says Harper cannot prove he’s “actually innocent,” as the compensation law requires. The state argued the statute was not intended to apply to people whose convictions were overturned by insufficient evidence or a legal technically, as in Harper’s case.

Harper’s attorney has not yet responded in court to the state’s filing and could not immediately be reached for comment.

Kansas is also disputing the claim brought by Michael Mata, who as a juvenile in 2011 was incarcerated for less than a year before his conviction for aggravated indecent liberties with a child was overturned on appeal. Mata is seeking $40,246 in compensation.

The attorney general’s office has asked a court to dismiss Mata’s claim, arguing his adjudication as a “juvenile offender” and his relatively short time at a juvenile correctional facility do not satisfy the elements for recovery of damages under the law. Mata’s attorney, Lora Ingels, said in a court filing that the state was “basically saying a juvenile’s life and liberty is not as valuable as an adult’s life and liberty.”

Meanwhile, Jones, — whose wrongful conviction became known as the “doppleganger” case because of his mistaken identity — has new legal problems. Federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged Jones in a new five-count indictment on weapons and drug charges.

WICHITA, KAN.– Zoos in Topeka and Wichita are receiving tiger and lion pelts that federal agents seized from wildlife traffickers, according to U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister.

The pelts donated were seized by agents of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who were enforcing federal laws aimed at protecting endangered animals and disrupting the global black market for hides and other parts of protected wildlife.

“Poachers, wildlife smugglers and black market merchants are stealing our last chance to protect and preserve creatures of awesome strength and beauty,” McAllister said. “Once these animals go, they will be gone forever. They are a precious natural resource that the federal government protects, including by criminal prosecution of illegal traffickers.”

The Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD), together with United States Attorneys’ Offices across the country, is responsible for prosecuting international wildlife trafficking crimes, primarily under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the Lacey Act, as well as crimes related to wildlife trafficking, such as smuggling, money laundering, and criminal conspiracy.

Wildlife items forfeited or abandoned to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are stored in a 22,000-square-foot office and warehouse located northeast of Denver that is called the National Wildlife Repository. Many of the items are donated to educational facilities and nonprofit organizations to aid in teaching about endangered species.

McAllister said the tiger pelts came from the wildlife depository. Fish and Wildlife Service agents used some of them in a sting operation in Wichita in 2018. A Wichita man pleaded guilty to making a deal to pay $8,000 to have two tiger pelts delivered to him. Agents retrieved the tiger pelts and seized a lion pelt from his home when they arrested him.

McAllister said the Justice Department estimates the international illegal trade in wildlife generates as much as $23 billion annually. In Kansas in recent years, federal agents have investigated wildlife trafficking cases including deer and elk that had been poached by guides and hunters, eagle feathers that were being unlawfully sold and Asian leopard cats unlawfully imported to Kansas. Federal prosecutors across the country also have pursued cases involving native turtles being exported to other countries.