KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The developer for the new single-terminal Kansas City International Airport is now projecting an opening date of October 2022, nearly a year later than originally anticipated.

Officials with Edgemoor Infrastructure and Real Estate told the Kansas City Council of its new plans Thursday. Edgemoor was chosen for the project that Kansas City voters approved in 2017.

The project is expected to cost up to $1.4 billion. The original project cost was estimated at $964 million in 2014. Inflation is responsible for part of the increase, but the new plan also accounts for 39 gates instead of the original plan’s 35.

Airlines, not taxpayers, are responsible for funding the construction project.

By BEN KUEBRICH & ESTHER HONIG

The U.S. House voted down an immigration bill Thursday that would have addressed one of the biggest concerns of American farmers: updating the agriculture guestworker visa program known as H-2A.

 

“Without this agriculture guestworker visa, our economy in Kansas will come crumbling down,” said Rep. Roger Marshall, a Republican from Kansas. “It’s very, very important,”

Created in 1952, the seasonal worker program is intended to help farmers facing local labor shortages. In 2017, more than 200,000 guestworkers, mostly from Mexico, came to the U.S. on an H-2A visas — a nearly 15 percent increase from the previous year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

The conservative immigration bill, which was defeated 231-193, would have allowed visa-holders to work year-round and in a wider number of industries, including dairy and meatpacking.

While the visa changes had support from some Republicans and the American Farm Bureau federation, many farmworker groups opposed them because of verification requirements and a cap on visas at 450,000 per year. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates there are 2.5 million agricultural workers in the U.S.

“There’s never been a cap on H-2A and … it’s not fair to the (agriculture) producer,” said Colorado vegetable farmer David Petrocco.

Petrucco first hired guestworkers in 2008. Since then, he said, local labor shortages have grown more severe and he’s had to increase the number of guestworkers on his farm. He said access to labor is vital to farmers who risk losing crops when there aren’t enough workers to harvest them.

But the visa changes may not dead. Marshall said he hopes another bill that addresses the guestworker visa will be introduced next month.

Thursday’s vote on the conservative bil; led to a delay on the so-called compromise immigration legislation, which is now scheduled for a House vote Friday.

Ben Kuebrich is a Kansas News Service reporter. Follow him on Twitter: @Ben_Kuebrich

Esther Honig is a Harvest Public Media reporter in conjunction with the Kansas News Service. Follow her on Twitter: @estherhonig

PINEVILLE, Mo. (AP) – A husband and wife from southwestern Missouri have been ordered to pay $5,000 in restitution for cashing government checks intended for an elderly man who was found padlocked in a bedroom in their home.

The Joplin Globe reports that 47-year-old Kevin Miller and 50-year-old Janice Miller of Goodman pleaded guilty Tuesday to financial exploitation of an elderly person. The plea deal dismissed kidnapping and armed criminal action charges. The couple received a suspended sentence.

The Millers were arrested after a McDonald County deputy, acting on an anonymous tip, found 79-year-old Herbert Spell inside a padlocked bedroom of the Millers’ home. Spell told the deputy he had been locked in the room for six months, fed “sporadically,” and rarely allowed to shower.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) – A longtime southwestern Missouri chief has been indicted on three counts of second-degree sodomy and one count of second-degree rape.

Brookline Fire Chief Larry McConnell was indicted Wednesday. He is jailed on $25,000 bond and does not have a listed attorney.

The Springfield News-Leader reported last year that McConnell was under investigation for allegedly raping a woman at his farm and at the fire station. Court documents showed that the woman told investigators that McConnell forced her to have sex with him for more than a year.

The allegations are described in a search warrant. The warrant says McConnell initially denied any sexual contact with the woman, but later told a detective that the sex was consensual.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican-led House has narrowly passed a sweeping farm bill that would toughen work requirements for food stamp recipients.

The bill passed 213-211.

“This legislation has been years in the making; we’ve hosted hundreds of hearings and made stops across the country to listen to rural America’s needs,” Kansas First District Rep. Roger Marshall said. 

“I am so proud to report; we did it! We passed a budget-neutral farm bill that takes care of our farmers and ranchers.”

Democrats opposed the measure, saying it would toss too many people off government food assistance.

The measure renews the safety net for farmers as President Donald Trump’s tough talk on tariffs threatens to close markets for many of their products.

The vote Thursday marked the House’s second attempt to pass a farm bill. GOP leaders suffered an embarrassing setback in May when 30 GOP members opposed passage in an effort to get a vote on immigration legislation.

The bill protects crop insurance, simplifies conservation programs, and rolls back heavy-handed federal regulations placed on farmers, ranchers.

This legislation strengthens farmers’ safety net, expands rural broadband access, restores funding for trade promotion programs, invests in animal health, and includes programs designed to help young and beginning farmers. 

The House bill sets up a certain clash with the Senate, which looks to make mostly modest adjustments to existing programs and doesn’t pick a food stamps fight.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House killed a hard-right immigration bill Thursday, and Republican leaders delayed a planned vote on a compromise GOP package with the party’s lawmakers fiercely divided over an issue that has long confounded them.

The conservative measure was defeated 231-193, with 41 Republicans — mostly moderates — joining Democrats in voting against it. Those defections — nearly 1 in 5 GOP lawmakers — underscored the party’s chasm over immigration and the election-year pressures Republicans face to stay true to districts that range from staunchly conservative to pro-immigrant.

Thursday’s vote set the stage for debate on the second bill, this one crafted by Republican leaders in hopes of finding an accord between the party’s sparring moderate and conservative wings. That compromise was considered too lenient by some conservatives and seemed likely to fall, too, and aides said the final roll call would wait till Friday.

Rejection of both would represent an embarrassment for President Donald Trump, who had embraced them. As if the internal GOP turmoil was not enough, the party’s political exposure on the issue has been intensified by heartbreaking images of migrant children separated from families and complicated by opaque statements by Trump.

At the White House, Trump defended his administration’s “zero tolerance” policy of prosecuting all migrants caught illegally entering the country, a change that has caused thousands of families to be divided while the parents are detained. He said without it, “you would have a run on this country the likes of which nobody has ever seen.”

He said he was inviting Congress’ top two Democrats, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, to the White House for immigration bargaining. He called them “extremist open-border Democrats.”

And in a tweet that seemed to undermine House leaders’ efforts to round up votes, he questioned the purpose of their legislation by suggesting it was doomed in the Senate anyway.

Trump issued an executive order Wednesday aimed at reversing his own policy of taking immigrant children from their detained parents, but emotions remained high.

“I was welcomed here,” a tearful Rep. Norma Torres, D-Calif., said during House debate, describing her journey to the U.S. as a child from Guatemala. “I was not put in a freezing cell.”

In an embarrassing detour, the House used an early procedural vote to correct what Republicans called a drafting error — language providing $100 billion more than they’d planned to help build Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico. Instead of giving initial approval for $24.8 billion spread over the next five years, the legislation said it would open the door to $24.8 billion “for each” of the next five years.

The rejected conservative bill would have granted no pathway to citizenship for young “Dreamers” who arrived in the country illegally as children, curbed legal immigration and bolstered border security.

The second was a compromise between GOP moderates and the party’s conservatives that included an opportunity for citizenship for the young immigrants. It provides $25 billion for Trump’s wall, restrictions on legal immigration and language requiring the Homeland Security Department to keep migrant families together while they’re being processed for illegal entry to the U.S.

Democrats oppose both measures as harsh.

“It is not a compromise,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters. “It may be a compromise with the devil, but it is not a compromise with the Democrats.”

Even before votes began, Trump complicated GOP efforts to round up votes.

“What is the purpose of the House doing good immigration bills when you need 9 votes by Democrats in the Senate, and the Dems are only looking to Obstruct (which they feel is good for them in the Mid-Terms),” Trump wrote. “Republicans must get rid of the stupid Filibuster Rule-it is killing you!”

In the unlikely event that the House approved the GOP compromise, it seemed certain to go nowhere in the GOP-run Senate. Democrats there have enough votes to use procedural delays to kill it. Sixty votes are needed to end filibusters.

On Wednesday, Trump reversed himself and took executive action aimed at curbing the separation of families. His order seemed to stem some of the urgency for Congress to act.

But GOP leaders were eager to hold the votes anyway. The roll calls would let Republicans assert to voters that they tried addressing the immigration problem.

“Our members wanted to express themselves on an issue they care a great deal about,” Speaker Paul Ryan said.

Passage of the GOP compromise was always a long shot, but failure may now come at a steeper price. Republicans and Trump have raised expectations that, in control of Congress and the White House, they can fix the nation’s long-standing immigration problems.

When the crisis of family separations erupted at the border, GOP leaders revised the compromise bill to bolster a provision requiring parents and children to be held together in custody. It did so by eliminating the 20-day cap on holding minors and allowing indefinite detentions.

Even though Trump has acted unilaterally to stem the family separations, lawmakers still prefer a legislative fix. The administration is not ending its “zero tolerance” approach to border prosecutions. If the new policy is rejected by the courts, which the administration acknowledges is a possibility, the debate could move back to square one.

Senate Republicans, fearing Trump’s action will not withstand a legal challenge and eager to go on record opposing the administration’s policy, have unveiled their own legislation to keep detained immigrant families together.

In the House, moderate Republicans forced the immigration debate to the fore by threatening to use a rare procedure to demand a vote. Led by Curbelo and Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., many are from states with large populations of young “Dreamer” immigrants who now face deportation threats under Trump’s decision to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. A federal court challenge has kept the DACA program running for now.

___

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – Missouri Gov. Mike Parson is among a group of eight governors meeting with President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

Parson’s spokesman Steele Shippy said the Republican governor is having lunch Thursday with Trump and Pence at the White House.

Appreciate @POTUS’s invitation to join & for the opportunity to share some of MO’s top priorities. I’m confident that, together, we can tackle shared challenges to continued our strong economic growth, strengthen our workforce, and reduce job-killing regulations. #MissouriForward pic.twitter.com/VjYBVLDO2d

— Governor Mike Parson (@GovParsonMO) June 21, 2018

Shippy says the group is set to discuss infrastructure and workforce development. Those are two issues Parson has emphasized since taking office. Shippy says the opioid epidemic is also on the agenda.

Parson only recently took over as Missouri’s governor after his predecessor, Eric Greitens, resigned June 1 amid allegations of personal and political misconduct.

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Uniformed officers from across the nation gathered Thursday to remember two Kansas sheriff’s deputies who were shot and killed by an inmate while transporting him between the courthouse and jail.

Wyandotte County Sheriff Don Ash said Thursday during a joint service for Theresa King and Patrick Rohrer at a soccer stadium in Kansas City, Kansas, that they “literally put their lives between a cold-blooded killer and the citizens they swore an oath to protect.

Authorities said an inmate apparently overpowered the deputies last Friday in a gated area behind the courthouse and shot them, possibly with one of their own guns. Rohrer, who was 35 and was the father of two, died shortly after the shooting. King, who was 44 and a mother of three, died the next day. The suspect also was shot.

One of King’s children, Bailey, talked about her hard-working mother.

“Mom, this feels like a bad dream and I want to wake up,” Bailey said. “Everything you did, you did for us and I know being a single mom wasn’t easy. I know working 80 hours a week wasn’t ideal . . . but you did what needed to be done to make sure we were taken care of.”

King was supposed to be assigned to a school attended by another of her children as a resource officer in the fall.

Some mourners showed up in costume, including Star Wars characters, princesses and superheroes. Ron Coleman, who dressed as a Ghostbuster, said Rohrer participated in 17 of the last 19 Kansas City Comic Con conventions. He said Rohrer volunteered at Children’s Mercy Hospital dressed as Superman.

Maritza Gordillo, 27, who works as a protection order advocate at the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department, described King as “assertive but also kind” and Rohrer as a kindhearted “jokester-geek.”

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WYANDOTTE COUNTY —A joint funeral service for Wyandotte County Deputies Patrick Rhorer and Theresa King will be held at Children’s Mercy Park on Thursday at 8:30 am.

The ceremony will include a 21-gun salute, music played on pipes and drums and a flyover, according to the sheriff’s department.

Kansas Governor Jeff Colyer ordered flags to be flown at half-staff state-wide from sun-up until sun-down on Thursday, June 21, 2018 in honor of the deputies.

King and Rohrer were fatally shot Friday. Authorities say they were killed by an inmate as they were preparing to leave the courthouse to return to jail after a hearing. King was 44 and had three children. Rohrer was 35 and was the father of two.

Anyone wishing to make cash donations to the Rohrer or King families can do so at the locations listed below. Each Deputy has a separate fund setup at the credit union. If someone wishes to make the donations at the Sheriff’s Office they will be accepted at the front desk (Sheriff Admin). We will take those donations to the bank daily. When donations are accepted it needs to be clearly identified as to which Deputy the money is to be credited to. Those writing checks should make the checks payable to one of the funds below.