By Brianna Childers
KU Statehouse Wire Service

TOPEKA — A bill that will help to clarify the public availability of information on police and law enforcement officers was under consideration Thursday in a House Corrections and Juvenile Justice committee hearing.

House Bill 2625 would change the confidentiality of police officer records to remain confidential. They could not be disclosed to an open records request.

These records, which are currently maintained by the Kansas Commission on Peace Officers’ Standards and Training (CPOST), can be requested by any agency that elects or appoints police, the subject of the records, the director of police training, an enforcement agency, or requested during a proceeding conducted by the commission.

The records include training and demographic reports, employment forms, and personal and personnel information.

Certain records also must be disclosed discretionarily, including records with the officer’s name, current employer, and written orders or documents regarding reprimand.

Michelle Meier, commission counsel for CPOST, said the registry currently contains information of more than 29,000 former and current officers.

“The original legislative intent behind this statute was to prevent the gypsy cop from freely moving from department to department, leaving behind various degrees of misconduct,” Meier said.

While the system works for CPOST, Meier said one of the problems with the original legislation was it didn’t define what information could be released and who it should be released to. She said she hopes this bill clarifies that, not only for agencies requesting the information but for CPOST as well.

Meier said this bill doesn’t necessarily change the transparency of the records, it just makes it easier for everyone to understand what can be released.

“House Bill 2625 balances the importance of public information about officer misconduct while upholding long established open records law for an agency’s records, and it does so in a way that provides direction and clarifies expectations to all those involved,” Meier said.

Max Kautsch, legal hotline attorney for the Kansas Press Association, is opposed to the bill and said that his concern is that the bill doesn’t make the information transparent enough to Kansas citizens.

“I think there is a way to balance all interests, making sure CPOST has all the info they need but there must be a way to balance it, especially when officers are engaged in misdeeds but don’t result in decertification proceedings, then the public can be aware of that,” Kautsch said.

Rep. Russ Jennings (R-Lakin) said he supports the bill but that it needs some more clarification as to what information can be disclosed.

“It’s a question of trying to balance the right of the public and the need to know by law enforcement employers, and the rights of individuals,” Jennings said. “That’s what complicates it; you have an odd array of elements that are not easily put into one bucket.”

Brianna Childers is a senior at the University of Kansas majoring in journalism, from Sedalia, Missouri.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – Missouri’s governor faces a showdown with the Legislature over an unexpected budget windfall.

The state had set aside $80 million to fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program when federal funding was in danger. But now that federal funding is guaranteed for the near future, there are competing visions over what to do with the remaining money.

Republican Gov. Eric Greitens wants to pump more money into rural Missouri, using all of the available funds to invest in broadband access, water initiatives and other projects.

The chairmen of the House Budget Committee and Senate Appropriations Committee want to use some of that money to restore cuts that Greitens had proposed to higher education institutions.

Lawmakers will start making budget decisions later this month.

By DAN MARGOLIES

Missouri and Kansas have joined 18 other states in seeking to have the Affordable Care Act declared unconstitutional following Congress’ repeal last year of the tax penalty associated with the individual mandate.

In a lawsuit filed late Monday in federal court in Texas, the coalition of 20 mostly red states claimed that the elimination of the tax penalty for those who don’t buy health insurance renders the entire healthcare law unconstitutional.

In announcing that Missouri had joined the lawsuit, Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley said in a statement that the Affordable Care Act “was never constitutional.”

“My office will continue to fight to take health care choices out of the hands of D.C. bureaucrats and put them in the hands of families and physicians,” Hawley said.

Hawley’s statement that the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, was never constitutional flies in the face of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2012 decision finding that the mandate was constitutional under Congress’ power to levy taxes.

The 20 suing states are now citing that same decision to argue that with the tax penalty eliminated, the mandate — and with it the entire law — should be struck down.

“The U.S. Supreme Court already admitted that an individual mandate without a tax penalty is unconstitutional,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement. “With no remaining legitimate basis for the law, it is time that Americans are finally free from the stranglehold of Obamacare, once and for all.”

Paxton and Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel are leading the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Fort Worth.

The Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, the most controversial part of Obamacare, was meant to force younger and healthier people to get coverage to help keep premiums low.

Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer, who assumed office last month after Sam Brownback took a job with the Trump administration as U.S. ambassador of religious freedom, said he supports the legal challenge.

In a statement released by Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, Colyer, a plastic surgeon, said, “The legal and policy failures of Obamacare are well known, and I am pleased that Kansas is joining this new effort to expose them.”

The Republican-led Congress eliminated the requirement that individuals have health insurance or pay a tax penalty as part of the tax overhaul it passed in December on a strictly party line vote. But the mandate that people have health insurance technically remained in place.

In addition to Missouri, Kansas, Texas and Wisconsin, the other states joining the suit are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia.

All but eight of those 20 states have opted not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

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

By Dewey Terrill

GEARY COUNTY —Rural firefighters converged on a rural location about seven miles east of Junction City Friday afternoon to battle a fast-moving fire that covered rural open land.

No one was injured and no structures were damaged.

Geary County Rural Fire Chief Garry Berges estimated that approximately 1,000 acres of grassland burned in the blaze which covered portions of Geary and Riley counties.  Berges said firefighters got the call to respond to the Interstate 70 location where the blaze began near mile post 305 about 3:30 to 3:45 p.m. “Looks like somebody driving along probably discarded some smoking material out. It just started roaring straight north, all open ground aided by the wind. My first fire truck on scene said he was doing 35 mph across country and couldn’t keep up where the fire was.”

Berges noted Geary County Rural Fire responded with eight trucks, Riley County had eight or nine, the Fort Riley Fire Department two trucks and the Kansas Forestry Task Force based in Manhattan provided two trucks and a supervisor vehicle. Additional assistance came from the Grandview Plaza Fire Department and numerous farm producers who provided water to help battle the blaze.

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Earlier about 10:30 Friday morning Geary County rural firefighters also responded to a small blaze near I-70 milepost 309 in the eastern part of the county where an estimated two to three acres burned. No one was injured there. Berges confirmed that blaze was put out quickly.

 

BRANSON, Mo. (AP) – Two southwest Missouri men will be sent to state prison for dragging a kitten behind a truck and then killing it after it survived.

Eighteen-year-old Kyle Williams was sentenced Friday to consecutive terms of four years for animal abuse and three years of armed criminal action. Nineteen-year-old Jordan Hall was sentenced to four years for animal control.

Taney County prosecutors say the crimes were recorded in June 2017. The kitten was not dead after it was dragged, so Williams killed it.

Prosecutors say Williams posted the cat’s death on Facebook in an effort to get his audience to buy him pizza.

Williams was also sentenced to a concurrent five-year prison sentence for sharpening a spork into a shank while in jail.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A man has been convicted of shooting and wounding a Topeka police detective after a convenience store robbery.

Jurors found 30-year-old Christopher Harris guilty Thursday of attempted capital murder, aggravated robbery, aggravated assault and criminal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Detective Brian Hill spent 20 days in the hospital after he was wounded in November 2016 while trying to apprehend Harris and Jermaine Patton following the convenience store robbery. Hill retired in September and said at the time that the shooting “definitely” was a factor.

Shawnee County District Attorney Mike Kagay says Harris faces life in prison without parole for at least 25 years when he is sentenced May 3.

Patton pleaded guilty in September to federal aiding and abetting charges.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – Since he was indicted on allegations related to an extramarital affair, Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens has shifted into attack mode against the St. Louis prosecutor who launched the investigation.

Some critics have decried his comments as politically or racially charged.

Grietens is a Republican accused of felony invasion of privacy. He has repeatedly laid into St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, the city’s first black prosecutor and a former Democratic lawmaker.

In one Facebook post, the governor called Gardner “anti-law enforcement.” In another, he said she is a “reckless liberal prosecutor” using her office to score political points.

Greitens is accused of taking a nonconsensual photo of a nude or partially nude woman in 2015, before he was elected.

A Gardner spokeswoman says the prosecutor will not play “political games.”

KANSAS CITY (AP) – Kansas City police say one person was critically injured and 14 people were taken to hospital as a precaution after a city bus and car collided.

Police say the crash happened Friday near Children’s Mercy Hospital in downtown Kansas City.

A man sitting in the back of the bus was critically injured. A woman and a 2-year-old in the car also were taken to the hospital.

Eleven people on the bus were also taken to a hospital as a precaution.

The cause of the crash is under investigation.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts says President Donald Trump’s unexpected announcement about tariffs on imported steel and aluminum “is not going to go down well in farm country.”

Roberts and other Republican senators received no formal warning from the White House before Trump said Thursday he’d impose a 25 percent import tariff on steel and 10 percent on aluminum to boost U.S. manufacturers.

Roberts says he and other Republicans from farming states and from the Senate Finance Committee have lobbied Trump hard in efforts to convince him that raising tariffs would negatively impact the rural and middle-class voters who supported his 2016 election.

The senator fears a foreign backlash will hit U.S. agricultural exports.