ST. PETERS, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri man is charged with felony animal abuse after authorities say he killed and dismembered cats he found in online want ads.

20-year-old Kaine Louzader was charged Friday. Prosecutors say more charges are expected.

Court documents say dead cats have been turning up on or near Louzader’s street outside St. Peters since January. Police contacted Louzader after someone reported seeing him dump a dead cat near his house.

St. Charles County police Sgt. Jeff Ochs says Louzader told police he would scour Craigslist ads for free cats, then would take them home and stomp or strangle them. Police say he dismembered some cats before dumping their remains.

Louzader is being held on $50,000 bond and could not be reached Saturday for comment. No lawyer is listed for him in online court documents.

BRANSON, Mo. (AP) — An entertainment company that owned a duck boat that sank on a Missouri lake last summer is disputing that an independent inspector told it that its vehicles did not comply with a government standard.

Steve Paul says Ripley Entertainment hired him in 2017 before it bought the boats from Missouri company Ride the Ducks International to determine whether they met the Department of Transportation’s regulations. Ripley says Paul passed the boats in his report.

Paul has said he inspected 24 of the 40 boats that Ride the Ducks was selling and that all of them were deficient under the department’s standard because of the location of their tailpipes.

Florida-based Ripley ultimately purchased 22 of the boats in December 2017. One sank in Branson last July, killing 17 people.

BySTEPHEN KORANDA & CELIA LLOPIS-JEPSEN

A fresh push by school districts to get Kansas to pony up more money for public education met with skepticism Thursday from the Kansas Supreme Court.

Justices had pointed questions for both sides in the lawsuit that began in 2010 and has already gone through multiple rounds of oral arguments and rulings.

Justice Eric Rosen called it frustrating that the funding goal that school districts argue for seems to be a moving target.

“Is there ever ‘crossing the finish line’ in these types of cases?” Rosen asked the districts’ attorney, Alan Rupe. “Or are you going to be back here three or four years down the road, making the same argument you just made?”

Rupe responded that all the court has to do is tell lawmakers to redo the inflation adjustment and districts would be satisfied.

“I think we’re getting real close,” Rupe said.

The question at hand in Gannon v. Kansas is whether the state has done enough to finally end a nearly  decade-long lawsuit over school spending.

So the attorney representing the state, Toby Crouse, argued it should be “case dismissed.”

But the question is whether lawmakers added enough.

Rupe, who’s been fighting the state for more education funding for three decades, questioned the state’s inflation calculations and asked the justices to make lawmakers recalculate when they return for the 2020 legislative session.

How much is enough?

Lawmakers took a major step last year, by promising to phase in a half billion dollars for schools.

That got close to ending the lawsuit, except for the inflation problem that justices identified.

Crouse said the plan to add $90 million per year for four years should end the litigation.

He argued that approval this year from a bipartisan group of lawmakers and Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly give credence to the state’s solution.

“Everyone agrees that this is what satisfies not only the constitution,” Crouse said, “but also the best interests of the children.”

Rupe said the state continues to fall short because its new solution only calculated inflation for part of the funding increase to schools, not overall spending.

School districts contend spending ultimately has to reach levels consistent with a court ruling from the mid-2000s that dramatically increased school funding and ended a previous lawsuit, Montoy v. Kansas.

Hitting that target based on the Montoy agreement would take $3.7 billion in total annual funding by 2023, the districts argue. And it would shield the Legislature from litigation. But hitting that target would take another $270 million in annual funding by 2023 over what the state has promised.

Rupe says that’s an important difference, because $270 million could pay for 5,400 teachers.

Justice Dan Biles was skeptical the state needs to spend that much to meet constitutional requirements.

“That safe harbor number,” Biles said, “doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the minimum level necessary to comply with the constitution.”

Should the court trust the Legislature to keep its promises?

Even if they sign off on lawmakers’ latest fix, justices questioned the state’s request to dismiss the lawsuit.

Biles said the state would not be in full compliance with the court until it had paid out all the money in the school spending deal, which will take several years.

“I’ve got to tell you, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the idea of dismissing this lawsuit,” Biles said.

There’s fear the governor and the Legislature might go back on their promises for more robust funding. They’ve done it before.

School districts filed the current suit, Gannon v. Kansas, in 2010, after governors Kathleen Sebelius and Mark Parkinson slashed school funding amid the global financial crisis and recession. The districts argued those cuts violated commitments the state made to end the Montoy lawsuit.

The district court and Kansas Supreme Court agreed. In ruling after ruling, they’ve pushed the state to restore hundreds of millions of dollars to its school funding formula. That included restoring targeted money meant to put poorer areas of the state on more equal footing with wealthier ones in terms of resources for education.

What if, Biles wondered, the court drops the case and the Legislature goes back to block grants or other funding schemes that have been found unconstitutional? Plaintiffs would have to start over at district court.

“When what the Legislature did is something we’ve already said they can’t do,” he said. “So that’s my problem.”

Stephen Koranda and Celia Llopis-Jepsen are reporters for the Kansas News Service. Follow Stephen on Twitter @kprkorandaand Celia @Celia_LJ.

DOUGLAS COUNTY —Law enforcement authorities are investigating two suspects on drug and weapons charges.

Just after 2 a.m. Friday, deputies responded to reports of shots being fired into the air from a vehicle near the intersection of U.S. 24-59 and U.S. 24-40 intersection, according to Sgt. Kristen Channel. Deputies were unable to locate the suspects.

A short time later, Lawrence Police officers spotted a suspect vehicle in the 900 block of Pennsylvania Street and questioned the two occupants and discovered a large amount of methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana as well as a stolen handgun and more than $11,000 in cash.

They arrested 31-year-old Antonio Brown and 28-year-old Bounsouay Khanya on requested charges of possession with the intent to distribute narcotics/methamphetamine/marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia. Brown also faces counts of felon in possession of a firearm and criminal discharge of a firearm.

MONROE COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a substitute teacher in Missouri for child sex crimes.

Twenty-seven-year-old Ty Michael Gramley of Columbia was arrested just after 1p.m. Thursday in Randolph County, according to a media release from the sheriff’s department.

The investigation lasted several weeks in connection with a  complaint that Gramley was exchanging pornographic text messages, photographs, and videos with a minor student from an area school via social media.

A Monroe County deputy wrote in a probable cause statement that a student said she had been sending and receiving sexually explicit text messages, photos and videos with Gramley through Facebook Messenger. The student said she met Gramley while he was working as a substitute teacher in the Madison C-3 school district.

Superintendent Shane Stocks said Gramley wasn’t an employee and worked for a contractor that provides substitutes.

By JOHN HANNA AP Political Writer

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas Supreme Court decision will force the state Senate into voting to reject a judicial nominee over political tweets that lawmakers found offensive.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly did not have the authority under a 2013 state law to withdraw her nomination of Labette County District Judge Jeffry Jack for the Kansas Court of Appeals, the state’s second-highest court. And, under the law, if the Senate fails take a vote by next week, Jack would be considered confirmed.

Kelly’s withdrawal of Jack’s nomination in March touched off an unprecedented and bizarre legal dispute with Senate President Susan Wagle over whether the governor could name a second nominee — as Kelly eventually did. The Supreme Court’s decision means that Kelly will get that chance if the Senate, as expected, rejects Jack’s nomination.

“I encourage the Senate to act swiftly to vote down the Jack appointment next week,” Kelly said in a statement after the Supreme Court’s ruling.

The nomination was doomed after political tweets from Jack in 2017 came to light. They included vulgar language and criticism of President Donald Trump and other Republicans, with one post calling the president “Fruit Loops.”

Wagle, a Wichita Republican, has called Jack “absolutely unacceptable.” Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat, predicted no senator would vote for him.

Wagle and other Senate leaders already anticipated the possibility of such a Supreme Court ruling, and the Senate is scheduled to convene Tuesday. Lawmakers wrapped up most of their business for the year early Sunday.

The Senate president contends Kelly failed to properly vet Jack and said Friday that the legal dispute resulted from a “display of her incompetence.”

“Sadly, this avoidable situation by the Kelly administration has turned into a waste of taxpayer dollars,” Wagle said in a statement.

The Supreme Court ruled only a day after hearing arguments from attorneys. It was also less than three weeks after Attorney General Derek Schmidt, a Republican, filed a lawsuit against Kelly, Kansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Lawton Nuss and the Senate to resolve the dispute.

The Supreme Court appointed a substitute for Nuss, who removed himself. His attorneys told his colleagues that he had no position on how the case should be resolved.

The vacancy on the Court of Appeals was created by the retirement of longtime Judge Patrick McAnany on the day that Kelly took office in January.

The 2013 law says that if governor fails to make an appeals-court nomination within 60 days of a vacancy, Nuss makes the appointment. The deadline was March 15, the day Jack was nominated, and Wagle argued that Jack’s withdrawal meant Kelly failed to make a proper nomination in time.

Under the law, the Senate has 60 days to act on a nominee if the Legislature is in session, as it was when Kelly named Jack, or the nomination is deemed confirmed. The law says that if the Senate rejects a nominee, the governor appoints another.

Kelly cited that section of the law in arguing that she could name a new nominee, and she chose Sarah Warner, a 39-year-old Kansas City-area attorney.

It’s time to move forward and fill this vacancy,” Kelly said in her statement.

The 2013 law applies only to Court of Appeals appointments and doesn’t specifically say what happens if a nomination is withdrawn. A broader law applying to other appointments allows nominations to be withdrawn.

Justice Dan Biles wrote in the Supreme Court’s opinion that the Court of Appeals is “the obvious outlier” and the justices would be “adding words” to the 2013 law if they concluded that it allows an appeals court nomination to be withdrawn.

“We conclude the Governor is powerless to withdraw a Court of Appeals nominee once it is made,” Biles wrote.

If a nominee withdraws, Biles wrote, the only “practical purpose” is “clearing the path” for a quick vote against his or her confirmation. The court also concluded that Kelly’s nomination of Warner must be treated “as if it never happened.”

LAWRENCE COUNTY —One person died in an accident just after 5a.m. Friday in Lawrence County.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 1999 Dodge Ram driven by Michael T. Biggs, 51, Reed Springs, was eastbound on Interstate 44 six miles six miles east of Mount Vernon.

The pickup traveled off the right side of the road and struck a tree. A passenger Robert A. Addington-Wells, 37, was pronounced dead at the scene and transported to Lakin Funeral Home.

EMS transported Biggs to Cox South. He was not wearing a seat belt, according to the MSHP.