TOPEKA—Fifty-eight tornadoes were reported across Kansas in 2017. This is well below the 1990-2017 annual average of about 91 tornadoes, and Kansas’ 4th fewest annual total since 1990.

These numbers are preliminary and may change slightly over the next few months, according to the National Weather Service.

A tornado near Seward, Kansas. Photo courtesy of @StormChaser220. pic.twitter.com/c4IkysJbAS

— KDEM (@KansasEmergency) May 18, 2017

In addition, eight tornadoes occurred across Kansas last Christmas. They were the first ever to occur on Christmas Day, and a record number for December.

By CELIA LLOPIS-JEPSEN

Kansas lawmakers are facing an even tighter deadline to pass a new school finance law this session, after an attorney for the state encouraged them to finish their work on the topic less than two months into the coming 2018 legislative session.

Asked  by lawmakers last week what legal staff need to help make the state’s case, Arthur Chalmers urged them to aim for the start of March for handing off a new school finance bill rather than sometime closer to the date the Kansas Supreme Court set for filing the state’s arguments.

“April 30 is too late,” Chalmers told a House-Senate committee on school finance that is meeting outside the regular legislative session. “That’s when the brief is due.”

Once lawmakers pass the bill, he said, it still will need to reach the governor’s desk. Then the state’s legal team will need to collect committee meeting minutes and supplementary materials for the court and write a brief defending the Legislature’s response.

“The Legislature needs to make these difficult decisions and work something out, as a practical matter, by about March 1,” Chalmers said.

The Kansas Supreme Court found the state’s school finance formula unconstitutional in October and set an April 30 deadline for the Legislature and governor to address the court’s concerns and submit legal briefs defending their response.

Chalmers said in the last court round, state lawyers didn’t receive all the related minutes and materials from the Legislature until the day before the state’s brief was due.

Sen. Carolyn McGinn, chairwoman of the Senate’s budget committee, said she thinks Chalmers’ request to pass a bill by March 1 is “doable” but added: “We’re going to have to get down to some serious work.”

McGinn, a Sedgwick Republican, noted that a potential conversation about amending the Kansas Constitution could take up time in the Legislature.

“If that gets some legs, we’ll spend some time on that,” she said, “and we really need to work on addressing a response for the courts.”

Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, of Topeka, said it’s important to give the state’s lawyers the time they need to prepare their brief before they appear at the Kansas Supreme Court.

“If that’s what the state’s lawyer is telling us, then that’s a deadline we’ll have to meet,” Hensley said.

The special school finance committee — created to lay groundwork ahead of the 2018 session that starts in January — will meet again Tuesday to hear about the differences between the wording and obligations in the Kansas Constitution and those of other states.

The presentation by legislative staff comes as some lawmakers explore amending the state’s constitution, which currently requires the state to provide “suitable” funding for public schools.

Kansans added the provision in the 1960s by popular vote, and changing it would require a two-thirds majority in both chambers of the Legislature and a regular majority in a public referendum.

Proposals to amend the state constitution in relation to school finance — with the goal of restricting the authority of the judicial branch to weigh in on the matter — have cropped up in at least 15 Kansas legislative sessions since the early 1990s.

See a list of proposed school finance-related amendments since 1993

The topic was especially heated during the 2005 special session, when lawmakers came back to Topeka in June under a court order to add $143 million to schools by July 1 of that year. None of the multiple proposals introduced in 2005 made it out of the Legislature, though two of them passed the Senate.

Other proposals since the early 1990s also failed before reaching a referendum.

On Monday, Sen. Dennis Pyle, a Hiawatha Republican, announced he has filed a proposal to change the constitution in such a way that courts would not be allowed to cut off funding to schools — effectively closing them — as a way of enforcing rulings that the state’s school funding system is unconstitutional.

Celia Llopis-Jepsen is a reporter for the Kansas News Service, You can reach her on Twitter @Celia_LJ.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – Authorities say two people were injured after a house caught fire in south Kansas City.

Firetrucks were sent to the scene a little after 6 p.m. Sunday. Firefighters found a man just inside the front door of his burning home. A woman who’d been in the house but had gotten into a car was suffering from smoke inhalation. She and the man were taken to a hospital. Their names haven’t been released.

The fire cause is being investigated.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Topeka Zoo officials are expecting inspections of its elephant program after one of the elephants died.

Zoo director Brendan Wiley says the zoo expects to know by early January what killed the elephant, Shannon. The 35-year-old elephant died after spending about 20 hours lying on the ground over two days.

The elephant was found on the ground Dec. 10. She was lifted back up but was found on the ground again the next morning. She died that day.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports the zoo this week began using a remote video system to monitor the elephants at all times.

A California-based animal welfare organization says the Topeka Zoo was negligent for not better monitoring the elephant. In Defense of Animals wants zoo’s remaining elephants removed and the zoo’s accreditation revoked.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) – A 26-year-old southwest Missouri man is dead after apparently stepping in front of traffic while walking along an expressway and being hit by an SUV.

The Springfield News-Leader reports that Steven Mayer of Fair Grove was pronounced dead at the scene early Sunday.

Authorities say there was no indication that the SUV driver was impaired. An investigation continues.

Mayer was the 18th person to die in a traffic-related incident this year.

By CELIA LLOPIS-JEPSEN

A federal lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union questions the security of a multistate voter registration database championed by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.

Last week, the ACLU week added concerns about personal privacy and data security to its list of complaints against President Donald Trump’s voter fraud commission. The national organization also claims that the commission violated sunshine laws on public meetings and public documents.

Kobach is vice chairman of the commission, which has sought individual-level voter registration records from all 50 states, though some states refused to hand them over.

The ACLU lawsuit cites concerns that the data-gathering effort would become a target for hackers, and by way of example points to indications that Kansas’ multistate Crosscheck voter registration system may not be secure.

Read the updated ACLU v. Donald Trump brief

This fall at least two media outlets — the investigative nonprofit ProPublica and the tech site Gizmodo — uncovered security problems with Crosscheck, ranging from relying on an insecure server to sharing passwords via email. Sensitive information also was exposed through open records requests.

The defendants in the lawsuit have yet to file an answer to the ACLU’s complaints. Kobach’s office didn’t respond to a request Thursday for comment on the lawsuit’s references to Crosscheck.

The ACLU lawsuit, originally filed in July, is similar to a lawsuit filed the same day by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, among other legal complaints.

Origins in Kansas

Crosscheck, formally known as the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, began in 2005 under Ron Thornburgh, then Kansas secretary of state.

It has drawn renewed interest and scrutiny since Trump formed the voter fraud commission. Kobach sees Crosscheck as a tool for election integrity that allows participating states to compare records in search of double-registered voters. In August, for example, he touted it to the U.S. Department of Justice, calling it “one of the most important systems” Kansas uses to achieve voter roll accuracy.

But Crosscheck has come under fire from critics who say it makes for poor-quality data with negative consequences, creating significant risks that people with the same name and birthdate will be misidentified as people who are double-registered.

The critics have support from research published by a team of academics at four universities.

Read the paper by researchers at Harvard, Yale and other universities

The research team concluded that proposed voter registration purging strategies related to Crosscheck “would eliminate about 300 registrations used to cast a seemingly legitimate vote for every one registration used to cast a double vote.”

More states have concerns

Some states already participating in Crosscheck appear concerned about inadequate security in the wake of the ProPublica and Gizmodo reports.

Last month, the Idaho Statesman reported that Idaho’s top election official may end his state’s participation in Crosscheck over that issue.

The Lawrence Journal-World has reported in recent weeks that Kobach’s office also recently discussed the concerns with officials from participating states in a conference call and that his office is looking into Crosscheck’s security.

At least three states have pulled out of Crosscheck because of data quality concerns, and state participation is embattled in others.

Democrats in Illinois, for example, are renewing efforts to remove their state from Crosscheck after a proposal to do so narrowly failed at the state’s election board. And Indiana’s secretary of state is facing a lawsuit over her use of Crosscheck.

According to a June presentation by Kansas officials to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Crosscheck grew from a four-state, Midwest-focused program upon its creation to about 30 states and 100 million voter records by 2016.

By comparison, a separate multistate effort called the Electronic Registration Information Center has about 14 million records from 20 states and the District of Columbia. That system is governed by a board of directors.

Trump created his voter fraud commission in May and tasked it with ultimately submitting a report to him that in part identifies the “vulnerabilities in voting systems and practices used for Federal elections.” The commission last met in September.

Celia Llopis-Jepsen is a reporter for the Kansas News Service. You can reach her on Twitter @Celia_LJ.