SUE MANNING, Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A pet industry trade group says Americans spent $58 billion on their pets in 2014.

The American Pet Products Association says that includes $22 billion for food, $15 billion for veterinary care and $14 billion for supplies such as bowls and beds and medicines for fleas and ticks.

The fastest growing category was “other services,” which includes grooming, boarding, walking, training, daycare and even trips to the spa, where pets can get facials and massages.

The only category that decreased was sales of animals themselves. Association President and CEO Bob Vetere says the 2 percent drop was likely caused by many reasons, including strong adoption of pets at shelters and rescues and bans on dogs from puppy mills in several cities.

EMPORIA – Two Kansas teenagers were injured in an accident just after 6 p.m. on Thursday in Lyon County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2004 Hyundai Santa Fe driven by Clarissa Childress, 19, Westmoreland, was traveling on Kansas 99 one mile north of Emporia.

The vehicle rear-ended a 1991 GMC pickup driven by David Mauersberger, 38, Emporia.

Childress and a passenger in the Hyundai Morgan Schwinn, 19, Westmoreland, were transported to Newman Medical Center.

Mauersberger was not injured.
The KHP reported all were properly restrained at the time of the accident.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas Supreme Court’s newest justice and the only one appointed by Republican Gov. Sam Brownback has removed himself from hearing an education funding lawsuit.

The court said in a brief order Thursday that Justice Caleb Stegall wouldn’t participate. Stegall declined to comment through the court’s spokeswoman.

An attorney for four school districts suing the state said in December that Stegall should not sit with the high court on the case because he represented Brownback in unsuccessful settlement talks in 2013.

Stegall was Brownback’s chief counsel before the governor named him to the state Court of Appeals in 2013. Brownback elevated Stegall to the Supreme Court last year.

The high court noted that Stegall wouldn’t participate as it ordered more proceedings before a three-judge panel in Shawnee County District Court.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A legislative committee’s proposed budget for the Kansas higher education system would shift money away from Kansas State University and the main University of Kansas campus.

The Senate Ways and Means Committee on Thursday approved a higher education budget of $2.7 billion both for the fiscal year beginning July 1 and the following fiscal year.

The panel endorsed a subcommittee’s proposal to trim operating funds for the main University of Kansas campus in Lawrence by $4.6 million each year.

The money would go to the University of Kansas Medical Center to help it expand in Wichita and to provide scholarships for medical students.

Kansas State University would lose $3.2 million in operating funds each year.

But the committee said it could review the spending again later.

LA CYGNE, Kan. (AP) — Westar Energy has requested a $152 million rate increase from the Kansas Corporation Commission to pay for environmental upgrades and repairs at the state’s only nuclear plant.

The Topeka Capital-Journal  reports that the commission will evaluate the request for the La Cygne plant over several months. The Citizen’s Utility Ratepayer’s Board, businesses and others can intervene to argue for a lower rate or disagree with how the company plans to distribute the funds.

About half the request would be used to bring the plant in line with federal emissions standards.

The company is responsible for about $600 million, and has already recovered about half of that money through previous rate increases.

John Bridson, senior vice president of generation and marketing at Westar, said that the upgrades were required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission after a tsunami damaged the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan in 2011.

By ANDY MARSO

A 14-year-old Washington boy died of leukemia in 2007 after a judge ruled the state could not compel him or his legal guardian to accept blood transfusions that ran counter to their faith as Jehovah’s Witnesses .

Two years later, when the parents of a 13-year-old Minnesota boy with cancer did not want him to have chemotherapy because of their beliefs in natural healing, the state secured a court order compelling the treatment. The boy’s condition quickly improved.

In Kansas, when parents or guardians decline to provide their children treatment the medical community deems necessary, the state can use medical neglect statutes to compel treatment unless that treatment would run counter to religious beliefs determined to be legitimate by a judge.

A bill that overwhelmingly passed the Kansas Senate could alter that.

Sen. Forrest Knox, a Republican from Altoona, said he introduced Senate Bill 157 to keep schools from forcing parents to medicate children with behavior-control drugs like Ritalin, which is used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

But a prominent attorney and a doctor who studies bioethics say the proposal could have much wider implications, including strengthening the legal case for parents who object to medical treatments that could save their children’s lives — even if those children are already in the foster care system.

Under SB 157, the state could not compel parents to medicate their child if a single licensed physician supports their wishes.

“You can find one or two physicians in almost any state to say almost anything,” said Douglas Diekema, a doctor who has written about ethics in medicine for the University of Washington School of Medicine. “So it’s an interesting proposal, which I think is probably pretty flawed.”

In testifying for the bill, Knox said he introduced it because “often public schools and sometimes our mental health clinics push parents to medicate their children simply because the schools cannot otherwise control the children.”

“If parents, in consultation with their doctors, refuse to medicate their children, the schools often call the authorities, accuse the parents of medical neglect, and the children enter the (foster care) system as children in need of care,” Knox told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Two private citizens also testified for the bill, based on their experiences with the education system.

Rocky Nichols, executive director of the Disability Rights Center of Kansas, said overuse of behavioral control drugs is a legitimate concern, at least as it pertains to students with disabilities.

“We have heard all kinds of examples of parents being intimidated with CPS (Child Protective Services) because of them refusing to do all kinds of things, whether it’s use restraints on their child or medicate them,” said Nichols, whose organization lobbies on behalf of Kansans with disabilities. “CPS is used as a leverage inappropriately a lot.”

But Ron Nelson, a family law attorney in Johnson County, said Knox’s bill as written does not directly address that problem.

The bill never references schools, Nelson pointed out. It adds a paragraph to the state’s Child In Need of Care statutes that begins: “Nothing in this code shall be construed to permit any person to compel a parent to medicate a child if the parent is acting in accordance with medical advice from a physician.”

Nelson said the use of “any person” broadens the bill well beyond the school setting.

“So the language doesn’t address schools at all, but instead addresses children who have been or might be removed from a parent’s care because the child has been abused or neglected, is truant, or the parent is unable or unfit to care for the child,” Nelson said.

Nelson said the effect of the bill as written would be to make it much easier for parents to decline to provide medical treatments for their sick children.

“It is directly written to stop the state from stepping into a situation to treat a child who is not being adequately treated by a parent because that parent is following that parent’s view of what is best for the child,” Nelson said.

Knox said his intention was to protect parental rights, but not to allow for situations where any actual harm would come to a child. That’s why the bill requires parents to collaborate with a physician licensed by the Kansas Board of Healing Arts, he said.

“The whole safety valve here is you’ve got to have a doctor you’re working with,” Knox said.

Nelson said that part of the bill that does little to ensure a child will receive necessary treatment.

“As we all know, if you want someone to say something, you can always find someone to say it,” Nelson said.

Diekema agreed.

“I hate to say it, but there are physicians out there who do not follow the standards of care, don’t always practice good medicine and have some crazy ideas about treatment,” he said.

Diekema said that the issue of overmedicating school children with behavioral problems is worthy of policy debate and if Knox’s bill were crafted to specifically address that, he might be able to get behind it.

In the bill’s current form, he said he’s very skeptical.

“I just don’t think it’s good for kids,” Diekema said. “It doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

The Department for Children and Families provided neutral testimony on the bill that urged the Senate committee to consider its implications for all of the state’s various protocols for medical treatment of children in need of care before and after they enter the foster care system.

No one testified against the bill.

The Senate passed it 38-2, with only Sen. Jeff Longbine and Sen. Vicki Schmidt, a pair of moderate Republicans, voting against it.

“I think that bill was poorly vetted,” said Schmidt, a pharmacist. “We should be speaking to family law experts about it and folks in the medical profession about it. Because that is a very broad bill.”

Longbine said he also thought the bill was overly broad and had concerns it could amount to a philosophical exemption that would allow parents to send their children to Kansas schools unvaccinated if they found a physician who supported that decision. Kansas students currently must be vaccinated against certain diseases unless they have a documented medical or religious reason that prohibits them from being vaccinated.

Knox emphasized that his goal with SB 157 was to address the issue of over-medication of behavioral issues and to keep the refusal to medicate in those situations from being a basis for a child to be taken into state custody.

If there is a more effective way to do that, he said he trusts the House will change the bill as it goes through that chamber.

“I fall on both sides of this,” Knox said. “We’re definitely interested in preserving parental rights in this state, but when there’s actual harm, when there’s a causal relationship (between parents’ action and harm)… judges need to step in.”

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), member of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, recently sponsored bipartisan legislation to support pilots and general aviation. Over the past 10 years, 60,000 pilots have left the general aviation industry. Sen. Moran joined several of his Senate colleagues in introducing two bipartisan bills to help reverse this troubling trend – the General Aviation Pilot Protection Act and the Pilots Bill of Rights 2.

“These common-sense bills will allow general aviation to grow and prosper while providing vital protections to pilots and aircraft operators,” Sen. Moran said. “I am proud to be an original cosponsor of the General Aviation Pilot Protection Act and the Pilots Bill of Rights 2, two important steps toward ensuring a brighter future for general aviation.”

For many pilots, the current process of obtaining a third-class medical certificate has become burdensome and expensive, while providing very little benefit to the industry. The General Aviation Pilot Protection Act of 2015 (S. 573), introduced by U.S. Senator John Boozman (R-Ark.), extends the 2004 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) sport pilot rule to include slightly larger aircraft, provided certain safety requirements.

The Pilot’s Bill of Rights 2 (S. 571), introduced by U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), would expand the third-class medical exemption for recreational pilots and broaden the protections provided in the original Pilot’s Bill of Rights, which was signed into law in 2012. In addition, S. 571 represents a significant improvement in the due process rights and liability protections for volunteer pilots by ensuring certificate holders have the right to appeal FAA decisions through a new, merit-based trial in Federal Court.

General aviation is the largest industry in Kansas, generating nearly $3 billion in annual exports and manufacturing 40 percent of all general aviation planes.

By Alyssa Scott

KU Statehouse Wire Service

TOPEKA – During the past 15 years, there has been a positive shift in juvenile justice systems across the country, but Kansas is lagging slightly behind, according to data presented at a joint House and Senate Corrections Committees meeting Wednesday.

Nationally, states have reduced the population of youth in confinement by nearly 50 percent, while Kansas has reduced its rate by less than 40 percent.

Josh Weber, program director for juvenile justice at the Council of State Governments Justice Center, said in his report that Kansas does not have statewide criteria to help judges and court service officers determine the most appropriate level of supervision is for youth offenders, which might result in inefficient placement within those levels.

“Theoretically, those levels of supervision should match the youth’s risk of reoffending and the severity of their offenses,” Weber said. “There’s a real misalignment between the supervision levels available, the use of resources and trying to match those to a youth’s risk of reoffending.”

Approximately 75 percent of all youth assigned to secure facilities and case management placements are considered to be low-to-moderate risk offenders, meaning that it is unlikely for them to commit another offense in the future. Weber said research has shown that being placed in these secure facilities is detrimental to low-risk youth.

“Generally what research has shown is that residential placement, particularly very restrictive residential placement, can actually increase the likelihood of recidivism for lower risk youth,” Weber said. “Those expensive placements, $90,000 per year in Kansas annually for a youth in a secure facility, really should be reserved for the highest risk youth.”

Weber said his overall goal is to work with the Kansas Department of Corrections to reduce the state’s levels of youth recidivism – the rate an offender will be a repeat offender. While these levels are comparable to other states, Weber said they are higher than they should be. Thirty percent of youth placed on case management are re-incarcerated in juvenile or adult systems within a three-year period, and this increases to 42 percent for youth who are placed in secure juvenile correctional facilities.

In addition to a lack of guidelines for judges and court officers, there is a lack of communication between authorities and the KDOC, resulting in an inability to manage statistics about youth offenders. Rep. Blaine Finch (R-Ottawa) voiced his concern about the failure to collect data across the juvenile justice system.

“Service providers and KDOC staff who work further down the stream don’t know what happened at the front end of the system, so they may be providing services for youth and interventions that have been already tried and failed, and so there’s not a really streamlined efficient use of services and resources,” Weber said.

Rep. John Rubin (R-Shawnee), chairman of the House Corrections and Juvenile Justice Committee said based on the presentation and comments from KDOC, change is necessary to facilitate improvement in the system.

“This presentation has given us a lot to ponder, Rubin said. “I would say, certainly not for the Department of Corrections, who I know you’ve been working with and is well aware, but for us on the legislature, I dare say this is somewhat of a wake up call for us.”

Robin Olsen, manager at Pew Charitable Trusts, said data has shown that voters across all political parties and various demographics support a change to the juvenile justice system.

“Eighty-five percent of voters agreed with the statement, ‘It does not matter whether a juvenile offender is sent to a corrections facility or supervised in the community. What really matters is that the system is doing a better job of making sure they’re less likely to commit another crime,’” Olsen said.

Alyssa Scott is a University of Kansas junior from Wichita majoring in journalism and French.