Topeka, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Lawton Nuss is giving the State of the Judiciary address next Wednesday from the courtroom of the Supreme Court.

The public also can follow the address on Kansas judiciary’s website. Nuss said in a news release that he chose to webcast the address because of public interest into how the state budget shortfalls will impact the judiciary.

Nuss will also provide a written report on the judiciary to the governor and state legislature as required by Kansas law.

SALINA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas has been awarded $13 million from the Agriculture Department for a multi-state project designed to improve water quality through the use of forestry practices.

The award is among 100 projects across the nation funded through the new Regional Conservation Partnership Program in the Farm Bill.

The Natural Resources Conservation Service says in a news release that the project aims to sustain reservoir storage and wildlife habitat, improve drinking water supply and boost recreational uses.

Kansas also received $2.4 million slated for irrigation water management on the High Plains Aquifer in Kansas. That project includes moisture probes and water metering that will give producers and crop consultants real-time monitoring.

Another $800,000 is going to a Kansas project to improve management of pheasant habitat.

By ANDY MARSO

Experts on rural Kansas hospitals made dire predictions about their fiscal futures in a legislative hearing Wednesday that laid the groundwork for a discussion of Medicaid expansion.

Rep. Tom Sloan, chairman of the Vision 2020 Committee, said that he’s trying to start a discussion about crafting an expansion plan that addresses the needs of stakeholders and the concerns of those wary of its connections to the Affordable Care Act.

“I’ve heard the governor and legislative leaders say they don’t want the Affordable Care Act, but they would like to see a ‘Kansas’ plan,” said Sloan, a Lawrence Republican. “None of the other standing committees have had the time to devote to it. We’re going to.”

There’s no formal bill for expansion yet, but the Kansas Hospital Association continues to lobby for it through a more conservative approach, similar to those being taken by other states led by Republican governors.

Sloan’s committee spent Wednesday hearing about how the lack of expansion is affecting the finances of rural hospitals.

“In many of our rural areas, the hospital is the largest employer, or one of the top two or three employers in that area,” said Chad Austin, the hospital association’s senior vice president. “So they are a large economic engine.”

Melissa Hungerford, the hospital association’s executive vice president, said the future is uncertain for many of the state’s rural hospitals.

It’s difficult to recruit physicians to rural areas, she said, and with shrinking populations in a majority of Kansas counties, some hospitals no longer have the patient load to support their infrastructure.

“We’re going to have to look for ways to reduce costs and find efficiencies wherever we can, but at some point you can’t go any deeper,” Hungerford said. “And some of our hospitals are at that point already.”

Kansas is home to more small critical access hospitals than any other state. Medicaid expansion is a crucial issue for many of them, said Scott Taylor, CEO of St. Catherine Hospital in Garden City.

“This large number of critical access hospitals in western Kansas, many of whom require a county subsidy to keep their doors open, could benefit immensely from an expansion of Medicaid,” Taylor said in an interview earlier this week.

Additional Medicaid funding, Taylor said, would help to maintain “a health care infrastructure in rural Kansas” where patient volume is low and operating margins are thinner as a result.

Dennis Franks, CEO of Neosho Memorial Regional Medical Center, said at Wednesday’s committee hearing that expansion also would help reduce the amount of uncompensated care hospitals provide, because many uninsured Kansans who don’t qualify for ACA subsidies would be eligible for Medicaid.

Franks said patients without insurance coverage still receive care, but often in its most costly form: in the emergency room.

“What happens then is we all pay for that,” Franks said. “This expansion is going to cover a lot of that.”

He said his hospital contributed nearly $60 million to the Chanute and Neosho County economy in recent years through payroll and capital improvement projects. But Franks said more could be done if his facility was providing less uncompensated care.

Neosho Memorial serves an area of southeast Kansas where 12.5 percent of residents are uninsured and 20 percent live below the poverty level, he said.

That led to $1.4 million in “charity care” last year that the hospital could ill afford.

“We’re in one of the roughest times we’ve ever been in,” Franks said.

Without Medicaid expansion, the hospital will lose about $250,000 to $300,000 per year, he said.

Legislators had several questions about the possible effects of Medicaid expansion, with freshman Rep. Shannon Francis, a Republican from Liberal, asking how much uncompensated care the state’s hospitals were providing in total.

Austin said that figure is “just south of a billion dollars” annually.

The Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, decreased federal reimbursements for uncompensated care under the assumption that the law’s Medicaid expansion would reduce the number of uninsured — and the amount of uncompensated care.

But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that states cannot be compelled to expand their Medicaid programs. In states like Kansas and Missouri that have chosen not to expand Medicaid, hospitals have lost their uncompensated care reimbursements and not gained the new Medicaid money.

“That’s put many of our local hospitals in a bit of a bind, yes,” Francis said.

Medicaid expansion has been a political nonstarter in Kansas for years because President Obama and the health care reforms he spearheaded remain unpopular with some voters and legislators. Opponents have expressed concern that the federal government will renege on its commitment to fully fund expansion in its early years and then fund at least 90 percent after that.

House Speaker Ray Merrick is opposed to expansion. But Sloan said House leaders have neither encouraged nor discouraged his hearings on the issue, and his committee will continue to explore it.

“It’s still a long shot, but at least we’re starting,” Sloan said. “We’re actually having a productive discussion now about what a KanCare expansion or Medicaid expansion plan should look like or include. That’s a step in the right direction.”

Andy Marso is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.

By DAVE RANNEY, Heartland Health Monitor

A federal judge has blocked implementation of a U.S. Department of Labor regulation that would have required state Medicaid programs to pay in-home care workers minimum wage and overtime.

“The judge vacated the regulation,” said Mike Oxford, executive director at the Topeka Independent Living Resource Center, a nonprofit program that helps arrange in-home services for people with physical disabilities. “That means he threw the whole thing out. It’s gone.”

The ruling on Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington, D.C., upheld a 40-year-old provision in the Fair Labor Standards Act that allows some care workers to be paid less than minimum wage.

“This is a very good thing for Kansas,” Oxford said. “If the regulation had gone into effect like it was supposed to on Jan. 1, the state would have been in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, and every provider would have been exposed to lawsuits for overtime, double overtime, back pay and economic damages.”

The ruling, he said, in no way endorsed low wages for workers who care for the state’s frail elders and for people with disabilities.

“That’s not what this is about,” Oxford said. “This was about legislative process and how the Department of Labor went about doing what it did.”

In Kansas, he said, most attendant care workers are paid between $9.50 and $10 an hour — above the hourly minimum wage of $7.25. Most do not work more than 40 hours a week.

In August, Oxford and Kansas Department for Disability and Aging Services Secretary Kari Bruffett alerted legislators to the new rule’s potential for increasing costs and reducing access to Medicaid-funded services that help frail elders and people with disabilities live in community-based settings rather than in nursing homes.

At the time, Bruffett said the regulatory change could affect more than 10,700 Kansans receiving in-home services.

As many as 1,400 people, she said, could see reductions in sleep cycle support, a service that involves paying someone — often an adult family member — to stay with an individual who should not be left alone at night due to their disability or medical condition.

In Kansas, most sleep cycle support workers are paid about $25 per six-hour night, which is less than minimum wage. Many of these workers are related to those they are caring for.

Angela de Rocha, a KDADS spokesperson, declined to comment on the ruling, noting that department officials had not had time to review the 12-page decision.

The decision came in a lawsuit filed by the Home Care Association of America, International Franchise Association and National Association for Home Care and Hospice. The associations accused the Department of Labor of disregarding rejection of similar legislation by Congress on several occasions in recent years.

Bruffett filed a six-page affidavit in support of the plaintiffs’ claims, saying the regulatory change would create a “landscape of uncertainty” and potentially “disrupt services and supports for thousands of our most vulnerable Kansans.”

Offsetting the projected increases in sleep cycle support costs, she said, would cost “more than $30 million in all funds, or $21,428 per consumer.”

Last month, Judge Leon ordered the Department of Labor to temporarily delay implementation of the new rule.

In the order, Leon was harshly critical of the Labor Department, characterizing the new rule as “nothing short of yet another thinly-veiled effort to do through regulation what could not be done through legislation.”

The Department of Labor, Oxford said, could appeal Leon’s latest ruling. “They have that option,” he said, “but for now we can continue to provide home and community-based services like we have in the past.”

Dave Ranney is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.

JOHN HANNA, AP Political Writer

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republican Gov. Sam Brownback says budget problems won’t prevent Kansas from continuing to move toward eliminating its income taxes.

In prepared remarks distributed before the annual State of the State address Thursday night, Brownback also called for overhauling the state’s formula for distributing aid to public schools.

But Brownback wasn’t specific about how he plans to close projected shortfalls of more than $710 million in the state’s current budget and the one for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

The governor said only that he will present proposals Friday to balance the budget through June 2017.

The shortfalls occurred after legislators aggressively cut income taxes at Brownback’s urging to stimulate the economy.

Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley of Topeka said in the Democratic response that Brownback’s fiscal policies have failed.

MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — As predicted, this year’s flu vaccine is doing a pretty crummy job. Health officials say a new study shows it’s only 23 percent effective.

That’s one of the worst performances since the government started tracking how well vaccines work a decade ago. The best flu vaccines were 50 to 60 percent effective.

But this year, the vaccine doesn’t include the specific virus that is making most people sick. Early in the season, officials warned the vaccine probably would not work very well.

The study results were released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They studied about 2,300 people in five states who were sick.

OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — Olathe police say an 18-year-old man has been wounded in a shooting near a high school.

The Kansas City Star reported that the shooting was reported around 12:15 p.m. Thursday near Olathe Northwest High School. Police said that the victim was taken to a hospital in critical condition but was expected to survive. Police arrested a 17-year-old several hours later near the scene of the shooting.

Police said they don’t believe the shooting had anything to do with the high school. But students at the school and several others in the area were kept inside as a precaution during the search for the suspect.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Supporters of medical marijuana in Kansas are joining Democratic two state lawmakers at a Statehouse rally in favor of the Cannabis Compassionate Care Act.

Rep. Gail Finney, of Wichita, and Sen. David Haley of Kansas City filed medical marijuana bills prior to the start of this year’s legislative session. Similar measures have been filed since 2009, but none of them have made it to the discussion stage in committee.

In addition to Thursday’s rally, several medical cannabis groups also will be lobbying state lawmakers on behalf of patients and caregivers throughout the day.

More than 20 states across the U.S. have legalized the use of medical marijuana.

Finney says she thinks there’s a good chance the measure will get a hearing during this year’s session.