LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Independent candidate Greg Orman is not nearly as well known as his opponent in the U.S. Senate race in Kansas, three-term Republican incumbent Pat Roberts, but he’s not spending much time in public to raise his profile.
Instead, Orman, 45, is campaigning mostly through ads, social media and small invitation-only events. He’s hoping that staying under the radar will keep the attention on the embattled Roberts, who has been criticized for losing touch with his home state during his four decades in Washington.
Roberts, 78, complains that Orman is dodging questions that would show he’s a secret liberal. Roberts is conducting his most vigorous campaign in many years, touring towns across the state to meet voters.
FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) — Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon says he will create an independent commission to study issues that have surfaced since the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson.
The group will examine the social and economic conditions underscored by the unrest in the St. Louis suburb since a white police officer, Darren Wilson, shot and killed the unarmed, black 18-year-old on Aug. 9.
Nixon outlined his plan for the commission Tuesday at St. Louis Community College’s Florissant Valley campus. Members of the commission, which is through an executive order, will be announced next month.
Besides the study of conditions that led to the unrest, the group is also to come up with recommendations for making the St. Louis region a fairer place to live.
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FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) – Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon will be in Ferguson Tuesday to announce an effort that seeks to address issues raised in the wake of the death of Michael Brown.
The Democratic governor and local elected officials, police, civil rights leaders and others will reveal the plan during a 1 p.m. news conference at St. Louis Community College’s Florissant Valley campus. So far, there is no word about specific topics to be addressed.
Brown, 18 and black, was shot and killed on Aug. 9 by a white Ferguson police officer, Darren Wilson. Weeks of unrest have followed in the St. Louis County town. A state grand jury is deciding whether Wilson should face criminal charges. That decision is expected by mid-November.
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and challenger Paul Davis met to debate Tuesday at the Kansas Association of Broadcasters convention in Wichita. Watch the replay here.
Rosemary Maxwell spoke at last week’s meeting in Overland Park. Her 31-year-old daughter, Tiffany, has cerebral palsy. Credit Dave Ranney / KH
By Dave Ranney
Parents of adult children with developmental disabilities say state officials are breaking a pledge made during negotiations last year that led legislators to include Medicaid-funded home- and community-based services for the developmentally disabled in the state’s KanCare program.
“I have one thing I want to say to the (Kansas) Department for Aging and Disability Services: ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire,’” said Susan Jarsulic, whose 35-year-old daughter, Jayne, has severe physical and developmental disabilities.
Jarsulic and others are upset over reports that a “health home” initiative recently announced by KDADS includes language that encourages – but stops short of requiring – KanCare companies to let developmentally disabled Kansans keep their current case managers if they so choose.
During several hearings last year, state officials promised families that if KanCare were to take over management of services for the developmentally disabled, beneficiaries’ families would be allowed to keep their case managers, who would help them navigate the new system. Legislators, in turn, agreed to the so-called KanCare “carve in.”
Case managers play a key role in assessing beneficiaries’ needs, determining which services they need to continue living in community-based settings, arranging for those services and making sure they’re provided.
“My daughter’s case manager has been with her for 18 years now,” Jarsulic said. “She’s wonderful. She knows Jayne, she knows the system and she really knows how to get things done.”
Under the KDADS health home initiative, KanCare health care providers – a group that includes physicians, safety-net clinics, mental health centers and home health agencies – are eligible for additional funding for integrating primary and behavioral health care with services designed to help people live in community-based settings rather than institutional care. A health home is not a place but a concept of care delivery built on close coordination among a patient’s medical providers so that health crises can be prevented or reduced.
The plan, Jarsulic said, included language that encouraged but did not require health home providers to allow beneficiaries to keep their case managers.
The change created a loophole that could lead to some families losing their case managers, she said, undercutting their abilities to advocate for their loved ones.
“Let’s be honest about this,” Jarsulic said. “This is just a back-door way of getting rid of the case managers that we’ve come to know and trust, and letting the managed care companies do whatever they want to do.”
Jarsulic, who lives in Shawnee and runs a Lenexa-based activity program for 10 severely disabled adults, is active in Provider Advocate Coalition of Kansas (PACK), a group that organized a town hall-style meeting here last week that included nearly 200 parents, case workers, service providers, and KDADS Secretary Kari Bruffett.
Nearly 200 parents, case workers, service providers and state officials attended a town hall meeting last week at Overland Park Christian Church, where a new health home initiative for developmentally disabled Kansans was discussed. Credit Dave Ranney / KHI News Service
Bruffett assured the audience that KDADS is in full support of families keeping their case managers.
The decision to encourage rather than require the arrangement, she said, was driven in large part by federal policies that consider case management to be a service that a health home would provide.
“CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) does not allow us to bill for both kinds of services,” Bruffett said, adding that the two services – health home coordination and case management – are considered duplicative.
But there is nothing to stop a health home provider from subcontracting with a beneficiary’s case manager on its own, she said.
And, Bruffett said, anyone who’s assigned to a KanCare health home that doesn’t allow them to keep their case manager can switch to a health home that does or opt out of health homes altogether.
“You don’t have to be in a health home,” Bruffett said. “We’d like you to be in one, but you don’t have to be in one.”
Those who opt out of their health homes, she said, will be allowed to keep their case managers.
It’s not yet known how many providers of health homes intend to contract with enrollees’ case managers.
Marilyn Kubler, a PACK facilitator, said the group is not yet aware of any families losing their case managers.
“We’ll know more in November, which is when the health homes (for the mentally ill) really get started,” she said. “But right now, no, we’re not aware of anybody being told they don’t get to keep their case managers. Our fear is that this is something that could happen, which is why we’re speaking up.”
KDADS launched its health home initiative in late July, limiting enrollment to KanCare beneficiaries who have a serious and persistent mental illness (SPMI).
Bruffett said department officials hope to have health homes for beneficiaries with chronic illnesses – diabetes and asthma, primarily – up and running in January.
According to KDADS records, letters were mailed to 25,770 SPMI beneficiaries across the state, informing them that they had been assigned to a health home provider in their area.
Almost 1,800 of these letters went to beneficiaries who were thought to be developmentally disabled and mentally ill.
Several parents in the audience said they resented KDADS assuming that their developmentally disabled sons and daughters were mentally ill.
Rosemary Maxwell, whose 31-year-old daughter, Tiffany, has cerebral palsy, was among those who were upset.
“Are you kidding me?” Maxwell said. “Anyone who knows Tiffany knows that she is not mentally ill.”
Maxwell said that when she called KDADS to find out why her daughter had been assigned to a health home, she was told that Tiffany had been diagnosed with depression.
“That did not happen,” she said. “Tiffany has never been diagnosed with depression. Somebody made that assumption because she takes Wellbutrin for neuropathic pain and Valium for spasticity.”
Maxwell said Tiffany opted out of her health home assignment because she isn’t mentally ill, her health care already is well-coordinated and she didn’t want to risk losing her case manager.
Other parents complained about not being involved in the process. As a result, they said, they weren’t anticipating the health home assignments.
“There’s no trust,” said Patty Hink, whose 37-year-old son is autistic. “There was before KanCare, but there isn’t anymore.”
Angela de Rocha, director of communication at KDADS, said the agency was committed to finding ways to “communicate better” and restoring the families’ confidence in the system.
“There needs to be more trust, and that goes both ways,” de Rocha said. “We need to trust them and they need to trust us, because everyone’s intentions are good. Everyone’s trying to make things better.”
Dave Ranney is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.
WASHINGTON (AP) — New U.S. rules aimed at getting banks to take on more of the risk when they package and sell mortgage securities are being relaxed with an eye to spurring broader home lending.
Federal regulators have dropped a key requirement: a 20 percent down payment from the borrower if a bank didn’t hold at least 5 percent of the mortgage securities tied to those loans on its books.
The long-delayed final rules unveiled Tuesday by six federal agencies include the less stringent condition that borrowers not carry excessive debt relative to their income.
The board of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was voting Tuesday to adopt the rules.
The rules, proposed in stricter form in 2011, were mandated by the overhaul law enacted in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
TOPEKA, KAN. – A man pleaded guilty Monday to an armed robbery at a Wendy’s restaurant in Topeka, U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom said.
George Christopher Walton, Jr., 37, Topeka, Kan., pleaded guilty to one count of robbery and one count of brandishing a firearm during the robbery. In his plea he admitted that on Aug. 4, 2014, he entered the Wendy’s restaurant at 728 S.W. Topeka Blvd. dressed all in black, wearing a mask and brandishing a firearm. He demanded cash from the register and then fled with the money.
Walton got into a car driven by his daughter and co-defendant Tashaun Desanic Walton. Police chased the car for several minutes before it stopped and Walton jumped out. He was captured a short while later in a residential area.
Sentencing is set for Jan. 26. Both parties have agreed to recommend a sentence of 84 months in federal prison.
His daughter, co-defendant Tashaun Desanic Walton, is set for a change of plea hearing Nov. 3.
Grissom commended the Topeka Police Department, the FBI and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jared Maag for their work on the case.
In all cases, defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty. The indictments merely contain allegations of criminal conduct.
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — A local attorney’s attempt to decriminalize the cultivation of marijuana has been defeated by the Columbia City Council.
The City Council voted 4-3 Monday against approving a proposed ordinance that would have let residents grow up to two marijuana plants within city limits. Those who opposed the measure were concerned about creating a disconnect between state and federal law, which still punishes people for growing the plant.
Dan Viets, the local attorney who authored the proposal, tells the Columbia Daily Tribune he’s disappointed with the council’s vote.
Before the City Council took a final vote, one council member proposed an amendment that didn’t pass. It would have deleted words related to cultivating marijuana for non-medical use and left in sentences that relaxed penalties for growing the plants for medical use.
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill today responded to California Senator Dianne Feinstein’s proposal of a friendly wager on the outcome of the 2014 World Series, which pits the Kansas City Royals against the San Francisco Giants.
McCaskill, confident in a Royals World Series victory after their recording-breaking 8-0 start in the playoffs, wagered Kansas City’s legendary Arthur Bryant’s BBQ, to be washed down with beer from Kansas City’s Boulevard Brewing Company. Feinstein wagered a number of Bay Area staples, including Petits Pains brioche, Boudin Bakery sourdough bread, Dungeness crab, Ghirardelli chocolates, Cowgirl Creamery cheese, and Anchor Steam beer—all of which McCaskill eagerly anticipates collecting at the end of the series.
“Anyone who likes baseball and has watched this team has fallen in love,” McCaskill said. “I look forward to the Royals showing the Giants what the word team really means.”
The Royals’ recent 4-0 sweep to defeat the Baltimore Orioles for the American League pennant, combined with an earlier win over the Oakland Athletics in the American League Wild Card game and a 3-0 sweep of the Los Angeles Angels, earned the team baseball’s first-ever 8-0 record in the playoffs. The Royals are 4-0 against California teams in this year’s playoffs and dominated the Giants in a 3-0 sweep when the teams last met in August in Kansas City.
Having been absent in the World Series for 29 years, the Royals’ 2014 Cinderella story has captivated baseball fans across Missouri and throughout the country – fans who will be heard loud and clear when the Royals take home the Series championship.
BUFFALO, Mo. (AP) — One of three people charged in the death of a 15-year-old southwest Missouri girl will be sentenced in December for his role in her case.
Dallas County authorities say 40-year-old Larry Warner of Springfield pleaded guilty last Friday to endangerment and conspiracy in Khighla Parks’ death in September 2012. Warner was originally also charged with second-degree murder.
KYTV reports that Warner said he took Parks and Anthony Balbirnie to the home of Amy Leigh Hartley in Buffalo but later left. Prosecutors allege Balbirnie killed Parks during sex and he and Hartley dumped her body in Truman Lake.
Balbirnie is scheduled for trial in March. Hartley is scheduled for a hearing next week on several charges, including statutory sodomy and abandonment of a corpse.
Lee during his summer trip to Kansas City- courtesy photo
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A die-hard long-time Kansas City Royals fan from Seoul who was superstitiously credited with sparking the team’s playoff run is headed for Missouri to watch the Royals appear in their first World Series since 1985.
A group of American fans helped Sung Woo Lee arrange a visit to Kansas City in August so he could watch a Royals game in person for the first time. By the time Lee returned to Seoul, the Royals, perennial also-rans, had won nine out of 10 games and rose to first place in their division.
Lee, a 38-year-old duty free shop employee, is reluctant to make World Series predictions due to concerns about jinxing the team. But he says he can’t help imagining a celebration with Royals’ players in a champagne-soaked locker room.
