JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – Missouri could become the first state to tie student learning to teacher evaluations in its state constitution, if enough voters support a November ballot issue.

Proposed Constitutional Amendment 3 would require a majority of teachers’ evaluation scores be based on objective student performance data, which could include standardized tests.

The measure also would limit future teaching contracts to three years, ending the current tenure system that gives teachers indefinite job security after five years.

The group sponsoring the initiative recently announced that it won’t be campaigning for the measure, after public opinion polling showed a lack of support.

But some education groups still are campaigning against it. They say it could lead educators to “teach to the test.”

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri wildlife officials and deer hunters agree on one thing — something has to be done to reverse a continuing drop in deer population in the state.

The Department of Conservation reports Missouri hunters took 251,924 whitetail deer during last hunting season, the lowest total in a decade. In response, the state said hunters in some counties could take only one deer, rather than an unlimited number, during firearms season in the spring.

The Kansas City Star reports (http://bit.ly/1D9jJ2N ) more restrictions are being considered.

Missouri officials blame the drop on an outbreak of hemorrhagic disease and hunting regulations that allowed hunters to take an unlimited number of does in many counties.

Kansas is dealing with a declining population also but the numbers aren’t down as sharply as Missouri’s.

BY REBECCA FRENCH SMITH

Every good home canner knows timing is important at several stages in preserving food. There are set cook times, water bath times and pressure cooking times that must be adhered to if you hope to be eating that food several months from now.

Sunday afternoon I spent seven hours at a friend’s house putting up salsa and tomatoes. That’s only a couple of items for my winter pantry. Putting up food is hard work, which makes me thankful for the farmers who are harvesting, in the middle of calving season or already planning for the spring right now.

On Saturday prior to the canning fest, I had the pleasure of taking a few blogging and media guests to visit several Missouri farms — dairy, beef cattle and row crop — to learn how those farmers grow and raise food. It’s always fun to share our agriculture story with someone who is not familiar with how modern farming and ranching is accomplished. Today’s farmers and ranchers truly are high tech and environmentally conscious.

The most interesting stops involved technology — like the equipment shed — where everyone had something in common. Tablets. Computers. GPS. Heck, every person on the tour had a smartphone in his or her pocket. This connection lays the groundwork for them to understand the role the tools of precision agriculture play in growing food and keeping it safe and grown and raised responsibly.

The timing of these fall tours is a challenge as it is a particularly busy time for farmers. As harvest windows can be short or random or both, farmers understand timing. Good years have their challenges just as bad years do, and with one of the largest harvests on record expected, farmers are racing to get their crops in and stored. As usual, Mother Nature is not playing nice. Heavy rain has kept combines in the shed and not in the field where they need to be. But by most accounts, it will be a decent harvest this year. Grain bins are nearly full to overflowing and farmers are still in the fields.

My friend’s kitchen looked very similar, except overflowing with salsa and stewed tomatoes. A plentiful vegetable harvest meant lots of tomatoes and peppers that needed to be preserved and not wasted. With canning and harvest, as with most things, timing is everything.

Rebecca French Smith, of Columbia, Mo., is a multimedia specialist for the Missouri Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farm organization.

By Andy Marso
KHI News Service

TOPEKA — A state fund meant to diffuse the costs of medical malpractice claims is on stable footing, but the fund’s executive director said this week that legislators should not consider using reserve money for other purposes.

Chip Wheelen, executive director of the Kansas Health Care Stabilization Fund, said the fund is in a key transition period due to changes in new legislation.
That makes the financial future less certain. But even without those changes, Wheelen said, all the money in the fund should remain devoted to paying malpractice claims and the costs of administering the fund.

“It should never be used for anything other than its intended purpose,” he said, adding that the Health Care Stabilization Fund is a trust fund like the state employee pension fund and the unemployment insurance fund. Wheelen’s comments came during a Wednesday meeting of the Health Care Stabilization Fund Oversight Committee.

The stabilization fund helps pay malpractice claims above what is covered by a provider’s required malpractice insurance. It is funded through a surcharge on that insurance, as well as state funds allocated to cover University of Kansas medical residents.

While there is no legislative proposal to transfer money from the stabilization fund, the state faces a projected $260 million budget deficit in the general fund next fiscal year. Wheelen said talk of a stabilization fund transfer has surfaced even when the budget picture was much rosier.

“There have been rumors almost every year that some member of the Legislature has decided to take money from the Health Care Stabilization Fund and use it for some other purpose,” he said.

Wheelen said legislators likely would face legal action if they tried to follow through on such a plan.

There’s legal precedent inside and outside the state.

The Kansas Legislature made a series of transfers from other industry fee funds to close a budget deficit in 2009, only to have trade groups representing those who pay the fees file a lawsuit. Plaintiffs in the class action were represented by then-House Speaker Mike O’Neal.

In 2007, Wisconsin legislators transferred money from that state’s version of the Health Care Stabilization Fund. Within three days, the Wisconsin Medical Society filed suit.

A lower court initially ruled that the state was within its rights to reappropriate the money, but the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned that decision, 5-2.

In Kansas, years of taking in more than the fund was paying out have created a healthy reserve in the stabilization fund.

The Kansas stabilization fund has benefited from a $250,000 statewide cap on non-economic damages, commonly called “pain and suffering,” that has been in effect for decades.

The Legislature, after some prodding from the Kansas Supreme Court, agreed to gradually increase the cap to $350,000 by 2022 when it passed Senate Bill 311 last session.

That’s expected to eat into the stabilization fund reserves, though Wheelen said the effect is hard to predict.

“That does not mean there will be a 40 percent increase in every professional liability claim,” he said. “But it does mean there will be some increase. We just don’t know how much.”

Legislative changes in House Bill 2516 also define some 630 assisted living facilities throughout the state as heath care facilities that fall under the stabilization fund’s protection and provide immediate “tail coverage” for previous claims against them.

Russel Sutter, an actuary from the St. Louis consulting firm Towers Watson, said the stabilization fund is projected to have about $266 million in assets when the current fiscal year ends in July 2015.

Before the two bills went into effect, it was projected to pay out about $194 million in liabilities, leaving almost $72 million in projected reserves. The legislative changes increased the projected liabilities to just shy of $222 million, which drops the projected reserves to $44 million.

“In our view the $44 million still makes the fund financially strong,” Sutter said.

“At what point do you become concerned it’s too low?” Dennis George, a member of the oversight committee, asked Sutter.

“That’s a real judgment call,” Sutter said. “I think something south of 20 (million dollars) would make me nervous.”

Wheelen praised the state’s “fiscal discipline” for allowing it to sustain the stabilization fund for almost four decades. But he also expressed regret at the impending departure of Rep. David Crum, R-Augusta, who is chairman of the House Health and Human Services Committee.

“Over the last seven years we have had a guardian in the Legislature,” he said of Crum. “I’m really going to miss him. We’re sorry he’s decided to not run for reelection.”

Sen. Laura Kelly, D-Topeka, said she thought Wheelen was being generous in his praise of lawmakers, because while they had not tried to transfer money from the stabilization fund, they had failed at times to pay the state’s full share of the medical residents’ portion.

Kelly opposed the income tax cuts that caused the current projected state general fund deficit. She said an ill-advised raiding of the stabilization fund to make up some of the difference, while unlikely, could be floated next session.

“It’s always a possibility,” Kelly said. “But I think we’d probably end up in the same situation as Wisconsin. We’d be taken to court by the physicians, and they would win.”

 

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

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Catholic bishops have scrapped their landmark welcome to gays, showing deep divisions at the end of a two-week meeting sought by Pope Francis to chart a more merciful approach to ministering to Catholic families.

The bishops failed to approve even a watered-down section on ministering to gays that stripped away the welcoming tone contained in a draft document earlier in the week.

Two other paragraphs concerning the other hot-button issue at the synod — whether divorced and civilly remarried Catholics can receive communion — also failed to pass.

Francis insisted in the name of transparency that the full document be published with the voting tally. The document is to serve as the basis for future debate leading up to another meeting of bishops next October.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A Macy man charged with killing a bald eagle is arguing in federal court that prosecutors have greatly overvalued the bird at $10,000.

Lamar Bertucci says the eagle he shot in February is worth only about $2,000.

The Lincoln Journal Star reports that the bird’s worth could make a difference in Bertucci’s sentence. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jan Sharp says that in federal cases, the costlier the crime, the longer the time.

Bertucci pleaded guilty this year to shooting a bald eagle and a rough-legged hawk near Macy, crimes that carry up to 30 months in prison and $350,000 in fines.

Bertucci argues in his latest cast that when he was convicted in 2009 of possessing eagle parts, the bird was valued at $2,000.

 

KANSAS CITY (AP) – Developers plan to break ground this fall on a series of replica Major League Baseball stadiums for Little Leaguers in the southwest Missouri tourism mecca of Branson.

Backers of the Ballparks of America project are banking on being able to lure the growing number of youth traveling teams to the two-thirds-scale versions of stadiums. They’ll include Chicago’s Wrigley Field, Boston’s Fenway Park, St. Louis’ Busch Stadium and Detroit’s former Tiger Stadium.

Ballparks of America CEO Hamilton Chang says work on the $15 million first phase is scheduled to be finished in May. It will include building six stadiums and converting part of a former outlet mall into a cafeteria and dorms for traveling teams. In future phases, developers plan to build another 10 stadiums at a cost of $9 million.

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) — Criminal charges have been amended against a supremacist accused of fatally shooting three people at suburban Kansas City Jewish sites.

The Kansas City Star reports that 73-year-old Frazier Glenn Cross Jr. faces a single capital murder count for all three victims after Johnson County prosecutors dismissed a separate first-degree murder charge.

Cross, also known as F. Glenn Miller Jr., is accused of killing 69-year-old William Corporon and his 14-year-old grandson, Reat Griffin Underwood, in the parking lot of the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park, Kansas, on April 13. Prosecutors said Cross then went to the nearby Village Shalom senior care facility and killed 53-year-old Terri LaManno of Kansas City, Missouri.

The amended charges say the three were killed as part of a common scheme or course of conduct.