MOBERLY (AP) – The city of Moberly is working to repair its credit rating after plans for an artificial sweetener factory collapsed.
The Columbia Daily Tribune reports the city council passed two resolutions designed to convince a financial investment services firm that the city was a safe investment.
Standard & Poors firm downgraded Moberly’s credit rating from “A” to “B” in 2011 after it defaulted on payments on the plant’s construction.
Moberly’s city manager says the new policies takes practices the city has had for years and puts them on the books.
Bruce Cole, CEO of Mamtek U.S. Inc., convinced Moberly officials to issue $39 million in bonds and $17 million in tax credits for the plant he said would employ 600 people. Cole pleaded guilty to two counts of securities fraud and one count of theft.
The plant never materialized as the plan collapsed financially before construction finished. Cole has pleaded guilty to two counts of securities fraud and one count of theft.
TOPEKA, KAN. – A Topeka man was indicted Wednesday on a federal charge of conspiring to buy firearms and unlawfully transfer them to a buyer in another state, U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom said.
Donald Gene Garst, 52, who is in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons, is charged with one count of conspiring to unlawfully transfer firearms. The indictment alleges that on Aug. 16, 2013, Garst was referring to firearms when he told an unindicted co-conspirator that there was a lot of money to be made in “women’s shoes” and that they should acquire all the “women’s shoes” they could.
On Sept. 13, 2013, another unindicted co-conspirator rented space at Quality Storage Facility, 426 E. 6th in Holton, Kan. The next day, she took out a loan of $1,500 and purchased a Cobra Model FS380 pistol and a New Frontier Armory Model LW-15 rifle. She put them in a suitcase belonging to Garst for delivery to the storage facility. She gave Garst the combination to the storage locker so that he could pass it on to a person from another state who would retrieve the firearms and leave $2,800 in an envelope marked “Barney” to pay for the firearms. On Sept. 19, 2013, the purchaser entered the storage locker and retrieved the firearms.
If convicted, Garst faces a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison and a fine up to $250,000. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives investigated. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jared Maag is prosecuting.
Jason Hooper, president of KVC Hospitals, a subsidiary of the Olathe-based KVC Health Systems.-Photo by Dave Ranney
By Dave Ranney
KHI News Service
TOPEKA — A coalition of behavioral health programs will receive a $1 million grant for services aimed at reducing the number of people with severe mental illnesses being referred to Osawatomie State Hospital or finding their way into the state’s correctional system, Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Secretary Kari Bruffett said Wednesday.
The grant will help the coalition provide crisis services in south-central Kansas, including the Wichita area, according to KDADS. The coalition includes mental health and substance abuse programs in Butler, Cowley, Sedgwick and Sumner counties.
The grant, a one-time allocation, is part of a $9.5 million mental health initiative announced by Gov. Sam Brownback in May.
Addressing a meeting of the Kansas Mental Health Coalition on Wednesday, Bruffett said the coalition’s services may prove to be similar to those at Rainbow Services Inc. (RSI), a Kansas City-based program that since April, according to KDADS data, has kept more than 250 would-be patients out of Osawatomie State Hospital and more than 60 out of jail.
“On the ground, the coalition’s model may look very different from that of RSI,” she said. “But the goals will be very similar.”
RSI is housed in the former Rainbow Mental Health Facility building near the University of Kansas Medical Center.
KDADS converted the state-owned inpatient facility to a privatized detox and crisis stabilization unit earlier this year, contracting with the community mental health centers in Johnson and Wyandotte counties and the Heartland Regional Alcohol and Drug Assessment Center.
The grant-funded services also are intended to offset the community mental health centers’ costs of caring for the uninsured, Bruffett said.
ComCare, the community mental health center in Sedgwick County, will administer the grant on behalf of the coalition.
Eventually, Bruffett said, the two initiatives – RSI and the south-central Kansas coalition – will give KDADS a “better idea” on where to invest state resources in the future.
In recent weeks, record numbers of patients have been admitted to Osawatomie State Hospital despite the RSI-fueled reductions in referrals from Johnson and Wyandotte counites.
Caring for patients in a state hospital setting is significantly more expensive than caring for them in community-based settings.
Several coalition members expressed support for RSI but raised concerns about unofficial reports that KDADS had disbanded its “Hospital to Home Transformation Work Group,” a long-standing advisory committee charged with helping the department define the mission of the state hospitals in Osawatomie and Larned and respond to issues affecting admissions and discharges.
Bruffett said the committee’s role had been delegated to the Governor’s Behavioral Health Planning Council, which has several subcommittees assigned to topics affecting the state hospitals.
“There is no intention to say that these topics don’t need to be talked about,” she said. “They’re what the planning council is talking about.”
Coalition members also heard an informational presentation by Jason Hooper, president of KVC Hospitals, a subsidiary of the Olathe-based KVC Health Systems.
VC Hospitals owns and operates two inpatient mental health facilities for children, ages 6 to 18, on behalf of the state: Prairie Ridge Hospital, with 49 beds, in Kansas City, and Wheatland Hospital, with 24 beds, in Hays.
Hooper said that in the fiscal year that ended July 1, the two hospitals admitted 2,393 children. The average patient age was 13.5, and their average length of stay was six to seven days.
At Prairie Ridge, he said, a third of the patients are in foster care, a third are private referrals and a third are from out of state, primarily Missouri.
Three-fourths of the patients at Wheatland are private referrals while a fourth are in foster care.
The hospitals, Hooper said, are seeing ever-rising numbers of children with suicidal intentions, “substance issues that require detox,” or increasingly complex medical and clinical diagnoses.
“A lot of this dates back to the trauma that these children have experienced,” he said. “And when you throw in the clinical complexities and all of the substance abuse, it’s pretty clear we’re looking at the deep end of the population. It’s pretty scary, actually.”
Many of the children, Hooper said, arrive at the hospitals displaying “a lot of hopelessness. Unfortunately, these are children who are literally checking out. Their parents are not wanting to take them back into their homes and not wanting to engage in the healing process … much less in the treatment process.”
By KHI NEWS SERVICE
TOPEKA — A new report from the nonpartisan Rockefeller Institute of Government says that changes in federal tax policy are not the main cause of a steep drop in Kansas revenue collections.
The report says while the federal changes, which caused people to shift when they took capital gains, are the main cause of revenue declines in many states, Kansas and Alaska are exceptions.
“Twenty-nine states reported declines in overall tax collections, with Kansas and Alaska reporting the largest declines at 21.9 and 15.7 percent, respectively,” the report says. “The large declines in Alaska are mostly due to declines in oil and gas severance taxes, while the declines in Kansas are mostly attributable to legislative tax changes.”
At Gov. Sam Brownback’s urging, Kansas legislators cut income tax rates in 2012 and again 2013. When fully implemented in 2019, the cuts will have reduced the state’s top income tax rate by 40 percent and eliminated income taxes for the owners of more than 190,000 businesses.
The Rockefeller Institute report says that income tax collections in the second quarter of this year were down by 43 percent compared to the same period last year. That is the largest drop of any state.
The drop in revenue will lead to a budget shortfall of nearly $240 million by July of 2016 unless lawmakers cut spending in the current budget year, according to projections compiled by the nonpartisan Kansas Legislative Research Department.
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill today released the following statement after Ford announced that its Kansas City Assembly Plant will add 1,200 new jobs and a second shift for its Transit van, bringing Ford to 6,000 hourly workers at the plant:
“Investing in the hardworking folks of Kansas City is a smart business decision by Ford. When companies invest in the Kansas City area, they continue this vibrant community’s trend of economic expansion, and send an unmistakable signal to other employers that Kansas City is the right place to create new job opportunities.”
Ford recently began production on its Ford Transit vans at the Kansas City Assembly Plant following a $1.1 billion investment that created 2,000 jobs. Ford’s plant in Claycomo, near Kansas City, consistently ranks among the most productive auto plants in the United States.
Missouri ranks among the top 10 states in automobile production. Nearly one-third of Missouri’s counties have auto industry employment concentrations that exceed the national average. Given the importance of the auto industry to Missouri’s economy, McCaskill has made advocating for auto jobs a priority since being elected to the U.S. Senate. McCaskill testified before the International Trade Commission in December 2010 and March 2012 to advocate for trade policies to protect jobs at Missouri auto part manufacturing facilities. She also wrote to the Obama Administration in November 2011 and July 2012 raising concerns about barriers Japan has imposed the keep U.S. automakers from competing in the Japanese auto market.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Homeland Security Department is acknowledging that tens of thousands of young families caught crossing the border illegally this year subsequently failed to meet with immigration agents, as they were instructed.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement confided to immigration advocates during a private meeting in Washington that about 70 percent of families the Obama administration had released into the interior of the U.S. never showed up as directed. The Associated Press obtained an audio recording of the meeting.
The estimate means roughly 41,000 members of immigrant families failed to appear.
The government official was not identified on the recording. The official separately said that deportation had been ordered for 860 people caught traveling as families at the border since May, but only 14 people had reported as ordered.
GILLMAN CITY- Two people were injured in an accident just before 1 p.m. on Thursday in Harrison County.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 1998 Ford driven by Frances A. Stagner, 32, Gallatin, was eastbound on Route H just northwest of Gillman City. The vehicle’s emergency brake was accidently activated and it began to spin. It went off the north side of the road and struck a ditch.
Stagner and a passenger in the vehicle Noah C. McCrary, 22, Gillman City were transported to Harrison County Hospital.
The MSHP reported they were not wearing seat belts
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republican Attorney General Derek Schmidt wants a chance to argue in court that Kansas Democrats are legally obligated to pick a new nominee for U.S. Senate.
Schmidt’s office Thursday asked a three-judge panel in Shawnee County District Court for permission to file friend-of-the-court arguments in a disgruntled voter’s lawsuit. A hearing in the case is set for Monday.
Democratic nominee Chad Taylor dropped out of the race against Republican Sen. Pat Roberts. The move was seen as helping independent candidate Greg Orman and hurting Roberts’ re-election prospects.
David Orel of Kansas City, Kansas, sued last week after the Kansas Supreme Court allowed Taylor’s name to be removed from the Nov. 4 ballot.
Orel is a longtime registered Democrat, though his son works on Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s re-election campaign.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Couples challenging Missouri’s refusal to recognize same-sex marriages legally performed in other states say there is no public interest in denying them the same rights as married heterosexuals.
American Civil Liberties Union attorney Anthony Rothert told a Jackson County judge on Thursday that refusal to honor same-sex marriages amounts to state-sanctioned discrimination.
Assistant Attorney General Jeremiah Morgan said Missouri voters approved a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage by a large margin in 2004, and that the U.S. Supreme Court has said states have the right to define marriage.
Ten couples who were legally married elsewhere are suing top state officials and the city of Kansas City for violating their due process and equal protection rights.
Circuit Judge James Dale Young didn’t say when he would have a ruling.
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KANSAS CITY (AP) – A Kansas City judge is preparing to hear arguments in a Jackson County lawsuit challenging Missouri’s rejection of same-sex marriages that have been performed in other states.
Ten same-sex couples who were married in other states are suing Kansas City and state officials, including Gov. Jay Nixon and Attorney General Chris Koster, for violating their due process and equal protection rights under the U.S. Constitution.
The plaintiffs say Missouri recognizes different-sex marriages performed elsewhere and that under a 2013 Supreme Court ruling it is obligated to treat same-sex marriages the same way. They are seeking a permanent injunction requiring the state to recognize all same-sex marriages performed in other states.
The lawsuit is one of at least three legal challenges to Missouri’s ban on same-sex marriages.
DETROIT (AP) — Chrysler is recalling nearly 350,000 cars and SUVs to fix ignition switches that could unexpectedly shut off the engines.
The recall covers 2008 Jeep Commander and Grand Cherokee SUVs, Chrysler 300 and Dodge Charger sedans, and Dodge Magnum wagons. All were built before May 12, 2008.
Chrysler says the ignitions may not fully return to the “on” position after being started. The switches could move to “accessory” or “off.” That could shut off the engine and knock out power-assisted steering and other features.
Chrysler knows of one crash and no injuries from the problem. It’s telling people to use the key alone in the ignition and confirm that switches have returned to “on” after starting their cars.
Chrysler is investigating the cause. Customers will be notified when repairs are ready.
