JEFFERSON CITY (AP) – Missouri dairy farmers are urging lawmakers to override Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto of legislation authorizing financial incentives for their industry.

The dairy cattle incentives are included in two broader agriculture bills that Nixon vetoed because they would shift regulation of deer farms from the Conservation Department to the Agriculture Department.

The deer provisions have dominated the public debate about the bills.

But the Missouri Dairy Association says the proposed industry incentives are important to keep farmers from closing their dairy operations.

The bills would authorize state subsidies to farmers participating in a new federal insurance program for dairy production that begins next week. They also would authorize 80 college scholarships of up to $5,000 each for students who work at dairy farms and remain in Missouri agriculture after graduation.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has appointed the top elections official in the state’s most populous county to another four-year term.

Kobach had a swearing-in ceremony Wednesday for Johnson County Election Commissioner Brian Newby. Newby has held the job since being appointed to fill a vacancy in January 2005. His current term expires Sunday.

The secretary of state appoints election commissioners in the state’s four most populous counties — Johnson, Sedgwick, Wyandotte and Shawnee. Elected clerks supervise elections in the state’s 101 other counties.

Johnson County has almost 378,000 registered voters, or nearly 22 percent of the 1.74 million statewide.

Newby is a former Sprint Corp. executive and Shawnee city council member. As election commissioner, he’s been honored by national groups for counties and election officials.

 

By Dan Margolies, KCUR

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Doctors at the University of Kansas Hospital have teamed with dozens of other transplant programs to urge delay of a proposal that would change how livers for transplant are distributed across the country.

The proposal, scheduled to be taken up in mid-September in Chicago, would have a profound effect on KU Hospital, which runs one of the top liver transplant programs by volume in the country, and other regional transplant centers.

Currently, donor livers are shared among the sickest patients within each of 11 regions in the country. KU benefits from that arrangement because organs are donated at a higher rate in this region than anywhere else.
KU performed 114 liver transplants in 2013, according to the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients. Only nine other programs nationwide exceeded that number.

The change under consideration aims to make access to donor livers more equitable by shrinking the 11 regions to eight or even four. That way, proponents of the change say, the very sickest patients — many of them on the East and West coasts, where donor rates are comparatively low — won’t have to wait years, as they often do now, for a transplant.

Dr. David Mulligan, a professor of surgery at Yale and chairman of the committee considering the proposal, said equalizing access will give the very sickest patients the same shot at survival as those with better access to livers.

“Patients can wait a little longer and they will be fine and they’re going to have excellent outcomes, and so will the people that have been dying with a chance of getting one who may be in areas that have less robust access to these organs,” he said recently.

The proposal, however, has roiled many transplant centers, particularly in regions of the country where donor rates are high. If the proposal is adopted, many donor organs from those centers’ regions will be shipped to other regions of the country, leading to longer wait times — and higher mortality rates, according to opponents of the change — for their patients.

Concerned about the effects of the proposal, 45 transplant center physicians and officials last week sent a strongly worded letter to the head of the federal agency that oversees organ donations, the Health Resources Services Administration. The signatories included Richard Gilroy, medical director of liver transplantation at KU, and Jameson Forester, director of abdominal transplantation at St. Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City, Mo.

“If this proposal becomes implemented without adequate and constructive improvements, it would represent the most drastic change in liver allocation ever and would significantly disadvantage many areas of the country currently able to serve their patient populations,” the letter stated.

The letter acknowledges that there is a critical shortage of donor livers in the United States — more than 12,000 patients are listed for liver transplants and only 6,000 transplants are performed annually — but urges further study before any changes are made to the way organs are allocated.

Opponents of the proposal say a better way to reduce the geographical disparities in organ access would be to increase organ donations in areas of the country where donor rates are low.

“Right now, the change in this policy is going to take a lot of livers that would otherwise be available for people here in the Midwest — and Midwesterners are donating them — and take those and go to the East Coast and the West Coast with them,” said Dr. Sean Kumer, a liver transplant surgeon at KU.

That, Kumer said, would merely change “where people die.” Instead, he said, regions with lower donor rates should be encouraged to emulate the KU region, where 82 percent of patients deemed eligible to do so donated organs in 2013.

“So when you look at the population of our area and you compare it to the New York region, for instance, they have 10 times more the population than we have. And their conversion rates are somewhere between 55 and 60 percent,” Kumer said.

The committee considering the organ allocation proposal is holding a public hearing Sept. 16 in Chicago. Kumer said he, along with Gilroy and Dr. Timothy Schmitt, director of transplantation at KU, will be there.

FERGUSON (AP) – U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt asked the Justice Department to help reimburse state and St. Louis-area law enforcement agencies for costs incurred while providing security in Ferguson this month.

Blunt said in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday that many of the police agencies do not have the resources to respond to the level of unrest that occurred in the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer on Aug. 9.

Blunt, a Republican, said the unanticipated cost may force many agencies to seek out additional resources.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley estimates that each night of policing in Ferguson cost the county police department alone up to $100,000.

COLUMBIA (AP) – A federal appeals court ruled that course syllabi are exempt from Missouri’s open records law because they are the intellectual property of faculty members.

The Columbia Daily Tribune reported the ruling by the Missouri Court of Appeals Western District on Tuesday was in response to a motion filed in October 2012 by the Washington-based National Council on Teacher Quality.

The education group requested the University of Missouri system disclose syllabi under the state’s Sunshine Law, but the appeals court ruled that the syllabi’s disclosure was protected by the Federal Copyright Act.

System spokesman John Fougere said the university is pleased with the ruling and had taken its stance against releasing the syllabi out of respect for the rights of the faculty members who created them.

The Office of Kansas Attorney General

IOLA, Kan. – An Iola woman has been sentenced to more than eight years in prison on methamphetamine charges, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said.

 Stephanie Jo Troxel, 35, was sentenced Wednesday to 98 months in the Kansas Department of Corrections by Judge Daniel D. Creitz in Allen County District Court.  Troxel pled guilty in December 2013 to one count of distribution of methamphetamine within 1,000 feet of school property, two additional counts of distribution and one count of possession with intent to distribute.

The charges stemmed from an investigation by the Iola Police Department. Assistant Attorney General Steve Wilhoft of Schmidt’s office prosecuted the case.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas board has approved the voter registration of a 92-year-old woman after she and her daughter presented copies of census records and a page from a battered family Bible to prove she was born in the U.S.

Evelyn Howard of Shawnee went before the State Election Board on Wednesday because she had no birth certificate. Daughter Marilyn Hopkins said she was born in a midwife’s home in Minnesota in February 1922.

Kansas requires new voters to provide a birth certificate or other proof of their citizenship when registering. Howard moved to Kansas from Missouri in 2013 and sought to register as a Republican voter earlier this month.

The three-member board’s decision was unanimous. The page from the family Bible recorded the birth of Howard and two siblings.

JEFFERSON CITY -Missourians are preparing to celebrate the last holiday of summer, Labor Day. Typically, this weekend sees heavy volumes on Missouri’s roads as many people will be taking one last summer trip.

            It’s important to remember the end of summer doesn’t mean the end of construction season. The Missouri Department of Transportation continues to have work zones around the state making improvements and repairs to the transportation system. The majority of construction work zones will not be in place from noon Friday, August 29 until mid-morning Tuesday, September 2. However, some work zones have lanes closed all the time that are unable to be reopened for the holiday weekend.

Driver behavior is the key to safe driving in work zones and on busy highways.

• Wear your seatbelt. During the Labor Day holiday in 2013, there were eight fatalities in crashes on Missouri roadways and two of those killed were not wearing a seatbelt.

• Don’t Text and Drive. Distracted driving is a top cause of crashes. Put down your phone and focus on your driving.

• Don’t tailgate. Keep a safe distance. Remember to leave at least two seconds of braking distance between you and the vehicle in front of you.

• Slow Down for Work Zones. Lanes may be reduced or shifted. By slowing down you will be more prepared to adjust to the changing conditions and potential delays from reduced lanes.

Before you head out this holiday weekend, visit MoDOT’s traveler information map at http://www.modot.org/ to get the latest information on current projects that may affect your travel plans. The map also provides real-time information regarding incidents on major roads that include lane closures. The MoDOT traveler information map can also be downloaded as an app to your phone.  MoDOT’s 24/7 customer service is also available to provide information on road conditions at 1-888-ASK-MODOT (275-6636).