(AP) — Police in Grain Valley are asking for the public’s help in locating a 28-year-old woman who’s been missing since January.
The police department said in a release Thursday they’re trying to locate Amber Jo Bradley-Couch of Oak Grove. She was last seen early on Jan. 19 leaving a Grain Valley bar.
She’s described as white, 5’11, 180 pounds with blonde hair and hazel eyes. Her green 1997 Chevy Cavalier has been located in nearby Blue Springs.
Information can be called in to Grain Valley police at 816-847-6250 and the TIPS Hotline, (816) 474-TIPS.
Senator Blunt met with members of the Missouri Association of Elementary School Principals.
U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (Mo.) met this week with the Missouri Association of Elementary School Principals (MAESP) to discuss various issues, including funding for early childhood education. The meeting included Mike Schooley, Executive Director of MAESP from Columbia, Mo.; Jason Anderson, Director of Elementary Operations at Springfield Public Schools from Springfield, Mo.; Tammy Condren, current Assistant Professor at Southwest Baptist University and retired Marion C. Early Principal from Morrisville, Mo.; Ed Elsea, Principal of Hillcrest School from Lebanon, Mo.; and Stacy Fick, Principal of Hallsville Intermediate School from Hallsville, Mo.
Before serving in Congress, Blunt was a high school and college history teacher, and he served for four years as the president of his alma mater, Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Mo.
“As a former educator, I understand the importance of a quality education for every student,” Blunt said. “I enjoyed meeting with the Missouri Association of Elementary School Principals, and I’ll keep working to encourage common-sense policies that allow local educators to decide what’s in the best interest of their communities, classrooms, and students.”
Gina Meier-Hummel, Commissioner of Community Services and Programs at Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services.-Photo by Dave Ranney
By Mike Shields
KHI News Service
TOPEKA — Officials say they are on schedule to open a retooled Rainbow Mental Health Facility on April 1 and are in the process of hiring case managers and other workers to staff it.
“Rainbow as of April 1, will no longer be a state psychiatric hospital. It won’t be licensed as a state hospital,” said Mark Wiebe, a spokesman for the Wyandot Center, which is taking over Rainbow operations with two partner organizations. “We will have a 24-7 facility to take in anyone who comes through in crisis – usually seriously intoxicated.”
The mostly mothballed state mental hospital will become a short-stay, “crisis stabilization” facility that Wiebe said officials hope will prove to be a model for others like it across the state. It will operate under state contract with a budget of about $3.5 million a year.
Wiebe described progress on the initiative during a meeting today of the Kansas Mental Health Coalition.
‘Port in a storm’
State officials and others have said the services to be offered at the repurposed Rainbow building, which is near the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan., will fill needs in Wyandotte and Johnson counties that have gone largely unmet since a short-lived stabilization and detox unit at the medical center was closed years ago.
Those who are brought or come to the facility will be sobered up – if needed – evaluated and directed to other service providers who can perhaps help them with their problems. The idea is that the facility will help reduce the number of people who end up in jails or mental hospitals because police or others don’t have a better place to take them.
Wiebe said the goal is to make the facility a “port in the storm and a port of access,” for people in trouble because of mental illness and/or drug and alcohol abuse.
The facility will include an “observation unit” with about 10 “recliners” instead of beds where people can sleep off intoxication or simply rest over the course of a few hours before they are connected to other service providers such as drug or alcohol treatment program or a mental health center.
One of the partners with Wyandot Center is the Heartland Regional Drug & Alcohol Assessment Center. The other is the Johnson County Mental Health Center.
Quick connections to services
“The whole idea is connecting people quickly to services,” said Gina Meier-Hummel, commissioner of community services and programs at the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services. KDADS is the agency in charge of the state’s mental hospitals and other mental health programs.
Wiebe said the facility also will have a “sobering” unit with sleeping pallets on the floor. Those admitted to the unit would only stay there for four to six hours, the time it would take to become sober.
“If you put someone in a bed, you have to worry about them falling out of the bed,” Wiebe said.
There also will be a unit with 10 beds where people can stay for as long as 10 days though the goal would be to get them otherwise situated within three to five days, he said.
Altogether, the facility will be able to treat or assist about 22 patients at any given time.
Wiebe said staff hiring is underway with first preference being given to current Rainbow employees, many of whom have been working at Osawatomie State Hospital since Rainbow was mostly closed down in 2011 after it failed to pass fire marshal and other inspections.
He said positions would be open to more applicants starting next week.
The staff will include mental health technicians, registered nurses, triage specialists, intensive case managers and others.
JUNCTION CITY — Geary County USD 475 pulled the plug in its Internet service after what is believed to be a cyberattack overloading the district’s systems.
“The first outage affected most of the state. The attackers sent out a code that caused one or more computers to repeatedly send out millions of pieces of data to clog our network,” Superintendent Ron Walker said in a new release.
He said the district’s firewall prevented any access to financial or confidential information.
Consultants were called in by the school district to help resolve the problem.
The state House has passed legislation aimed at requiring voters in Missouri to have photo identification to vote.
With party-line votes the House approved a proposed change to Missouri’s Constitution (HJR 47) necessary to allow the photo ID bill to become law, along with the bill (HB 1073). The proposed amendment would go to voters in November.
If voters reject that issue the bill would become null. The measures were sponsored by Representatives Stanley Cox (R-Sedalia) and Tony Dugger (R-Hartville), respectively.
Both items now go to the Senate for consideration.
The bill would require a person wishing to vote display to election officials a valid Missouri driver’s or non-driver’s license, military identification or any unexpired ID that is issued by the United States or Missouri that has that voter’s photo and signature.
Republicans say the bill is needed to prevent voting fraud. Democrats argue the legislation is intended to keep certain populations from voting.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Sam Graves (MO-06), House Small Business Committee Chairman, released the following statement on House passage of the ALERRT Act (H.R. 2804), which includes the Committee-sponsored Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act, by a vote of 236-179:
“While no one disputes that small businesses bear a greater regulatory compliance burden than larger companies, there is disagreement over whether Congress should act to improve the regulatory process, which all too often ignores the plight of small businesses. Washington can and must do better. The current rate of regulations that are unnecessarily burdensome is too great. The Regulatory Flexibility Act of 1980 was passed into law to improve the regulatory process by requiring analysis of small business impacts, but unfortunately, weaknesses in the statute have been exploited by federal agencies to the detriment of America’s best job creators. Title III of the ALERRT Act, the Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act, is needed because it ensures that agencies will carefully consider the consequences of rulemaking on small businesses, including indirect impacts, and provides increased opportunities for small business input earlier in the rulemaking process. Not all regulations are bad, but many can impose costly burdens that can be a tremendous barrier to small business growth and job creation.”
BACKGROUND: In September 2013, the Small Business Committee reported out the bipartisan Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act of 2013 (HR 2542). This month, HR 2542 was included as Title III of the ALERRT Act. Last Congress, the Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act of 2011 (H.R. 527) passed the House by a bipartisan vote of 263-159, but died in the Senate.
Reducing unnecessary regulatory burdens for small business has been a priority for Chairman Graves. In January 2013, the Small Business Committee launched the “Small Biz Reg Watch” initiative, which encourages small businesses to participate in the federal rulemaking process by regularly highlighting new agency proposed rules that may have a significant effect on small firms and encouraging business owners to submit comments to agencies. The Committee communicates with small businesses via email and social media when new comment periods begin for select proposed rules that have a significant impact on a wide array of small firms.
(AP) — The University of Missouri has hired an engineering company to inspect all of its buildings after a walkway collapsed at a university-run apartment complex last week, killing a firefighter.
The Columbia Daily Tribune reports the university hired the firm, Trabue, Hansen & Hinshaw Inc., to inspect 1,300 campus buildings, including storage facilities. University spokesman Christian Basi says the university isn’t giving the company a deadline for completing the inspections.
John Smith, a structural engineer with the firm, says the buildings on the list are all across the state, including farms and university extension offices.
Lt. Bruce Britt was on the second-floor walkway of University Village Apartments when the walkway collapsed Saturday morning. Britt, a 23-year veteran of the force, was pronounced dead at a hospital. No residents were injured.
ST. LOUIS (AP) – When Deacon Wissam Akiki is ordained as a Maronite Catholic priest in St. Louis, he’s expected to have hundreds of supporters there, including his wife and daughter.
For the first time in nearly a century, the Maronite Catholic Church in the United States is ordaining a married priest. The ceremony is scheduled for Thursday night at the ornate St. Raymond’s Maronite Cathedral near downtown St. Louis.
The Maronites commonly ordained married men as priests in the U.S. before the 1920s, when the practice was banned.
St. Raymond’s Chancellor Louis Peters says married priests are common in the Maronite Catholic Church in Lebanon.
Pope Francis gave permission for Akiki to be ordained, though he did not lift the ban on married priests in the U.S. It is simply an exception.
Gov. Jay Nixon today announced that he will lead a delegation of Missouri business leaders and state officials to Canada next week, from March 2 through March 6. Canada is Missouri’s largest export market and purchased nearly $4 billion in Missouri goods last year, led by the provinces of Ontario ($2.6 billion) and Quebec ($700 million). In meetings with business and governmental leaders in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, the Governor will seek to build on this solid foundation by identifying new opportunities to sell more Missouri products to Canada, and expand investments by Canadian companies in Missouri.
“Ninety-six percent of the world’s consumers live outside the United States, so in order to keep creating jobs here at home we need to do everything we can to reach new customers for Missouri-made products abroad,” Gov. Nixon said. “As Missouri’s number one export market, Canada offers tremendous opportunities for Missouri businesses and farmers. In fact, Canada purchased nearly $4 billion in Missouri goods last year alone – dollars that helped fuel our economy and bring our unemployment rate to a five and a half year low. The goal of this mission is simple: sell more products to Canada, and create more jobs in Missouri.”
Joining Gov. Nixon on the delegation will be: First Lady Georganne Nixon; Mike Downing, Director, Department of Economic Development; and Richard Fordyce, Director, Department of Agriculture. The Missouri delegation will also include representatives of Missouri businesses including Custom Metalcraft of Springfield; Essex Industries of St. Louis; Advantage Capital Partners; and Kent Precision Foods Group, Inc. of St. Louis.
During the mission, the Governor will meet with government officials including Elaine Zakaib, the Minister of Industrial Policy in Quebec; Ed Fast, the Canadian Minister of International Trade; and Kathleen Wynne, the Premier of Ontario. The Governor will also address a number of Canadian trade and industry associations, including American Chambers of Commerce in Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa and the Montreal Board of Trade.
Gov. Nixon will also meet with the leadership of major Canadian corporations that have made or are considering making investments in Missouri, such as Magna International, the parent company of Magna Seating in Excelsior Springs and LMVAutomotive in Liberty. In 2012, LMV Automotive broke ground on a $42 million facility in Liberty that will supply parts to the Ford Transit, being built in Claycomo.
