Missouri’s economy continues to grow with international law firm Sedgwick LLP announcing plans to open a new administration center in downtown Kansas City and create 100 jobs over the next five years, Gov. Jay Nixon said today.

“Businesses continue to locate to Missouri because of our talented workforce and stable business climate,” Gov. Nixon said. “We welcome Sedgwick to the Show-Me State and look forward to continuing to attract global companies to Missouri by investing in education and holding the line on taxes.”

The company plans to invest more than $4.6 million to open its Kansas City office, where it will consolidate its global administrative operations. Founded in 1933 as a three-person firm in San Francisco, Sedgwick now has more than 370 attorneys in offices around the world. Sedgwick’s collective experience spans the globe and virtually every industry.

“We are very excited to consolidate our global administrative operations and open a Shared Service Center in Kansas City, Missouri,” said Michael Tanenbaum, Chair of Sedgwick LLP.   “Being located in the heart of the country, Kansas City offers us a unique opportunity to tap into a diverse and talented workforce in a vibrant and pro-business environment, thus allowing Sedgwick to better meet the evolving needs of our clients and our thirteen domestic and two international offices.  For Sedgwick, Kansas City is an excellent fit.”

Expanding in Kansas City will allow Sedgwick LLP to improve efficiency by locating the global firm-wide services and operations under one roof including its Finance, Human Resources, Information Technology, Knowledge Management, Marketing and New Business functions. The law firm’s Shared Services Center is expected to begin operations in June 2014.

Today’s announcement is just the latest in a series of positive developments that demonstrate the continued strength of Kansas City’s economy.  Last month alone, Cerner Corp. confirmed plans to create up to 15,000 new jobs as part of a $4.3 billion redevelopment of the former Bannister Mall site; Kansas City International Airportwelcomed Aviation Technical Services and 500 new jobs to its overhaul base; and Ford Motor Company hiredthe 1000th worker to build the Ford Transit Van in Claycomo.

As a result of strong and continued economic growth in communities all across the state, Missouri’s unemployment rate recently dropped to 5.9 percent, its lowest point since June 2008.

To assist Sedgwick LLP with its expansion, the Department of Economic Development has offered a strategic economic incentive package that the company can receive if it meets strict job creation and investment criteria.

 (AP) — Cargill has added wording to its ground beef package labels to say whether they include the product that’s been called “pink slime.”

The Lincoln Journal Star says the company announced in November that it would be adding the labeling. Cargill says bulk packages and some ground beef chubs bear labels that say, “Contains Finely Textured Beef.”

Another company that makes the product, Beef Products Inc., sued ABC news in September 2012 after ABC aired a story that used the phrase “pink slime.” The company says ABC’s story misled consumers into believing the product is unhealthy and unsafe. The company says it lost business and had to close plants in Texas, Kansas and Iowa. It kept open a Nebraska plant.

Beef Products Inc. is based in South Dakota.

(AP) Police are praising three Good Samaritans who stopped a domestic assault along a busy Kansas City highway.

Police and court documents say a man was beating his wife near an exit from Interstate 70 at U.S. 40 when the three people stopped. They say the helpful motorists possibly saved the woman’s life.

The suspect, 38-year-old Robert Tyus, was charged Wednesday with first-degree assault and felonious restraint. Court records do not indicate if he has an attorney.

(AP) — The head of Missouri’s public defender system is seeking a pay raise for the attorneys who represent low-income criminal defendants.

Public Defender System Director Cat Kelly says entry-level attorneys in her office are paid a salary of about $38,500. She says that’s nearly $5,000 less than beginning lawyers in the state attorney general’s office. Kelly says both should be paid the same amount.

Kelly presented figures Thursday to the Senate Appropriations Committee showing that Missouri’s public defenders also typically earn less than those in all neighboring states.

Gov. Jay Nixon has recommended a 3 percent pay raise for all state employees.

Senate Appropriations Chairman Kurt Schaefer says he would prefer to give targeted pay raises to certain professions instead of an across-the-board increase.

By Dave Ranney
KHI News Service

A Johnson County legislator has introduced a bill that would require health insurers to cover the diagnosis and treatment of many Kansas children that have autism disorders.

“In my opinion, this is the socially responsible and moral thing to do for kids with autism and for their families,” said Rep. John Rubin, a Shawnee Republican.

Similar bills pushed by Rubin and others in 2012 and 2013, failed to advance after insurance company lobbyists characterized the initiative as a mandate that would increase health care costs and cause insurers to raise premiums.

But Rubin said he thought most of the industry’s objections to the proposal were close to being resolved.

“I’ve met with representatives of all the major health insurers in Kansas: Aetna, Conventry, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City, and United HealthCare,” he said. “I think there’s a general recognition that this needs to get done this year.”House Bill 2531 has been referred to the House Insurance Committee for a hearing, though that has yet to be scheduled.

The bill would require state-regulated group- and individual-market health plans in place before enactment of the Affordable Care Act to cover the diagnosis and treatment of autism for beneficiaries who are less than 19 years old.

“It will only apply to the policies that were grandfathered in after the Affordable Care Act,” Rubin said. “That’s because there are provisions in the act that say that if a state adds something to its essential health benefit package, it has to pick up the tab for whatever additional costs there might be.”

That “tab,” he said, would be “a huge fiscal note” that would kill the bill’s chances for passage.

“We’d like to have gotten this bill passed soon enough for (autism coverage) to make it into (Kansas’) essential benefit package. But that didn’t happen,” he said. “They did in Missouri, though. Wealthy people can afford this treatment and get it for their kids, and study after study show their kids do much better. But poorer and middle-class folks just cannot afford the therapies on their own.”

Rubin said if the bill becomes law it would affect about 750 of the 8,400 children in Kansas who are thought to be autistic.

“This is not my desired outcome,” he said. “I’d like it to be more, but this is what we have to deal with.”

The expanded coverage would begin Jan. 2015.

In 2010, lawmakers agreed to add autism coverage to the state employees’ health plans, partly to find out how it might affect premiums if applied more broadly.

“The average cost comes to about 17 cents per month per policy holder,” Rubin said. “That’s based on what the experience has been in Kansas and in Missouri.”

Mary Beth Chambers, a spokesperson for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas, the largest health insurer in Kansas, said the company still has reservations about the bill.

“Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas typically opposes mandated coverage because such mandated benefits tend to raise premiums for all people with insurance, whether they access the new benefits or not,” Chambers wrote in an email to KHI News Service. “We have been and will continue to work with the autism community to find a solution that does not raise premiums for all of our members or impose new taxes on all Kansans.”

Rubin, a retired Social Security administrative law judge, said he was weary of the insurance lobby’s argument against requiring the coverage.

“In case you haven’t noticed, just about everything we do up here – every bill we pass – involves a mandate of one kind or another,” he said. “So the question isn’t whether this is a mandate, the question is whether it’s good public policy, and whether it’s good for the people of Kansas. This certainly will help autistic children and their families.”

Michael Wasmer, associate director of state government affairs for Autism Speaks, an advocacy group, said 32 states have passed bills similar to HB 2531.

(AP) – A mid-Missouri woman was sentenced to 10 years in prison Tuesday after an infant girl died when a pacifier obstructed her airway.

Twenty-five-year-old Treschell Kemp of Boonville was sentenced after pleading guilty in Cooper County Circuit Court to involuntary manslaughter and endangering the welfare of a child.

In May 2012 Kemp shoved a pacifier into the infant’s mouth, obstructing her airway and causing her death by asphyxiation.

Kemp was arrested in November 2012 and was originally charged with second-degree murder, first-degree domestic assault and child abuse.

Authorities never publicly identified the infant, who was not related to Kemp.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is carrying out a presidential duty he hasn’t had a lot of opportunity to perform recently: signing into law a major piece of bipartisan legislation.

Obama planned to sign a far-reaching farm bill Friday during a visit to Michigan State University.

The bill expands federal crop insurance and ends direct government payments to farmers. But the bulk of its cost is for the food stamp program that aids 1 in 7 Americans.

A partisan dispute over food stamp spending held up the legislation for two years.

The compromise bill cuts food stamps by $800 million a year, or around 1 percent, far less than House Republicans wanted.

Obama is coupling the bill-signing with a new administration initiative to boost exports. It’s called “Made in Rural America.”