JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Federal regulators say Missouri’s plan to oversee the disposal of toxic waste from coal-fired power plants fails to adequately protect human health and the environment.
The Environmental Protection Agency said in a letter to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources that several provisions in Missouri’s plan are weaker than the 2015 federal coal ash rule.
Some provisions allow the DNR to waive requirements for utility companies to clean up groundwater contamination or monitor groundwater for toxic chemicals if they can show that it doesn’t affect drinking-water supplies or harm the environment.
Contamination has been detected near many coal ash ponds and landfills in Missouri.
DNR officials declined comment on the letter from the EPA.
Andy Knott of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign was critical of the DNR.
“I think that this is astonishing and that it’s just further evidence that the DNR cares more about the demands of the coal utilities than the needs of Missourians for clean water,” Knott said at a public hearing hosted Thursday by the DNR in Jefferson City.
Utility representatives say Missouri’s proposed rule is just as protective of human health and the environment as the federal rule. Trey Davis, president of the Missouri Energy Development Association, said Congress didn’t require state rules to be identical to federal rules.
“Nor did Congress say that each line in the rules must match federal requirements,” Davis said.
A Washington University law clinic recently found excessive levels of arsenic, boron and other harmful chemicals near all ponds that are receiving coal ash waste. The law clinic represents the Labadie Environmental Organization, a group of residents pushing Ameren Missouri to remove coal ash from its ponds at the Labadie Energy Center in eastern Missouri.
“We drink well water, and many of us are scared of that the pollution they have found will end up hurting us and our neighbors,” 12-year-old Ella Alt told DNR officials at Thursday’s hearing. She attends school near the Labadie Energy Center.
DNR is accepting feedback on its plan until Thursday and expects that the state regulations will be effective by Sept. 30.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Schoolteacher raises of $5,000 are on the table in Texas — a proposed pay hike that ranks among the biggest in the U.S. since a wave of teacher unrest began last year. But protests aren’t why the money is suddenly available.
Texas hasn’t even had a teacher strike. But as in other GOP strongholds this spring, lawmakers who have spent years clashing with public schools by slashing budgets, ratcheting up testing and cheerleading private schools are blinking in the face of election pressure as much as picket lines.
Rattled by a dreadful midterm election for Republicans — and looking ahead to 2020 — conservative-leaning states including Georgia, Oklahoma and South Carolina are pouring new money into schools. And to ensure it doesn’t go unnoticed, Republicans are making a show of a renewed commitment to public classrooms, courting voters turned off by years of cost-cutting that catered to the party’s base.
Nowhere is this political whiplash more on display than in Texas, where just two years ago conservatives pushed heavily for private school vouchers and restrictions on which bathrooms transgender students could use. That was followed last November by Republicans losing 14 seats in the Statehouse, their worst election in a generation.
To some, the message was clear. Said Republican state Sen. Kel Seliger, quoting a top GOP official “way up” whom he wouldn’t name: “Urban Texas is now blue. Suburban Texas is purple and it’s rural Texas that is still red. And then what does that mean for the future” of the party?
Seliger added, “You’re not hearing anything about a bathroom bill. You’re not hearing anyone utter the word ‘vouchers’ this session. And I think that’s significant.”
A nationwide teacher revolt that began with walkouts in West Virginia in early 2018 is still kicking. In Kentucky, recurring “sickouts” for teacher protests forced schools to cancel classes, and a six-day teacher strike in Los Angeles ended with a 6 percent pay hike and commitment to smaller classes.
Elsewhere, new worries over elections are moving Republicans to act on their own.
In Oklahoma, the state’s new CEO-turned-governor , Kevin Stitt, made giving teachers another pay boost a key plank of his campaign. He’s pushing ahead with an additional $1,200 pay increase for classroom teachers, a year after several Republican opponents of a pay package were ousted in GOP primaries. In South Carolina, a state budget passed by House lawmakers would give all teachers a 4 percent raise and bump the minimum salary for first-year teachers to $35,000. Teachers there have asked for a 10 percent raise.
Public concern about education is growing, said Pat McFerron, a GOP pollster and strategist in Oklahoma. “In a red state where Republicans are in control, it’s going to fall on Republicans.”
Texas is in the middle of the pack nationally in classroom funding for the state’s 5.5 million public school students, and teacher pay is about $7,000 below the national average. In recent years, conservatives have pushed for directing some funding to students attending private and religious schools.
That talk has now gone silent. Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who pushed the “bathroom bill” in 2017, is now calling for $5,000 teacher raises, while House Republicans have called for an extra $9 billion for public schools.
“There’s no doubt about it. When Dan Patrick goes from bathrooms and vouchers to, ‘We need to give every teacher a $5,000 pay raise,’ his pollsters are telling him you took a bath with educators this time around,” said Louis Malfaro, president of the Texas chapter of the American Federation of Teachers. “We’re nine seats off from flipping the House.”
Not all Republicans are running scared: Some GOP lawmakers in West Virginia and Arizona have proposed measures that would effectively punish striking teachers, but those bills have had little support. And while governors in at least 18 states have proposed teacher pay hikes this year, elections are not always the driving factor, said Michael Leachman of the Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
For both parties, “you do have a political constituency that supports public schools that reaches deep into the business community, deep into school boards and parent groups,” Leachman said.
Near Austin, Shea Smith brings home about $55,000 in her 10th year teaching in the Del Valle school district. She took a half-day from work to take part in a rally for more funding this month at the Texas Capitol, where some Republican lawmakers stood side-by-side with union leaders.
“I think people are fired up because of the results in November,” Smith said.
By ROXANA HEGEMAN Associated PressWICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The day after Thanksgiving in 2009, James Kahler went to the home of his estranged wife’s grandmother, where he shot the two women, along with his two teenage daughters.
Kahler-photo Kan. Dept. of Corrections
No one — not even Kahler’s attorneys — disputes that he killed the four relatives. Instead, his lawyers argue that he was suffering from depression so severe that he experienced extreme emotional disturbance, dissociating him from reality.
What had been an open-and-shut death penalty case — Kahler was convicted and sentenced in 2011 — was upended when the U.S. Supreme Court said this past week that it would consider whether Kansas unconstitutionally abolished his right to use insanity as a defense. A ruling from the nation’s highest court could have far-reaching implications for mentally ill defendants across the nation.
Kansas is one of five states where a traditional insanity defense in which a person must understand the difference between right and wrong before being found guilty of a crime isn’t allowed. Instead, someone can cite “mental disease or defect” as a partial defense but must prove that he didn’t intend to commit the crime. The other states with similar laws are Alaska, Idaho, Montana and Utah.
“A favorable decision in this case would make it clear that the Constitution requires that a defendant be able to understand the difference between right and wrong before being found guilty, and, in cases like Mr. Kahler’s, put to death,” his defense attorney, Meryle Carver-Allmond, said in an email.
Kahler’s lawyers argued in their petition to the Supreme Court that although Kahler knew that he was shooting human beings, his mental state was so disturbed at the time that he was unable to control his actions.
“We’re hopeful that, in taking Mr. Kahler’s case, the United States Supreme Court has indicated a desire to find that the Constitution requires better of us in our treatment of mentally ill defendants,” Carver-Allmond said.
The state argues that it hasn’t abolished the insanity defense, just modified it.
“We think the state’s approach, providing for an insanity defense based on mental disease or defect, satisfies constitutional requirements,” Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said in an emailed statement. “We look forward to defending the statute and arguing our case before the Justices in the fall.”
Kahler was in the middle of a contentious divorce when he went to Dorothy Wight’s home in Burlingame, where his wife, Karen, and three children were spending the Thanksgiving holiday amid contentious divorce proceedings. He found Karen in the kitchen and shot her twice, then shot Wright and his daughter Emily in the living room. He found his daughter Lauren in an upstairs bedroom. His son, Sean, fled to a neighboring house.
Sherrie Baughn, executive director of the Kansas chapter of the National Alliance for Mental Illness, said her organization opposes execution of individuals who have a serious mental illness or mental disability when committing a crime.
“I am happy that they are looking at it and reviewing this,” Baughn said of the Supreme Court decision to take up the Kansas case. “Despite constitutional protections, the death penalty is still somewhat applied to people with mental illness or mental disabilities.”
It is unclear how often an insanity defense would be used in Kansas, because the state hasn’t really had one for so many years now, Carver-Allmond said. Without the option, seriously mentally ill defendants are often left to go to trial with little-to-no defense or forced to plead guilty on bad terms.
The last week might have been easier for Gov. Laura Kelly if every staffer and appointee had stuck to sharing cat photos on Twitter instead of political opinions.
The Kansas GOP pounced quickly on her newly formed Democratic administration for the social media transgressions of its people. With divided government in Topeka, GOP leaders won’t miss a chance to point out potential errors.
Partisan tweets prompted the removal of a Kansas Department of Transportation staffer and, in quick succession, the withdrawal of Kelly’s nominee for the Kansas Court of Appeals. The governor’s choice to head the Kansas Department of Commerce also got a verbal lashing from Republicans because of a social media post.
“Let’s be frank. There have been some real missteps here,” Kansas Republican Party Chairman Michael Kuckelman said in an interview. “Had they not been fixed, they have serious consequences.”
The Kelly administration acted swiftly after a tweet was sent Sunday from a KDOT account calling President Donald Trump a “delusional communist.” Within hours, the tweet was taken down and the employee responsible, a media relations specialist in the agency’s south-central district, was fired.
KDOT Secretary Julie Lorenz nonetheless had to answer for it at her confirmation hearing Monday. She’d been out on a run when her chief of staff alerted her to the problem.
“I found that I ran home a little faster than I otherwise would have anticipated,” she said. “It needed to be taken care of and it was.”
Old tweets about the president derailed Kelly’s nomination to fill a seat on the Kansas Court of Appeals just days later.
Labette County District Court Judge and former Republican lawmaker Jeffry Jack had posted tweets in 2017 that included profanity, calls for gun control and insults aimed at the president.
“A president who is objectively ignorant, lazy and cowardly,” read one tweet.
That drew condemnation Monday from Senate leaders being asked to confirm the judge, and a day later Kelly herself withdrew the nomination.
“It’s unacceptable for a sitting judge, who must be seen as unbiased and impartial, to post personal political views on social media,” the governor said in a statement Tuesday morning. “It’s clear that despite a thorough review and investigation, this was missed.”
Kelly’s nomination to head the Department of Commerce is still headed for a vote in the full Senate, but without a favorable committee recommendation partially because of his social media history.
image Kansas News Service
Acting Commerce Secretary David Toland is pictured in a post from when he worked for the economic development organization Thrive Allen County. The post made a joking allusion to former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback and local Republican Sen. Caryn Tyson as things that kept him up at night.
“Of concern to me,” Republican Sen. Molly Baumgardner said at Toland’s confirmation hearing, “is the disparaging representation, particularly of one of our Senate colleagues.”
Toland said it was a prank and apologized.
“It was a juvenile prank, and it shouldn’t have happened,” he said. “I regret that it did.”
He explained the image of him in bed with photos of Brownback and Tyson on the nightstand beside him was posted as a joke by the Thrive Allen staff. Toland was sleeping in a downtown office to raise awareness for a sleep clinic at the local hospital.
Politics were also at play in his grilling, Toland suspected.
He was treasurer for Kelly’s campaign for governor. The Topeka Capital-Journal reported that Toland’s policy proposals in Allen County had clashed with business interests of the newly elected vice chair of the Kansas Republican Party, Virginia Crossland-Macha.
“This is Topeka. There are always politics,” Toland said after the first day of his hearing.
Still, Baumgardner and others said Twitter feeds and Facebook profiles should be some of the first items reviewed when considering potential nominees.
“It is 2019,” Baumgardner said. “For us to not start at social media first in the vetting process is not being self-aware of the society that we live in.”
Kelly has asked her judicial nominating committee to review the applicants for the Appeals Court job again, and this time check their social media activity before sending her new names for consideration.
Employees in the administration are subject to the executive branch social media policy and agencies sometimes have additional guidelines.
“Our staff has had numerous conversations about the importance of respectful, responsible social media behavior,” Kelly spokesperson Ashley All said.
Stephen Koranda is Statehouse reporter for the Kansas News Service. Follow him on Twitter@kprkoranda.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — A federal appeals court says a judge went too far by dismissing a Kansas drug indictment after finding that a prosecutor violated the defendant’s right to a fair trial.
Gregory Orozco photo Wyandotte Co.
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that U.S. District Court Judge Julie Robinson should retry Gregory Orozco.
Robinson dismissed Orozco’s two drug charges in December 2017 after finding that federal prosecutor Terra Morehead intimidated a witness into not testifying and belatedly disclosed evidence.
Morehead was also accused of misconduct in her handling of a case in the 1990s that caused a man to be imprisoned for nearly 23 years for a crime he didn’t commit.
The appeals court says Robinson never addressed why dismissing Orozco’s case was necessary to deter misconduct.
SHAWNEE COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a fatal shooting and on Friday asked the public again for help with the investigation.
Police on the scene of the shooting investigation photo courtesy WIBW TV
Just before 9p.m. March 16, police responded to the report of a shooting in the 1100 block of SW Hillsdale Street in Topeka, according to Lt. John Trimble.
Officers found a victim identified as 25-year-old Robert McKinsey James, unresponsive in the yard suffering what appeared to be several gunshot wounds.
Officers were able to secure the scene and first responders performed first aid on McKinsey. He was transported to an area hospital where he died, according to Trimble.
The suspect vehicle is described as an older, boxy, dark colored SUV that was seen fleeing from the area shortly after the shooting. The SUV had several occupants, according to Trimble.
Anyone with information regarding this crime is encouraged to contact the Topeka Police.
BOWLING GREEN, Mo. (AP) — A northeast Missouri high school student is dead after his car struck a deer and ran off the roadway.
The accident Friday night killed 18-year-old Kaleo Dade, who was a senior at Bowling Green High School. A 17-year-old passenger was flown to a hospital in Columbia with serious injuries.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol says Dade’s 2006 Ford Focus was on Route MM when it struck the deer, left the roadway and struck an embankment. Dade was pronounced dead at the scene.
OMAHA (AP) — Even as floodwaters receded in hard-hit places in in the Midwest, experts warned Saturday that with plenty of snow still left to melt in northern states, the relief may only be temporary.
KHP pilots continue to help monitor the MO River flooding. This morning we surveyed the river levee near Elwood, KS, and took pics of the flooding after the levee breach east of Atchison yesterday. pic.twitter.com/fyzUOZinAk
Rainfall and some snowmelt spurred flooding in recent weeks that’s blamed in three deaths so far, with two men in Nebraska missing for more than a week. Thousands were forced from their homes in Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri, as water broke through or poured over levees in the region. The damage is estimated at $3 billion, and that figure is expected to rise.
As temperatures start to warm, snowmelt in the Dakotas and Minnesota will escalate, sending more water down the Missouri and Mississippi rivers and their tributaries.
None of this is supposed to be under water.
Here’s what the Missouri River looks like just across from Nebraska City into Iowa. If you ever drive to Kansas City, you’re probably familiar with this interchange of I-29 and Highway 2. The Missouri looks like an ocean.#NSP575pic.twitter.com/kwkkAs5fha
Lt. Col. James Startzell, deputy commander of the Corps of Engineers’ Omaha, Nebraska, district, said even warmer temperatures are possible into next week. He urged those living near rivers to keep a wary eye on them.
Bill Brinton, emergency management director for hard-hit Buchanan County, Missouri, which includes St. Joseph’s 76,000 residents, said he expects more flooding this spring. Buchanan and its neighboring counties have been ravaged by this round of flooding.
“There’s a sense from the National Weather Service that we should expect it to continue to happen into May,” Brinton said. “With our levee breaches in Atchison and Holt and Buchanan counties, it’s kind of scary really.”
A precautionary evacuation involving hundreds of homes in the St. Joseph area was lifted as the Missouri River began a swift decline after coming just inches short of the 1993 record. St. Joseph was largely spared, but Brinton said 250 homes were flooded in the southern part of Buchanan County. It wasn’t clear when residents would be able to get back.
When they do, officials say they need to be careful. Contaminants that escaped from flooded farm fields, industrial operations and sewage plants are part of the murky water now saturating homes.
In Fremont County, Iowa, homes remain underwater, so it will be some time before residents can return, said county Supervisor Randy Hickey.
“We don’t want them in that water, anyway,” Hickey said.
The water itself isn’t the only concern. Experts warn that sharp objects — broken glass, pieces of metal, pointy sticks and rocks — could lurk in muddy debris. Downed or broken power lines also may pose electrocution hazards.
Another risk is posed by river wildlife. Brinton said two people in Buchanan County were bitten by snakes after returning home following flooding in 2011.
The Missouri River had yet to crest further downstream in Missouri, but flooding impact in those areas was expected to be far less severe.
Concern was rising on the Mississippi River, too. Major flooding was reported at several spots north of the Iowa-Missouri line. St. Louis and other Missouri cities were seeing mostly moderate flooding.
Even the lower Mississippi River was impacted. The U.S. Coast Guard on Friday rescued two boaters from a disabled vessel near New Orleans. Coast Guard officials said the flooding means more debris in the river, and the currents can pull a boat into danger.
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) — A bicyclist has died after being struck by a vehicle in Overland Park, Kansas.
The accident happened Friday morning. The bicyclist was taken to a hospital and died Friday afternoon. Overland Park police have not released any information about the bicyclist, pending notification of relatives.
Police say the vehicle and bicyclist were heading in the same direction when the accident happened just after 9:30 a.m. The bicyclist was not wearing a helmet.
Social workers can perform a myriad of tasks. Some check on children in abusive homes and some train foster families. Others support patients through medical procedures like kidney dialysis or provide talk therapy to mental health patients.
But there are too few of them in Kansas.
Aspiring licensed clinical social workers in Kansas must go through 4,000 hours of supervised training, and often pay for it out of pocket. CAMILO RUEDA LOPEZ / (CC BY-ND 2.0)
An array of health care providers, state agencies and nonprofit organizations that employ social workers say low pay and emotionally challenging work make it hard to hire and retain qualified social workers — especially in the wake of years of declining state funding.
Advocates say Kansas’ uncommonly high standards make the problem worse. The state has stringent requirements for granting the most advanced social work certification and for allowing people certified elsewhere to practice in Kansas.
Now lawmakers are considering a bill that would lower those standards, bringing them closer to requirements in most other states.
“Currently there’s a chronic (worker) shortage,” said Becky Fast, executive director of the Kansas chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, “in rural medical care, in mental health and in child welfare.”
Currently, Kansas requires aspiring licensed clinical social workers to pay for 4,000 hours of supervised experience with clients and 150 hours of direct contact with a supervisor. Most other states require between 3,000 and 4,000 hours of client experience and less than 110 hours of supervisor contact.
The state also requires social workers, counselors and other professionals who were licensed outside of Kansas to have worked at least 60 out of the last 66 months before applying for a license in Kansas.
A bill pending in the Legislature would reduce those requirements, instead asking for 48 months of work experience out of the preceding 54 months. It would also reduce the work requirement for licensed clinical social workers from 4,000 to 3,000 hours.
The state Senate approved the bill unanimously last month. It now awaits a vote from the House of Representatives.
Advocates and employers say the reductions would motivate more social workers to seek jobs or clinical certification in Kansas and would make it easier for nonprofits, state agencies and health care providers to recruit.
Laura Howard, the newly appointed secretary of the Kansas Department for Children and Families, has said she wants to make hiring social workers a priority for the department. She said on KCUR’s Up to Date that her agency has been able to fill more vacancies since Gov. Laura Kelly came into office, and that recent interns have expressed interest in staying with the department.
“This is the hardest work that someone can do,” Howard said in the interview. “We have some aggressive recruitment campaigns with the schools of social work across the state.”
But Kansas employers often lose out to neighboring states with lower standards for clinical social worker certification, said Fast. One reason: the cost of paying a clinician to oversee training time, which can be as much as $70 an hour.
“Most social workers now have to pay for that clinical supervision because agencies can’t afford to lose that billable time,” Fast told lawmakers. “You’re paying several thousand dollars. Many just give up and say, ‘I’m going to move to Missouri.’”
Fast told legislators that it took her two years to get her clinical license in Missouri, while her colleagues working in Kansas needed three or four years to complete the required hours.
She called the requirements “a primary barrier” to recruiting social workers from nearby states.
In an interview, Fast said she doesn’t have an exact number for open social work positions in Kansas, but she said employers routinely send her job postings and tell her that they have trouble hiring workers. The impending retirement of Baby Boomer social workers and the mobility of the millennial workforce have made things worse.
“There’s a real generational shift right now,” she said. “Today’s young professionals want to live in many states and want to move across state lines. And how do you meet that changing workforce need?”
Fast said the shortage of licensed clinical social workers has a particular impact in rural western Kansas, where patients rely heavily on Medicare. Among the variety of social work and counseling positions, only clinical social workers and psychologists can bill Medicare.
There are only 79 licensed clinical social workers in the western half of the state, Fast said. “It is at (a) crisis point in rural areas of Kansas.”
Christie Appelhanz, executive director of the Children’s Alliance for Kansas, said in an interview that the shortage reduces social workers’ ability to manage their caseloads and help their clients.
“It’s really about fulfilling the needs that each individual has on a day-to-day basis,” she said. “Social workers are definitely feeling the stress.”
