KANSAS CITY,  Kan. (AP) — Records show a former Kansas City priest no longer has valid licenses to practice medicine in Kansas and Missouri after being defrocked last year following an investigation into multiple allegations of child sexual abuse.

John Wisner’s medical licenses to practice as a psychiatrist remained activefor months after the Archdiocese of Kansas City removed himfrom the clergy over credible allegations that he abused three minors decades ago.

Kansas registration records now list Wisner’s license as inactive, while Missouri’s professional registration agency says Wisner’s license has lapsed because it wasn’t renewed.

Kansas State Board of Healing Arts official Kathleen Selzler Lippert declined to say whether Wisner’s license had been revoked. The board’s website doesn’t show disciplinary records involving Wisner.

The Missouri agency’s spokeswoman, Lori Croy, says Wisner’s license wasn’t revoked.

TOPEKA — Governor Laura Kelly has withdrawn Jeffry Jack’s nomination to the Kansas Court of Appeals.

In light of the information that has surfaced regarding Judge Jeffry Jack’s social media presence, Governor Laura Kelly is withdrawing his name from consideration for the Kansas Court of Appeals vacancy. Jack, at the request of Governor Kelly, submitted a letter last night removing his name from consideration, according to a media release from the governor’s office.

“I’m surprised and disappointed that a sitting judge would engage in this type of rhetoric,” Kelly said. “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’s Nominating Committee forwarded three names for consideration on February 1. The finalists were interviewed and their legal background and work history vetted by the committee. Additionally, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation conducted background investigations on the finalists.

“It’s clear that despite a thorough review and investigation, this was missed,” Kelly said. “In fairness to all the applicants, I ask that the nominating committee thoroughly review all applicants again – including social media activity – and send me additional names for consideration. Once this is done and background checks are complete, I will then submit a new nominee to the Kansas Senate for review and confirmation, prior to the end of the legislative session.”

Due to recent problems with state employees and judicial nominees posting inflammatory comments on Twitter, the governor believes further review is necessary. The two remaining finalists, Sarah Warner and Marcia Wood, will be considered with the additional names following a thorough, follow-up review.

“In an era when we increasingly see Twitter and other social media platforms being used to attack and divide, we can and must do better,” Kelly said. “The last 24-hours is just the latest example of the deterioration of political discourse – on both sides of the aisle. I hope all of those working in the public sphere will join me as I work to change the tone and rhetoric used both online and here in Topeka. Regardless of our political affiliation, we can and must do better.”

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By JOHN HANNA

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s nomination of a trial judge to Kansas’ second-highest court appeared doomed Monday after two key Republican legislators decried past social media posts criticizing President Donald Trump and expressing support for gun control and abortion rights.

I’m pleased to nominate Judge Jeffry Jack to the Kansas Court of Appeals. Our judges must ensure that every Kansan who encounters our courts is treated fairly under the law. That requires integrity and impartiality. Judge Jack will bring those qualities to the Court of Appeals. pic.twitter.com/Iuf15TvWUx

— Governor Laura Kelly (@GovLauraKelly) March 15, 2019

Senate President Susan Wagle predicted that Judge Jeffry Jack’s appointment to the Kansas Court of Appeals will not be confirmed by her GOP-dominated chamber. She and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Rick Wilborn said the nomination should be withdrawn.

Even Kelly’s chief spokeswoman, Ashley All, called the tweets and retweets on a Jack’s feed “troubling” and said the governor’s office did not know about them, despite its vetting of potential appeals court nominees. Jack has been a district judge in Labette County in southeast Kansas since 2005 and served before that as a Republican in the Kansas House.

The judge’s Twitter page, showing his picture, includes political retweets with vulgar language, a September 2017 tweet referring to Trump as “Fruit Loops” and another saying, “I am so embarrassed that he is our President.” His postings show support for National Football League players who have kneeled in protest during the national anthem. The last tweet on Jack’s feed appeared to be from October 2017.

“He’s obviously politically biased, and he just isn’t the type of personality that you want on the bench, determining judicial questions,” said Wagle, a Wichita Republican.

All said the governor’s office was looking into Jack’s tweets and retweets. Jack was in court Monday and did not immediately return a telephone message to his office seeking comment.

Kelly picked Jack to replace longtime appeals court Judge Patrick McAnany, who retired the day the Democratic governor took office in January. She said Jack’s legislative experience was an important factor in choosing him over two other finalists and said he would bring qualities including “impartiality” to the bench.

The quickly-emerging problems with Jack’s nomination were particularly embarrassing for Kelly because she took the extra step — not required by law — of appointing a panel of lawyers and non-lawyers to screen applications, interview candidates in public and name three finalists.

Questions about Jack’s social media posts also came a day after the Kansas Department of Transportation said an employee who had used an official Twitter account to criticize Trump no longer worked at the agency.

All said she could not say why the governor’s office did not know about Jack’s feed on Twitter, which still could be viewed online Monday evening.

Some of Jack’s tweets criticized Republican legislators, including Wagle. One July 2017 tweet speculated that Wagle, who is now considering a U.S. Senate bid, might seek higher office and suggested she might be “failing upward.” He described another GOP senator with a vulgar acronym in a June 2017 tweet.

“It just flies in the face of everything you want a sitting judge to be,” said Wilborn, a McPherson Republican. “I would have thought that she (Kelly) would have vetted this candidate a little more closely and the prudent thing for her to do to continue to be credible is to withdraw that nomination.”

Sen. Vic Miller, of Topeka, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said he found Jack’s social media posts “deeply troubling.”

Asked whether Jack should withdraw as the nominee, Miller said: “If these are genuine, and he asked me for advice, I would advise him to do that.”

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TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Latest on Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly’s nominee to the state Court of Appeals (all times local):

Kansas Senate President Susan Wagle and another key Republican say Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s nomination of a trial court judge for the state Court of Appeals should be withdrawn.

Wagle and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Rick Wilborn said Monday that they oppose Kelly’s nomination of Labette County District Judge Jeffry Jack. They cited tweets and retweets criticizing President Donald Trump and expressing support for gun control and abortion rights.

Kelly spokeswoman Ashley All called the Twitter posts “troubling” and said the governor’s office is looking into them.

Wagle predicted the GOP-controlled Senate would not confirm Jack.

Jack has been a Labette County district judge since 2005. Kelly nominated him Friday for an open seat on the state’s second-highest court.

Jack did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment.

___

2:15 p.m.

The Kansas Senate’s top leader says that she will oppose Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s nominee to the state Court of Appeals.

Senate President and conservative Wichita Republican Susan Wagle said Monday that nominee Jeffry Jack has a history of “pro-abortion” rhetoric, statements favoring gun control and criticism of President Donald Trump.

Wagle’s staff pointed to Jack’s social media tweets and retweets about gun violence, abortion and Trump. A picture of Jack appears on his Twitter page.

Jack has been a Labette County district judge since 2005. Kelly nominated him Friday for an open seat on the state’s second-highest court, and the appointment must be confirmed by the Senate.

Kelly spokeswoman Ashley All said her office is looking into the matter. Jack did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment.

MISSION HILLS, Kan. (AP) — Authorities say a man in his 50s has died in a fire in a suburban Kansas City home. Johnson County Consolidated Fire District No. 2 says the fire broke out early Tuesday in Mission Hills, Kansas. Chief Tony Lopez says the man’s mother was able to escape the blaze and seek help from a neighbor.

The mother told fire officials that she was in her second floor bedroom when she heard a smoke alarm. When she went downstairs to the main level of the home, she saw her son in the burning living room. She tried to put out the fire using a coat but was forced back by the heat.

The victim’s name wasn’t immediately released. The fire is under investigation.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A coalition of Kansas City-area leaders is working to reduce the impact of climate change amid reports that the region could be among the hardest hit in the nation.

After an international group of scientists issued a climate report in October, Lindsey Constance, a councilwoman in the suburb of Shawnee, Kansas, teamed up with officials in Roeland Park, Kansas, for a December workshop. The workshop evolved into the Metro KC Climate Action Coalition.

The Weather Channel has ranked Kansas City fifth among 25 U.S. cities most likely to be affected by climate change, potentially facing higher temperatures as well as both extreme drought and heavier rains.

Constance said the concerning reports had her flipping ahead to 2030, when her now-8-year-old daughter will graduate from high school.

“To me it was terrifying to think about the fact that we might not have much of a hopeful future,” she said.

The coalition is preparing to host a Climate Action Summit it hopes will draw up to 1,000 people in September. The coalition is made up of dozens of members from local municipalities, nonprofits and utility companies from both Kansas and Missouri. The group is in part preparing for the inevitable effects of climate change.

Roeland Park Mayor Michael Kelly said the issue requires a regional approach.

Strategies can include planting trees or promoting urban gardens to mitigate heat from asphalt and concrete. Municipalities could urge residents and businesses to consider “green” roofs, solar panels, LED lighting and other energy efficient practices. They could help companies transition to wind energy or other sustainable power.

Leaders also want climate action plans and legislative platforms imploring state and federal leaders to address the issue.

The stakes are high. The Climate Disruption Index study said Kansas City face “heat in the form of urban heat islands and extreme drought. The city will see 20 more days above 90 degrees than its rural counterparts, according to Climate Central, plus more drought in the coming years.”

“While it’s alarming to see KC ranked fifth,” said Kelly, “I also know that KC is up for the challenge.”

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Kansas’ solicitor general on Monday called on a federal appeals court to reinstate the state’s law requiring people to provide proof of citizenship before they can register to vote, saying problems with how it was enforced during the three years it was in place are fixable.During a hearing before a three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Salt Lake City in a case with national implications for voting rights, Judge Jerome Holmes questioned attorneys for the state and for plaintiffs who succeeded in getting a lower court to overturn the law, which was in effect from 2013 until 2016. He pointed to evidence that it kept more than 30,000 people from registering to vote even though nearly all of them were citizens.

Solicitor General Toby Crouse said there were problems with the way the law was implemented, but he argued that the state should be able to ensure that ballots are cast legally and called on the court to resurrect the law.

“The rollout is problematic and concerning and should be improved, but that’s not a reason to undermine the law and strike it down as unconstitutional,” he said.

Dale Ho, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project, disagreed. He said cases where people can’t find their birth certificate or afford a new one are inevitable, and the Kansas law contains few fail-safes to ensure citizens can cast a ballot.

“The difficulties of implementing a law like this, which is unique in the country, are baked into the statute,” he said.

The judges didn’t indicate when they might rule.

The legal fight has drawn national attention as Republicans pursue voter ID laws aimed at preventing in-person voter fraud, including by people who are in the country illegally. Many experts say such voter fraud is extremely rare, and critics contend that the Republican-led efforts are actually meant to suppress turnout from groups who tend to back Democrats, including racial minorities and college students.

The law was championed by former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who led President Donald Trump’s now-defunct voter fraud commission and was a leading source for Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally may have voted in the 2016 election.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, supported the legislation when she was a state senator but opposes resurrecting it. Kobach, who is an attorney, personally defended the statute in the courts while he was secretary of state. Kansas’ Republican attorney general, Derek Schmidt, has taken up its defense during the appeal, saying in an emailed statement that the law was passed by large bipartisan majorities in the Legislature.

“The Legislature is free to repeal the statute if it is no longer favored, but as long as the law requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote remains on the books, we think it, like other duly enacted state laws, deserves a full and vigorous legal defense,” Schmidt said.

Kansas argued in court filings that it has a compelling interest in preventing voter fraud. It contended its proof-of-citizenship requirement is not a significant burden and protects the integrity of elections and the accuracy of voter rolls.

Critics countered that the documentary proof-of-citizenship law was “a disastrous experiment” that damaged the state’s voter rolls, disenfranchised tens of thousands and eroded confidence in the state’s elections.

The National Conference of State Legislatures has counted 35 states that have laws requiring some form of identification at the polls, but the Kansas voter registration statute at issue goes further by requiring people to provide documents such as a birth certificate, U.S. passport or naturalization papers before they can even register to vote. Arizona is the only other state with a similar law in effect, but it is far more lenient and allows people to satisfy it by writing their driver’s license number on the voter registration form. Proof-of-citizenship laws in Alabama and Georgia are not currently being enforced.

Judge Robinson found that between 1999 and 2013 a total of 39 noncitizens living in Kansas successfully registered, mostly due to applicant confusion or administrative error. That is .002 percent of the more than 1.76 million registered voters in Kansas as of Jan. 1, 2013. Eleven of those 39 noncitizens voted.

The registration law took effect in January 2013. In the three years before the appellate court put it on hold, more than 30,732 Kansans were not allowed to register to vote because they did not submit proof of citizenship. That figure represented about 12 percent of voter registration applications.

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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A federal appeals court will hear arguments Monday over the constitutionality of a struck-down Kansas statute that had required people to provide documents proving their U.S. citizenship before they could register to vote.In a case with national implications for voting rights, Kansas faces an uphill battle to resurrect the law once championed by former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach , who led President Donald Trump’s now-defunct voter fraud commission.A three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked Kobach in 2016 from fully enforcing the law, calling it “a mass denial of a fundamental constitutional right.” The issue is back before the appellate court after U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson struck it down last year and made permanent the earlier injunction.

“Kansas was the tip of the spear of an effort to make it harder for people to register under the guise of protecting elections from a nonexistent epidemic of noncitizen voting. Those efforts haven’t stopped as this case illustrates, and I think this case will be closely watched,” said Dale Ho, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project.

The legal fight has drawn national attention as Republicans pursue voter ID laws they say are aimed at people who are unlawfully in the country. Critics contend such efforts amount to voter suppression that target Democratic-leaning minorities and college students who may not have such documentation.

Kobach, a conservative Republican, was a leading source for Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally may have voted in the 2016 election.

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said in an emailed statement that the statute was enacted by large bipartisan majorities in the Legislature.

“The Legislature is free to repeal the statute if it is no longer favored, but as long as the law requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote remains on the books, we think it, like other duly enacted state laws, deserves a full and vigorous legal defense,” Schmidt said.

Kansas argued in court filings that it has a compelling interest in preventing voter fraud. It contended its proof-of-citizenship requirement is not a significant burden and protects the integrity of elections and the accuracy of voter rolls.

Critics countered that the documentary proof-of-citizenship law was “a disastrous experiment” that damaged the state’s voter rolls, disenfranchised tens of thousands and eroded confidence in the state’s elections.

The National Conference of State Legislatures has counted 35 states that have laws requiring some form of identification at the polls, but the Kansas voter registration statute at issue goes further by requiring people to provide documents such as a birth certificate, U.S. passport or naturalization papers before they can even register to vote. Arizona is the only other state with a similar law in effect, but it is far more lenient and allows people to satisfy it by writing their driver’s license number on the voter registration form. Proof-of-citizenship laws in Alabama and Georgia are not currently being enforced.

Judge Robinson found that between 1999 and 2013 a total of 39 noncitizens living in Kansas successfully registered, mostly due to applicant confusion or administrative error. That is .002 percent of the more than 1.76 million registered voters in Kansas as of Jan. 1, 2013. Eleven of those 39 noncitizens voted.

The registration law took effect in January 2013. In the three years before the appellate court put it on hold, more than 30,732 Kansans were not allowed to register to vote because they did not submit proof of citizenship. That figure represented about 12 percent of voter registration applications.

By STEPHEN KORANDA 

Republicans in the Kansas Senate seem ready to end a long-running lawsuit by complying with a court ruling that said the state sends too little money to local school districts.

The Kansas House? Not just yet. It’s advancing a plan that would continue adding school spending for another year, and only another year.

That sets up a potential fight between the two chambers and threatens Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s hopes for a plan to finally settle the court battle and carve out increased funding for public schools for several years to come.

Leaders in the House want to mix conservative policies with a funding plan that only boosts spending for the coming fiscal year. They’d also strip away future funding increases already in state law.

Senators have approved a bill mirroring Kelly’s plan for a multi-year funding hike, which many lawmakers hope could end the lawsuit.

“It is our best attempt to provide a reasonable solution for the Supreme Court,” Republican Sen. Molly Baumgardner said last week when pitching the bill to her fellow senators.

In a way, the Senate vote marks a change of fortune for Kelly. Republican leaders have blasted and blocked many of her major proposals. But Kelly’s school funding plan, based on numbers from the Department of Education, has garnered bipartisan support.

The Senate sent the bill to the House on a 32-8 vote with support from Democrats, moderate Republicans and conservatives such as Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning.

But House Speaker Ron Ryckman said he has concerns the boost in school funding would leave lawmakers unable to fund other services like roads and mental health care.

“We have to balance everything out and not always do what is politically easy to do,” Ryckman said. “We need to protect other core functions of government.”

The House will continue to work first on a proposal introduced last week, Ryckman said.

That bill includes an initial injection of cash for local school districts, but it cancels future funding increases and mixes in some controversial policies. For instance, it would let bullied students transfer to private schools on the state’s dime. Letting students use public money for private schools already draw criticism from a teachers’ union and school districts.

The Kansas Supreme Court mostly signed off on a funding boost lawmakers approved last year. But the justices said that previous spending plan needs to be adjusted for inflation. Kelly’s bill offers that added money.

Rep. Tom Sawyer, the Democratic Party leader in the House, wants to simply approve the Senate plan and move on. He said the House Republicans’ bill reopens the entire school funding debate.

“That causes all kinds of problems with the court,” Sawyer said. “Do the Senate bill. Get it behind us. Fund our schools the way we should.”

A committee will continue work this week on the House plan.

If the House approves its bill, the two chambers will have to find a compromise between proposals that have a wide disparity in funding and policy ideas.

Kelly will stay out of the fight for now and won’t pitch her plan to House lawmakers.

“They would prefer just operating on their own,” Kelly told reporters.

The issue is further complicated by a group of dozens of school districts, including the four that sued the state in the latest lawsuit, that now say even the bill approved in the Senate falls hundreds of millions of dollars short.

Baumgardner said lawmakers can’t afford what the school districts want without crippling the state budget.

“A $900 million price tag over four years will be devastating to our state,” she said during the Senate debate.

Republican Sen. Kevin Braun said if the Senate bill doesn’t satisfy the high court, it’s time to change the state constitution so courts can’t weigh in on school spending. He’s not interested in another round of fighting over a funding increase.

“This is not an opening bid,” Braun said. “This is a final offer.”

Stephen Koranda is Statehouse reporter for the Kansas News Service Kansas. Follow him on Twitter @kprkoranda.