SHAWNEE COUNTY — An accidental fire at a Kansas home caused significant damage.
Thursday afternoon fire at a home in Topeka-photo by Rick Felsburg courtesy WIBW TV
Just after 4p.m. Thursday, crews responded to a fire at a home in the 600 Block of SW 9th Street in Topeka, according to Fire Marshal Michael Martin.
Upon arrival, fire crews reported smoke and flames coming from the back southern 2nd floor of the residence. Fire suppression crews were able to extinguish the fire, containing it to second floor and attic spaces of the home. The remaining portions of the dwelling sustained significant water damage throughout.
Estimated structural dollar loss is $50,000 to the dwelling and $25,000 contents loss.
The fire was caused by a space heater appliance and or a related electrical issue, according to Martin.
Multiple occupants of the home were able to escape unharmed. Fire crews did not find working smoke detectors at the home.
A new ag labor bill by California Senator Dianna Feinstein and Repetitive Zoe Lofgren would allow certain foreign agricultural workers to receive permanent U.S. residency. The California Democrats introduced the bill Thursday.
Under the Agricultural Worker Program Act, farmworkers who have worked in agriculture for at least 100 days in the past two years may earn “blue card” status that allows them to continue to work in the United States legally. Farmworkers who maintain blue card status for the next three years or five years, depending on hours worked in agriculture, would be eligible to adjust to lawful permanent residence, or a green card.
In a statement, Senator Feinstein said the bill “would ensure that hardworking immigrants don’t live in fear and that California’s agriculture industry has the workforce it needs to succeed.” The bill has numerous Democrats listed as co-signers in both the House and Senate.
In her first budget as governor, Democrat Laura Kelly aims to inject cash into what she calls critical state services.
The proposal unveiled Thursday also would start to wean the state off money diverted for years from highway construction and upkeep.
But the bill met a predictably harsh reception from some Republicans. They argued the spending plan would lead to budget deficits.
To invest in services, while preserving a savings account, the budget would stretch out payments intended to fill a deficit in the state pension plan. It also continues transfers from the highway fund, although it would take less money from roads than in recent years.
That would let Kansas plow money into schools, child welfare and an expanded Medicaid program that would offer health coverage to an added 150,000 or so Kansans.
Kelly’s budget also shoots to end a years-long school funding lawsuit. It would add $92 million a year more for schools to comply with a court decision from last year.
The budget follows a theme Kelly has repeated, that she inherited problems from her Republican predecessors and that she can’t restore state services in a single year.
“It’s going to take time for Kansas to heal from the damage inflicted over the last eight years,” Kelly said in a statement, “so we don’t have a moment to lose.”
Larry Campbell, the budget director for Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, laid out the administration’s spending plan to lawmakers on Thursday. CREDIT STEPHEN KORANDA / KANSAS NEWS SERVCIE
Kelly’s budget director, Larry Campbell, told lawmakers in a budget briefing that the spending plan invests in services while allowing Kansas to weather economic uncertainty that, he said, could include a possible recession in the coming months or years.
“We need a cushion, and we need tools back in the toolbox to address the unforeseen economic challenges coming,” Campbell said.
At the end of fiscal year 2020, Kelly’s budget would leave Kansas with a $686 million reserve. That’s 9 percent of state spending and a decrease from the $761 million the state had banked at the end of fiscal year 2018.
Republican Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning said lawmakers don’t want to extend the payoff schedule in the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System, or KPERS. Without the restructured pension payments, he said, the numbers in the budget don’t work.
“This whole budget is built on a house of cards,” Denning said after the meeting.
Kelly’s also pushing to expand the health care program Medicaid. She’s budgeted $14 million, although the administration says the cost would rise in the following year.
That is an underestimate of the true cost, Denning said.
“We know that it’s impossible,” Denning said.
Yet Denning applauded the proposal to reduce transfers from the highway fund.
Medicaid expansion will likely have bipartisan support in the Legislature. A bill passed both chambers in 2017 but was vetoed by then-Gov. Sam Brownback.
Democratic Rep. Kathy Wolfe Moore said even if the cost estimate isn’t exact, Medicaid expansion is something lawmakers need to do because of the benefit it could offer to Kansans and struggling rural hospitals.
“I absolutely believe we have to invest in that,” Wolfe Moore said.
The spending plan also makes investments in a variety of other services.
It would spend $22 million to give state employees a 2.5 percent raise.
The plan would reverse a funding cut universities absorbed in 2016. Those cuts had already been partially restored and finishing the job will cost almost $9 million.
To tackle problems in the state’s troubled child welfare system, the budget proposes hiring 55 more social workers at a cost of $4 million. The plan would also spend more than $7 million on services aimed at keeping children in their homes so they never enter the foster care system in the first place.
The governor’s spending plan serves as a template for state lawmakers. Now, budget writers from the House and Senate will begin digging deeper into the bill and developing their own spending priorities.
“It’s kind of a rosy picture,” said Republican Rep. Troy Waymaster, the top budget writer in the House. “We have to go back and do a complete analysis.”
The Environmental Protection Agency intends to complete a rule that allows year-round E15 sales by June. However, the government shutdown may delay the action. EPA acting administrator Andrew Wheeler told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee this week that the agency can finish the rule on-time, if the government shutdown doesn’t delay the work.
Wheeler also told the committee that he intended to issue the E15 proposal next month, but the shutdown has complicated the timeline. Renewable Fuels Association President and CEO Geoff Cooper said the association was “encouraged” by the comments, but added, “we remain concerned that the partial shutdown is compressing a timeline that was already very tight.”
Cooper says he believes the EPA could improve the chances of finishing the rule on time if it was separated from RIN reform provisions also being considered in the rulemaking package.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Authorities are looking for a missing witness in a pending Missouri homicide case.
Kenneth E. Cornwell Jr.-photo Raytown PD
The Missouri State Highway Patrol has issued an endangered person advisory for 42-year-old Kenneth Cornwell Jr. He was last seen Tuesday in Raytown. Investigators are looking for a green 2000 Kia Spectra with Missouri license plate SR0-G3L.
Cornwell is 6 feet tall and 240 pounds. He has tattoos on both of his arms.
Police didn’t immediately release any information on the homicide case in which he is a witness.
KANSAS CITY — Fans who suffer from the epidemic that hit the state this week have a place to go for help.
image courtesy KC Chiefs
A Kansas City area hospital helps patients with flu, colds and many other health issues. Now they have created a web site that will help patients who have Chiefs Fever.
According to the St. Lukes Health System web site, Chiefs Fever is an extremely contagious condition of the brain and body. It’s known to occur when the Kansas City Chiefs utterly dominate in the AFC West.
Head coach Andy Reid and quarterback Patrick Mahomes are among the healthcare providers listed on the web site.
Both providers will be busy Sunday evening during the AFC Championship game that is scheduled to kick off at 5:40p.m.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon has identified three of the four Americans killed in a suicide bomb attack claimed by the Islamic State group in Syria this week.
They are Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jonathan R. Farmer, 37, of Boynton Beach, Florida, who was based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky; Navy Chief Cryptologic Technician (Interpretive) Shannon M. Kent, 35, from upstate New York and based at Fort Meade, Maryland; and a civilian, Scott A. Wirtz, from St. Louis, Missouri.
The Pentagon hasn’t identified the fourth casualty, a civilian. The four were killed in the northern Syrian town of Manbij on Wednesday. The attack, which also wounded three U.S. troops, was the deadliest assault on U.S. troops in Syria since American forces went into the country in 2015.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri appeals court says a lower court judge was wrong to order a woman to reveal her home address despite being in a program that shields the addresses of abuse victims.
Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and Attorney General Eric Schmitt on Thursday praised the ruling.
Ashcroft’s office runs the Safe at Home program, which lets victims of domestic violence, rape, sexual assault, stalking and other crimes keep their addresses confidential by routing mail through a special post office box.
A St. Louis County judge in 2017 had ordered one participant to reveal her actual address as part of a divorce case. The judge said the application failed to include a sworn statement about the abuse.
Missouri’s Western District Court of Appeals reversed that ruling Tuesday.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas Department of Labor is recommending that federal employees who are furloughed because of the partial government shutdown should apply for unemployment benefits.
Impacted fed. workers who want to file for unemployment or who have questions, call the KDOL Contact Center at 1-800-292-6333.
The department said in a news release Thursday that unemployment insurance was created to help people who are not working through no fault of their own.
Federal employees in Kansas can apply for benefits by calling a contact center at 1-800-292-6333.
Applicants will need to provide wage verification, such as pay stubs or W-2 forms.
Federal employees who are working full time but not being paid are not eligible for unemployment benefits. The law requires anyone receiving back pay to any repay jobless benefits they received.
JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) — A 22-year-old man has pleaded guilty in the abuse death of his then-girlfriend’s 3-year-old son in southwest Missouri.
Valdez- Jasper Co.
Leonard Valdez pleaded guilty Thursday to second-degree murder in the November 2017 death of Jonathan Munoz-Bilbrey. The plea agreement effectively drops a second count of child abuse resulting in death and caps his sentence at 22 years.
Court records say Valdez called the boy’s mother while she was at work and told her that Jonathan was sick. Jonathan was transported from a Joplin apartment to a local hospital, and later to Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, where he died .
Medical staff determined that Jonathan suffered injuries consistent with head trauma.
A new ag labor bill by California Senator Dianna Feinstein and Repetitive Zoe Lofgren would allow certain foreign agricultural workers to receive permanent U.S. residency. The California Democrats introduced the bill Thursday.
The Environmental Protection Agency intends to complete a rule that allows year-round E15 sales by June. However, the government shutdown may delay the action. EPA acting administrator Andrew Wheeler told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee this week that the agency can finish the rule on-time, if the government shutdown doesn’t delay the work.
