Fire crews on the scene Saturday in Topeka-photo courtesy WIBW TV
SHAWNEE COUNTY–Fire crews responded to a fire located at 110 NE Coachlight Drive, Topeka just after 3 p.m. on Saturday.
According to a media release, fire crews found heavy smoke and flames coming from the mobile home. Firefighters began an offensive fire attack, keeping it confined to the structure of fire origin. Firefighters performed a search of the structure and confirmed there were no occupants.
A Topeka Fire Department Investigation’s Unit responded to this incident to determine the fire cause to be natural, associated with a lightning strike.
Estimated dollar loss – $15,000.00 structural loss and $2,000.00 contents loss.
Kansas’ plans to migrate driver’s license records for about 2 million people from an aged mainframe to new information technology infrastructure remain troubled, a new report indicates.
In a new report, legislative auditors say a project to migrate Kansas driver’s license records to a new information technology system remains troubled. FILE PHOTO / KANSAS NEWS SERVICE
Some portions of the already-delayed KanLicense project have been further postponed, a team of legislative auditors wrote in the report, with plans to carry them out after the project’s go-live date in early January.
According to the report, the Kansas Department of Revenue — the agency in charge of implementing KanLicense, previously known as KanDrive — said the portions being punted to next year involve server upgrades and other items that won’t cause problems.
The auditors disagreed.
“There is potential risk that delaying this portion of the work could jeopardize the successful roll-out of the KanLicense project,” the report said, “or could result in functionality issues after the system is in use.”
In a letter responding to the audit, the department said KanLicense has seen a “positive turnaround.”
KanLicense “has successfully accomplished many project milestones,” department official Lisa Kaspar wrote.
Auditors have been monitoring KanLicense on a quarterly basis because of its rocky progress. Its latest projected launch date is six years behind schedule. Uninterrupted access to driver’s license records is vital for motor vehicle offices and law enforcement agencies.
Last month Kansas Revenue Secretary Sam Williams told lawmakers he will push back the KanLicense launch if quality issues arise but said the project is on track for a smooth rollout.
It is undergoing testing this fall, he said, and staff from motor vehicle offices have begun training related to its use.
Other problems that auditors cited in their new report included concerns that more work remains to be done on KanLicense than can be completed by January, and that contractors continue to miss deadlines.
The department switched to a system of milestone targets to hold contractors accountable, but auditors said the agency accepted some portions of work as meeting milestones even when components were missing.
One of the contractors, MorphoTrust, recently replaced its program manager, the report said. It also shortened its timeline for system testing from two months to one to help catch up.
BAXTER SPRINGS, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas prosecutor has filed first-degree murder and other charges against a man suspected of fatally burning a woman and injuring two police officers during a confrontation.
Cherokee County Attorney Jake Conard’s office says 49-year-old Harvey Raymond Ortberg is accused of dousing 65-year-old Sharon Horn with gasoline and setting her on fire Sept. 30 at her Baxter Springs home. She later died at a Springfield, Missouri, hospital. Other charges include burglary, arson and the attempted murder of two responding officers, who also were burned.
Missouri and Kansas officials couldn’t immediately confirm whether Ortberg has an attorney. Once he’s released from the hospital and extradited to Kansas, he’ll be held on a $1 million bond.
He faces life in prison without the possibility of parole for at least 50 years.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Regulatory filings show natural gas is leaking through unplugged abandoned wells that have penetrated a massive underground storage field in Kansas. It is creating a public safety hazard amid a dispute over whose responsibility it is to fix the problem.
Northern Natural Gas Co. told federal regulators in a filing this week that the Kansas Corporation Commission “has sat on its hands with full knowledge of the risk.”
The Kansas agency filed a motion last month with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Washington, D.C., seeking an order forcing Northern Natural to keep its storage gas from escaping through the wells.
But Northern contends Kansas law requires well owners to plug the abandoned wells.
Northern owns the Cunningham Storage Field spanning Pratt, Kingman and Reno counties.
WASHINGTON —President Donald Trump’s decision to end a provision of the Affordable Care Act that was benefiting roughly 6 million Americans helps fulfill a campaign promise, but it also risks harming some of the very people who helped him win the presidency.
An analysis by The Associated Press found that nearly 70 percent of those benefiting from the so-called cost-sharing subsidies live in states Trump won last November.
The number underscores the political risk for Trump and his party, which could end up owning the blame for increased costs and chaos in the insurance marketplace.
The subsidies are paid to insurers by the federal government to help lower consumers’ deductibles and co-pays. To make up for the lost funding, insurers will have to raise premiums substantially, potentially putting coverage out of reach for many.
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — A recent cybersecurity breach has a University of Kansas faculty group concerned that it could lead to other attacks, not just at the university, but across higher education.
The Lawrence Journal-World reports that aerospace engineering professor Ron Barrett-Gonzalez says an apparently disgruntled engineering student carried out the hack during the 2016-17 academic year. Barrett-Gonzalez says details of the hack were shared publicly at a School of Engineering Senate meeting last week.
The student in question had allegedly used a keystroke logger to gain faculty members’ login information and passwords and changed his failing grades to As. Keystroke loggers are often used by cybercriminals to steal personal information from public computers and keyboards.
University officials confirmed that a security breach took place but said the attack “was minimal and caught quickly.”
COWLEY COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a Kansas high school teacher for an alleged unlawful relationship with a student.
On Friday, police arrested 27-year-old Ethan Dane Huff after report of the relationship with a 17-year-old student and an investigation to established probable cause, according to a media release.
He was booked into the Cowley County Jail on a $10,000 Bond on suspicion of unlawful sexual relations.
According to the school newspaper, Huff taught history at Arkansas City High School.
Phyllis Gilmore, secretary of the Kansas Department for Children and Families, faced questions Tuesday from lawmakers about the number of children missing from the foster care system. FILE PHOTO / KANSAS NEWS SERVICE
The news that about 70 children are missing from the Kansas foster care system is the latest in a string of concerns for lawmakers and child welfare advocates.
Concern for the safety of children, heavy caseloads for social workers and a lack of coordination in the system prompted lawmakers earlier this year to form the Child Welfare Task Force, which heard about the missing children during a meeting Tuesday in Topeka.
The foster care system, overseen by the Kansas Department for Children and Families, was privatized 20 years ago after it failed court-ordered reviews. Care is now overseen by two contractors: St. Francis Community Services in western Kansas, and KVC Health Systems in eastern Kansas.
Missing kids
The task force raised concerns Tuesday about missing children in response to a Kansas City Star article about three sisters who have been missing from their foster home in Tonganoxie since late August.
The girls, all under age 16, were part of KVC’s caseload, and are among 37 children the contractor said were missing as of Wednesday. The Star heard about their disappearance from their foster parent and great aunt, Debbie Miller, who hasn’t seen sisters Emily, Aimee and Christin Utter since Aug. 26.
State Sen. Laura Kelly, a Topeka Democrat, said it was “very concerning” that the Tonganoxie sisters had been missing for almost two months. But Kelly said she was more alarmed that DCF Secretary Phyllis Gilmore hadn’t heard about the girls when Kelly brought it to her attention Tuesday.
“She’s responsible for these kids,” Kelly said. “They are wards of the state, and she’s in charge of that agency. So the fact that she knew nothing about these missing girls is of great concern to me.”
In a Wednesday interview, House Minority Leader Jim Ward expressed exasperation with the Kansas foster care system and its issues, some of which have led to child endangerment and even the deaths of children in care.
“If this was a single event, I would be more willing to listen,” Ward said. “But this is on top of last (month’s) revelation that some foster care kids were sleeping in offices … this is just absolutely unconscionable.”
Ward went even further, reiterating past calls for Gilmore to be removed as head of DCF.
“I’ve been calling for her to be gone for two years, and renew that call today,” he said.
The number of missing Kansas foster care children represents about 1 percent of those in the state’s system.
Jenny Kutz, KVC communications director, said kids who go missing from its care are found within two weeks on average, with many returned to their care within days. However, one teenager has been missing for more than two years.
Janis Friesen, a communications consultant for St. Francis, did not specify how long children in its care are missing, but she noted that teens reported missing are located quickly “in many instances.” She said children ages 12 and older make up 92 percent of the kids missing statewide.
DCF issued a news release Wednesday outlining its protocol for missing and runaway foster children.
According to DCF protocol, contractors are required to notify the department and appropriate law enforcement agency of a missing child within two hours. By the next workday, the contractor has to communicate what they know about the incident to DCF.
“We made the decision to highlight the protocol for handling situations involving runaways and missing children because of questions that arose during the final minutes of the Child Welfare System Task Force meeting on Tuesday,” Gilmore said in the release. “We want to assure the public that protocols are in place, and have been for many years, to ensure that when children run away from their foster care placement, every effort is made to locate them and return them to a safe and appropriate foster care home or facility.”
Serena Hawkins, a guardian ad litem and task force member, said children often run back to their previous home.
“A lot of the time these children have returned to their biological families, and they are being sheltered by these families to prevent them from being removed from DCF again,” she told task force members.
However, running away to return to families is still cause for concern, as 61 percent of the kids removed from their homes in fiscal year 2016 were removed because of abuse or neglect, ranging from physical and sexual abuse to a lack of supervision or abandonment. An additional 16 percent were removed due to a parent’s substance abuse.
More kids coming into the system
State officials say the problems in the foster care system are not unique to Kansas.
The number of children in foster care nationwide increased every year from 2012 to 2015, the last year for which national data is available. Thirty-five states, including Kansas, saw an increase in the number of children in their foster care systems during that period.
Kansas lawmakers are not sure why the number of kids in the system is increasing, but several noted the national opioid epidemic could be one factor, as children are removed from the care of opioid-addicted parents.
The climbing numbers are adding stress to the Kansas system, which has not been able to add enough new foster families to keep up.
One consequence of this increase has been made visible in the couches and makeshift beds set up in contractors’ offices.
At last month’s task force meeting, lawmakers learned more than 100 children in the foster care system had to spend the night in offices instead of homes in the last year when other facilities were not available to immediately take them.
This happens all over the country, Kutz said, and has been a growing problem in Kansas as the state has seen a steady increase in the number of kids in care in recent years. She said KVC sees an average of five kids sleeping in offices each month, with a high of 15 in June. In 19 instances this year, kids have spent multiple nights in offices.
In response, KVC is opening short-term children’s crisis centers to provide temporary beds for kids who would otherwise be stuck in offices. Kutz said KVC opened beds in Hays and plans to open a crisis center with up to 20 beds in Kansas City, Kansas, in January. KVC is considering a third center in Wichita.
Friesen did not say how many children St. Francis had staying in its offices this year, but she did say the placement process can be prolonged for older youth with behavioral issues, many of whom then spend the night in the contractor’s offices. She said St. Francis is seeing an increase in harder-to-place children.
Next steps
The task force, which has met three times, is examining issues with the foster care system more broadly, looking at how DCF oversees foster care, integration and adoption. Rep. Linda Gallagher, a Lenexa Republican, said she expects the issue of missing kids to come up again, along with worker caseloads and other consequences of increased numbers of kids.
The task force will meet twice more before putting out its preliminary findings in January 2018. Its final recommendations will be issued a year later.
“My intent and my hope is that the task force will identify where the problems are, where the balls are being dropped, and where children are falling through the cracks,” Gallagher said.
SMITH COUNTY— A Kansas woman was injured in an accident just after 6p.m. Friday in Smith County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2002 Jeep Cherokee driven by Lucinda M. Johnson, 62, Smith Center, Vehicle was southbound on U.S. 281 eleven miles south of U.S. 36.
The jeep left the roadway and entered the west ditch. The driver lost control of the jeep. It rolled and the driver was ejected.
Johnson was transported to the Smith County Hospital. She was properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the KHP.
JEWELL COUNTY — Another earthquake shook north central Kansas on Friday. The quake at 9:13 p.m. measured a magnitude 2.7 and was centered approximately 4 miles southeast of Mankato, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
This is the 4th quake in Kansas this week. On Wednesday at 6:29p.m. a quake measured a magnitude 3.1 and was centered approximately ten miles northwest of Harper, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
On Tuesday a magnitude 2.5 quake was centered approximately 19 miles southeast of Salina, according to the USGS. On Sunday a 2.6 magnitude quake was centered four miles east of Harper.
There are no reports of damage or injury from Friday’s quake.
