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Archives for “Topeka”
Tweet Citizens for Higher Education, a business group promoting the idea that a strong higher education system fuels economic growth for the state, has released its list of endorsements for the 2012 Kansas legislature races. The group says candidates were endorsed “based on recommendations from higher education and legislative leaders, and the candidates’ positions on [...]
Tweet Last week we put out a call for input to help us craft a five-item questionnaire for the local candidates in the upcoming August 7 primaries. We got nearly two dozen suggestions, and based on that input developed the five questions below, which we sent to the candidates in the primaries for House districts [...]
Tweet The Kansas City Star’s editorial board on Sunday released its list of voting recommendations for the Kansas House of Representatives primaries to take place Aug. 7. Citing a desire to find candidates who will support local schools and “are independent thinkers and not inclined to vote in lockstep with the governor or according to [...]
Tweet A bill rolling back some of Kansas’s more restrictive liquor laws signed by Gov. Sam Brownback earlier this month may prove a boon to Prairie Village’s burgeoning hospitality industry. The bill will allow bars and restaurants to offer happy hour specials for set periods of time. Previously, bars and restaurants had to make any [...]
Tweet Yesterday’s announcement that state Sen. Terrie Huntington would be retiring so she could focus on caring for her ailing mother shifted the casting in a race that was expected to garner considerable attention for its role in determining whether moderates or conservatives will control the Kansas senate. But Kay Wolf’s entry into the field [...]
Tweet A stampede to the Secretary of State’s office Monday in the wake of the last week’s state legislature redistricting has set the stage for an election season that will significantly change the makeup of northeast Johnson County’s delegation in Topeka. The new election maps, released by a panel of federal judges Thursday, significantly [...]
Tweet Former Prairie Village city councilor and current state Rep. Kay Wolf on Monday filed as a Republican candidate for the District 7 state senate seat currently occupied by Sen. Terrie Huntington, who will not be seeking re-election. Huntington was one of the moderate Republican state senators who had been targeted for defeat in August’s [...]
Tweet Former Johnson County Sun publisher Steve Rose has spent decades analyzing Johnson County and Kansas politics. But in all that time, he’s never seen a political scenario where so much was at stake as what lies on the horizon today. In fact, Rose says, the coming battles in the state house and at the [...]
Tweet State Sen. Terrie Huntington, one of the eight moderates targeted for defeat in this summer’s primaries by conservative factions of the state Republican party, is vigorously fighting allegations of mail tampering made by a group trying to eliminate income taxes in the state. An article in the Topeka Capital Journal Friday carried accusations by [...]
Tweet Mission Hills’ Barbara Bollier, a retired anesthesiologist now serving in the Kansas House of Representatives, has been a lone voice of dissent among her Republican peers on issues of reproductive health — particularly those concerning proposed laws that would make it more difficult for women to get abortions. Her objection to a proposal currently before [...]
Tweet Mission Hills resident and Kansas State Rep. Barbara Bollier – a retired physician — has frequently found herself among sparse company in Topeka on issues of reproductive health. As the increasingly conservative state government moved toward restricting access to abortion during the past legislative session, she took vocal stands against the measures. Last week, she decided [...]
Tweet State Rep. Kay Wolf of Prairie Village was one of 40 Republicans to sponsor a bill introduced on the House floor that would allow taxpayers to donate money to the arts. The move comes on the heals of the announcement that Gov. Sam Brownback’s proposed budget for the coming fiscal year would include $200,000 [...]
Tweet Using Mission Valley Middle School as a backdrop Tuesday, Kansas Democrats offered their rebuttal to the school finance overhaul plan introduced by Gov. Sam Brownback in December. The Democrats say their plan, which would bring the base state aid per pupil from $3,780 to $4,492, would net districts in Johnson County more that $15 [...]
Tweet Kansas Democrats today are planning to use Mission Valley Middle School as the backdrop for a press conference unveiling their plan for funding Kansas public schools. Democratic Senate Leader Anthony Hensley and House Leader Paul Davis had originally planned to hold the event last Wednesday, but postponed it after word leaked that Boeing would [...]
Tweet The highlight of 2012′s political calendar will certainly be the presidential election in November — but there are plenty of important local and state elections along the way. The seat of local State Senator Terrie Huntington, who defended a primary challenge in 2010 as she sought to defend the seat she had taken over [...]
Tweet State Rep. Kay Wolf, the former Prairie Village city councilwoman who now represents much of the city in Topeka, says that by and large the Johnson County delegation in the state legislature is excited about Gov. Sam Brownback’s proposal for revamping the school finance formula. Wolf and other Johnson County legislators met with Brownback’s [...]
Tweet Shawnee Mission School District Superintendent Gene Johnson released a statement Wednesday suggesting he was highly encouraged by Gov. Sam Brownback’s proposal to revamp the state’s school funding formula, which has been the subject of near-constant litigation in recent years. The statement was as follows: We are pleased that the Governor’s plan appears to include [...]
Tweet Gov. Sam Brownback’s office has presented its proposal for overhauling the state’s school finance formula, a set of steps that would take effect in July 2013 if approved by the state legislature. The highlights include: Lifting the cap on the amount of money school districts can raise through local property taxes. Removing the tie [...]
Tweet Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s office has announced that it will release details about its proposal for revamping the state’s controversial school funding formula. Policy director Landon Fulmer will present the governor’s proposal Wednesday at a meeting of the State Board of Education. Brownback hinted throughout his campaign for governor that he would be looking [...]
Tweet Six days, hundreds of news articles and several thousand provocative tweets later, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback ended up being the one to issue the apology in the Emma Sullivan Twitter fracas. Brownback issued a statement to the media saying he was sorry for his staff’s “over-reaction” to Sullivan’s message: My staff over-reacted to this [...]
Tweet Everything in moderation, the old saying goes. Especially moderation. But in a state where a single party controls all three houses of government and a broad swath of local elected offices, even temperate subscribers to the theory of moderation can find themselves wanting. And they could find themselves wanting even more if a group [...]
Tweet Last week, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback appointed local attorney Fred Logan and two others to the Kansas Board of Regents, the body charged with overseeing the state’s higher education system. Long a champion of public education in the state, Logan has been hailed as an excellent choice for the position by the Kansas City [...]
Tweet Ask state Sen. Terrie Huntington whether there’s any hope the legislature will change the school funding formula that’s wreaking havoc on the Shawnee Mission School District and you’ll get an optimistic answer. As long as you’re not hoping for things to change quickly. “I think the likelihood is high that it can be changed,” [...]
Tweet An email dust up between two Shawnee Mission East teachers might offer a preview of larger battles to come between conservative state legislators and education advocates as the state examines the need for future budget cuts. KCTV 5 reported yesterday that SM East history teacher and Dist. 22 state representative Greg Smith earlier this [...]
Tweet A group of seven state legislators are holding a Kansas Budget Forum 6:30 p.m. tonight at SM West. The forum will include information about how the Kansas state budget is produced, how the state school finance formula works, and how the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System (KPERS) is funded. The legislators will also be [...]
