As the Kansas Legislature returned to the Statehouse to begin its veto session on Wednesday, an openly gay lawmaker called on his colleagues to begin working on a bill that would protect the LGBTQ community from discrimination. Rep. Brandon Woodard, D-Lenexa, who is one of two openly LGBTQ ...
Story updated at 4:31 p.m. Wednesday TOPEKA — Republican lawmakers in Kansas narrowly failed Wednesday to override Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly's veto of a bill requiring abortion providers to tell patients about a disputed treatment to stop a medication abortion after it's been started. It ...
TOPEKA — Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly is seeking $35 million to improve corrections officer salaries and inmate health care and to transfer inmates out of overcrowded state prisons. Kelly on Tuesday submitted an amended budget proposal for the spending year that begins July 1 for lawmakers to ...
Story updated at 8:33 p.m. Wednesday TOPEKA — Advocates for expanding Medicaid in Kansas are looking to block passage of the state's next annual budget to force an expansion plan through the Republican-controlled Legislature over conservative leaders' objections. Legislators reconvened ...
Story updated at 12:43 p.m. Tuesday TOPEKA — Kansas' governor nominated a new judge Tuesday to the state's second-highest court, despite a lawsuit over whether she has the authority to fill the vacancy after withdrawing her first nominee over his past political tweets. Democratic Gov. Laura ...
TOPEKA — Fewer juveniles have been arrested and held in the Kansas juvenile justice system while the state has been investing in alternatives to incarceration, according to a recent study. The Pew Charitable Trusts found that the number of juvenile arrests in Kansas fell by 29% between 2015 ...
Story updated at 3:27 p.m. Friday TOPEKA — Kansas' highest court declared for the first time Friday that the state constitution protects abortion rights, a sweeping ruling that blocks a ban on a common second trimester method for ending pregnancies and endangers other restrictions as ...
TOPEKA — The Kansas Supreme Court is preparing to rule on whether the state constitution protects abortion rights. The court announced that it would issue a decision Friday in a lawsuit filed by two abortion providers in 2015 against a Kansas law banning a common second-trimester ...
TOPEKA — Roughly half of the participants in Kansas' certified intervention programs designed to break cycles of domestic violence dropped out last year, according to the state attorney general's office. The office found that 2,404 people participated in domestic violence intervention ...
TOPEKA — Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly and top Republican legislators met Wednesday to try to break a stalemate on expanding Medicaid in Kansas, only to fail after she demanded that lawmakers approve a plan this year and the GOP leaders insisted on waiting until next year. Kelly set aside four ...
A statewide elected official earned the University of Kansas School of Pharmacy’s highest honor, the university announced on Wednesday. Vicki Schmidt, the Kansas insurance commissioner, was awarded the school’s Distinguished Service Award, which aims to honor individuals who have ...
TOPEKA — A Kansas government website designed to nab child support evaders has been taken down after it caught only one man in a year. The Wichita Eagle reports that the Kansas Department for Children and Families spokesman Mike Deines says the Child Support Evaders website "had little to no ...
TOPEKA — Kansas' new Democratic governor on Monday vetoed a measure that would require clinics and doctors to tell their patients about a disputed treatment to stop a medication abortion after a woman has taken the first of two pills. The action by Gov. Laura Kelly, an abortion-rights ...
Story updated at 10:32 p.m. Monday, April 22: TOPEKA — Kansas’ attorney general on Monday asked the state Supreme Court to settle an unprecedented dispute between Gov. Laura Kelly and a top lawmaker over whether Kelly can name a new lower-court judge after withdrawing her first pick. The ...
TOPEKA — Kansas will allow its state Farm Bureau to offer health care coverage that doesn't satisfy the Affordable Care Act after Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly on Friday declined to block a Republican-backed effort to circumvent former President Barack Obama's signature health care law. Kelly ...
TOPEKA — Kansas officials issued a new fiscal forecast Thursday that's slightly more optimistic about how much tax revenue the state should expect to collect over the next two years, creating a little more breathing room for expanding Medicaid or providing tax relief. Democratic Gov. Laura ...
TOPEKA — The Kansas Supreme Court has ruled that Gov. Laura Kelly cannot file a brief in support of a law that would add about $90 million annually to public school funding. The governor on Monday asked the court for permission to file the brief in support of a bill she signed April 5. The ...
Story updated 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 17, 2019: WICHITA — A new law gives Kansas counties the legal option of letting voters cast ballots at any polling site within their county, but spotty internet service and aging voting equipment is expected to curtail its availability in many places, ...
TOPEKA — Gov. Laura Kelly has signed a bill that protects the identities of Kansas National Guard members who undergo counseling. The legislation signed by the governor on Wednesday is designed to encourage service members to seek help if needed. It will exempt counseling-related notes and ...
TOPEKA — As an election supervisor and poll worker for more than 20 years, Robert Bailey routinely mailed in his ballot early, confident that voting problems elsewhere that he read about would have a slight chance of happening in his suburban Kansas City county. So when the 82-year-old ...