Testimony Thursday in the Kansas City, Kan., federal retrial of former Westar Energy executives David Wittig and Douglas Lake recalled a forgotten fact — that in the summer of 1998, Westar tried to buy the Kansas City Royals. This was just before the same company, then known as Western Resources, started making headlines for piling up $3 billion in debt, grappling with regulators, feuding with Wichita over rate parity and failing at two merger attempts. Had Westar gotten into the baseball business, quipped Eagle columnist Mark McCormick, “At the night games, you’d have to be putting coins in the machine to keep the lights on.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Granted, state lawmakers put in some long hours during their special session — though many of them spent much of the time just sitting around. But they don’t deserve to get paid for the three days they took off over the July 4 weekend — especially when it was their own fault that they missed the Kansas Supreme Court’s July 1 deadline and had to come back on July 6 to finish the session. At $175-a-day pay for 165 lawmakers, their three-day break cost taxpayers $86,625.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Whenever Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline does something out of the box, which is often, I wonder what his predecessors think of him. The Lawrence Journal-World asked three of them about his attempted end run of the Kansas Supreme Court’s threat to close schools. Bob Stephan (1979-94) and Curt Schneider (1975-79) disapproved. But Vern Miller (1971-75), who practices law in Wichita, said of Kline’s collaboration with the State Board of Education, “Those are his clients. He has a responsibility to advise them of all their options. I don’t see anything wrong with that. I’d be surprised if he did it to spite the court.”
That’s big of Miller, who also knows a thing or two about making headlines. But other Kansans question Kline’s motives.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
An Eagle news story last week was a good reminder that Medicare is the biggest long-term financial challenge facing this country, not Social Security. Medicare is already paying out more in benefits than it receives in premiums, and its cumulative unfunded liability just for its Part A benefit is estimated at more than $41 trillion by 2080, according to the Concord Coalition.
Rising health care costs combined with an aging population is creating a budgetary disaster. But there are few policymakers talking about this problem, probably because there aren’t any simple solutions. As the Medicare trustees have warned, the longer we wait, the worse the reforms.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Will Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Hays, run for governor against Kathleen Sebelius? We’re still waiting for his announcement. The school funding mess might be giving him pause. Or has he gone on a vision quest?
Posted by Randy Scholfield
The Midwest is becoming a new center of high tech, according to an interesting article (sorry, no link) in the July/August issue of The American Enterprise magazine. It seems that lower costs of living — especially compared with San Jose and Boston — and higher public school test scores and a Midwestern work ethic are turning cities such as Fargo, Sioux Falls and Des Moines into hot spots for innovation.
Could Wichita join that list? It would take some work — especially given our state’s backward reputation on evolution. But the recently announced e-business/open source training partnership between IBM and area technical colleges could be a good start.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
