WHAT YOUR FRIDGE SAYS ABOUT YOUR HEALTH
Details of Panama Papers made public. 1B
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TUESDAY • MAY 10 • 2016
Groups join forces to push for Medicaid expansion Kansas coalition aims to make issue key for upcoming elections and health care advocates said Monday that they hope to build support Topeka — A coalition of for expanding the state’s civic and business groups, Medicaid program durfaith-based organizations ing the upcoming 2016 By Peter Hancock
Twitter: @LJWpqhancock
legislative campaigns. “There will be significant investments in public education of candidates, public education of legislators, and also
engagement of communities around this issue,” said David Jordan, executive director of the newly formed Alliance for a Healthy Kansas.
The group includes several businesses, civic and faith-based organizations from throughout Kansas, as well as health care advocacy groups, who held a rally and news conference at the Statehouse on Monday to
kick off their campaign. Jordan said he and other members of the coalition were frustrated that Kansas lawmakers completed the 2016 session Please see MEDICAID, page 2A
CHANGING COURSE
Town Talk
Chad Lawhorn clawhorn@ljworld.com
Sales tax figures show big gain for city
Funding swap The Republican-dominated Legislature rewrote the state’s school finance law in 2014 in response to an earlier Supreme Court order to boost aid to poor districts, but after the price tag ballooned, a new law was Please see SCHOOL, page 2A
Please see TAX, page 2A
Nick Krug/Journal-World Photo
GOLFERS SET UP TO PUTT WHILE ON THE GREEN OF THE NINTH HOLE on the public side of Alvamar Golf Course on Monday.
City leaders to decide on changes to Alvamar redevelopment By Nikki Wentling Twitter: @nikkiwentling
Lawrence city commissioners will get a look Tuesday at updated plans to redevelop — and financially salvage — Alvamar Country Club, which now includes office space and reconfiguring the course to 27
holes of golf, instead of space for a hotel and maintaining 36. decided to renovate the Since the City Comexisting clubhouse, rathmission first approved er than demolish it and a preliminary developbuild a new one. The ment plan in October, variations were enough CITY developers have made COMMISSION to require another look other changes: They’ve from commissioners, added a chapel and indepen- said City Planner Sandra Day dent living facility, removed when the plan went back to
the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission in March. At the time, Day said the change from 36 to 27 holes of golf generated questions and concern from those living around the “back nine,” Please see ALVAMAR, page 6A
Supreme Court to hear school funding arguments By John Hanna Associated Press
Topeka — Critics of Kansas’ new public school funding law are illustrating what they see as its flaws with before-and-after towers of Legos: The blocks change color, but the stack doesn’t grow any larger.
The state Supreme Court plans to hear arguments today on whether legislators satisfied a mandate to improve funding for poor schools by, in effect, swapping green blocks for yellow ones — making technical changes in how state aid is distributed without affecting most districts’ share or boosting overall state spending.
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The state’s lawyers have submitted nearly 950 pages of material from the Legislature’s debate to back up its case that the changes satisfy the high court’s February mandate, which came in a lawsuit filed in 2010 by four of the state’s 286 school districts. The key issues at stake before today’s arguments:
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here are new sales tax figures out that will make you wonder whether my wife finally gave me the PIN code for the ATM at the bank. Yes, for the second month in a row, retail sales totals in Lawrence have grown dramatically. Lawrence sales tax collections grew by 8.4 percent during the most recent monthly reporting period. Most of those sales took place in February or early March. (It is a big-ticket time period: Boxes of Valentine’s Day chocolates, March Madness big-screen TVs, cranes to move both.) Whatever the case, the 8.4 percent growth in sales tax collections was one of the larger growth rates in the state. This is the second month in a row that’s been the case for Lawrence. Last month’s sales tax report showed growth of 7.4 percent. As a result, Lawrence’s sales tax growth is outpacing all of the
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Student injured
Vol.158/No.131 28 pages
A Free State High School student was hurt Monday when he jumped into a retention pond near the high school. Page 3A
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