JAYHAWKS RANKED 119TH — BUT STILL OPTIMISTIC. 1D AGING COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY PUTS AIRLINES AT RISK.
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Feds charge ex-mayor Farmer with embezzlement By Chad Lawhorn and Conrad Swanson clawhorn@ljworld.com; cswanson@ljworld.com
Up to 10 years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines may await former Lawrence Mayor Jeremy Farmer, if he is convicted
Farmer
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of a federal embezzlement (Just Food has) certainly cooperated and charge filed against him wanted the facts to come out.” Thursday. Federal prosecutors on — Will Katz, president of the Just Food board Thursday charged Farmer, 32, with one count of interstate travel of embezzled funds related to his time Kansas’ U.S. District Court er’s personal assets to reas the executive director also states that prosecu- cover any ill-gotten gains, of Just Food. The filing in tors plan to go after Farm- if necessary.
FROM LAWRENCE
TO SLOVAKIA
Farmer is alleged to have taken more than $55,000 in funds from the nonprofit agency from 2013 to August 2015, when Farmer resigned from Just Food and from his mayoral post under a cloud of controversy.
> FARMER, 2A
Regents: Restoring funding is top priority By Peter Hancock phancock@ljworld.com
Contributed Photo
LHS grad to be sworn in as ambassador today By Kim Callahan
More on Adam Sterling
kcallahan@ljworld.com
W
hen Adam Sterling is sworn in today as a U.S. ambassador — the coveted pinnacle of a career in the Foreign Service — he’ll likely give some thought to how it all began: in Kansas, in the 1970s, when he was a teenager itching to see the world. “Nobody in my family had ever left the United States,” he said earlier this week in a phone interview from Washington, D.C. So not long after graduating from Lawrence High School in 1977, he found himself spending a magical college
Adam Sterling is pictured in 1976 in this LHS yearbook photo.
Age: 56 Family: His wife, from Belgium, is Veerle Coignez. They have two children, Elka, 17, and Bram, 15. Education: Bachelor’s degree from Grinnell College, 1981; Master’s from John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, 1990. Word of advice: “I grew up in Lawrence not knowing what the Foreign Service was. I would encourage anyone who might take an interest in this life and this career to look into it. Careers.state.gov.”
year in Paris, living in the first of many world capitals, mastering the first of five languages and generally catching “the bug for life overseas.”
Forty years later he is set to present his credentials to President Andrej Kiska as the U.S. ambassador to Slovakia in an ornate ceremony
in Bratislava, Sterling’s new home on the Danube River, in the heart of Central Europe.
> SLOVAKIA, 5A
Arts Center, city disagree on nature of budget cuts By Rochelle Valverde rvalverde@ljworld.com
The Lawrence Arts Center sustained a $55,000 cut in funding for building maintenance as part of the city’s 2017 budget, and years to come will likely bring more reductions. Arts Center leaders said the cut came as a surprise, and is moving the center closer to a private entity that may have to reduce some of
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“The city is taking steps toward privatizing the Lawrence Arts Center, which is not a part of our vision and not a part of our plan,” said Arts Center CEO Susan Tate. “Public funding is very important to keeping an entity open to the public, and we hope that the city reverses course.” Tate Markus The city owns the building that its hours or eliminate some of the houses the Arts Center, located free and low cost services it pro- at 940 New Hampshire St., and vides to the public. leases it to the center. As part of
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the lease agreement, the city is responsible for major exterior and structural maintenance to the Arts Center, but not interior upkeep. City Manager Tom Markus said the funding reduction is the first phase of returning funding to what was originally intended by the agreement, under which the city has been paying more than required for interior maintenance. > ARTS, 4A
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Wichita — The Kansas Board of Regents said Thursday that its top budget priority for the next legislative session will be to restore the $30.7 million that Gov. Sam Brownback cut out of university budgets this year, even though Brownback is asking all OF state agen- BOARD REGENTS cies, including universities, to study the prospect of additional cuts. The Regents’ decision came at the end of a threeday meeting in Wichita during which each of the state’s six universities offered wish lists for projects they would like to have funded. “We are going to include those (other projects), but as narrative, just to be sure to communicate that we have those priorities, but our number-one priority is to restore the cuts and the stability to higher education,” Regents President and CEO Blake Flanders said. At the end of the 2016 legislative session, lawmakers passed a final budget for the fiscal year that began July 1, knowing that the state likely would not have enough money to completely fund it.
> REGENTS, 4A
WEST LAWRENCE’S NEW EATERY AIMS TO BE CASUAL, CHIC J. Wilson’s is now open at the former Marisco’s location, with as much emphasis on upscale seafood dishes as its predecessor. PAGE 1C