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FRIDAY • JULY 8 • 2011
Opponents of city’s SRS shutdown plan forums By Scott Rothschild srothschild@ljworld.com
TOPEKA — Opposition continues to mount to the decision by Gov. Sam Brownback administration’s to shut down the Lawrence office of the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services.
At 10 a.m. Saturday, at a meeting of the Douglas County Democratic Party, Robert Harder, the first and longest-serving director of SRS, will talk about the recent changes going on at SRS and how it will affect Kansans. The program will be at the Lawrence Public Library. Then at 7 p.m. Monday, local leg-
move. The Lawrence office, with 87 employees, was by far the largest one. Brownback said people served by the Lawrence office could use the Internet or travel to other cities for assistance. Siedlecki said the Lawrence office needed to be closed to capture the biggest sav-
Low: 72
Today’s forecast, page 10A
INSIDE LHS players attend Notre Dame camp Their summer is filled with football — three Lawrence High School football players took a few days off from their summer football workouts to go to a football fundamentals camp at Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. Page 1B
Brownback picks abortion opponent to serve on body that licenses and regulates doctors
Little progress made in negotiations
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QUOTABLE
The right thing is that state government needs to be a fair partner. That partnership is how it works in our country, and you can’t take a piece out of that without unraveling or threatening to unravel the structure.” — Robert Lynch, chief executive of the national advocacy group Americans for the Arts, which is urging the federal government’s arts agency to withhold money from Kansas after Gov. Sam Brownback made it the first U.S. state to eliminate its funding for arts programs. Page 6A
COMING SATURDAY City commissioners sit down with the proposed 2012 budget to begin making decisions about what’s in and what’s out.
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INDEX Business Classified Comics Deaths Events listings Horoscope Movies Opinion Poll Puzzles Sports Television Vol.153/No.189
7A 3B-10B 9A 2A 10A, 2B 9B 5A 8A 2A 9B 1B-3B 5A, 2B, 9B 40 pages
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— Statehouse reporter Scott Rothschild can be reached at 785-423-0668.
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SCHOOLS
Lawrence teachers reduced their request for across-the-board raises during negotiations Thursday, but the union’s lead negotiator, David Reber, said, “It’s still got a long way to go.” Page 3A
ings: about $300,000. But the Brownback administration has so far declined to discuss further details about the decision, despite repeated requests by the Journal-World to do so.
Medical board choice criticized
‘This house is like our country’
Mostly sunny
High: 89
islators will host a public forum on the recent announcement to close the Lawrence SRS office. That meeting will take place at Plymouth Congregational Church, 925 Vt. Last week, SRS Secretary Robert Siedlecki Jr. announced the closure of nine SRS offices as a cost-cutting
By John Hanna Associated Press Writer Mike Yoder/Journal-World Photos
communication studies professor. The hope is that they can return to their home countries more engaged, empowered and able to inspire others around them, she said. “This is just a life-changing experience,” Banwart
TOPEKA — Abortion-rights supporters condemned Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s appointment of an attorney who has previously represented anti-abortion protesters to be on the state board that licenses and regulates doctors, including those who terminate pregnancies. Attorney Richard Macias of Wichita said Thursday that while he personally opposes abortion he can be fair in analyzing issues before the State Board of Healing Arts. He said his duty as an attorney is to uphold the law. Brownback Kansas already has drawn national attention over new health department regulations for abortion providers, telling them what drugs and equipment they must stock, requiring them to give the department access to their medical records and setting requirements for room sizes and temperatures. The rules have been blocked by a federal judge until a lawsuit from providers is resolved. Even with such rules, the Board of Healing Arts still would regulate individual doctors, consider allegations of misconduct against them and have the power to f ine them or suspend or revoke their licenses. Brownback, an anti-abortion Republican, announced the appointment this week — several weeks after Macias actually joined the medical board.
Please see CASA, page 2A
Please see BOARD, page 2A
MONICA G. IBRAHIM, LEFT, AND AMANY ABDELMEGUID, both from Egypt, paint slogans of their country’s recent revolution on their dollhouse creation Wednesday at the Nunemaker Center on the Kansas University campus. The dollhouse project is one activity during a KU International Women’s leadership seminar. The dollhouses will be donated to the Douglas County CASA playhouse fundraising effort. BELOW: Nische Khan, from Pakistan, paints a miniature item for a dollhouse representative of her country.
International women take part in CASA dollhouse fundraiser By Andy Hyland ahyland@ljworld.com
ONLINE: See the video at LJWorld.com
The Egyptian house was plastered with photos of the revolution. The Moroccan one featured a wall painted in the traditional tadleakt way, with big swoops in the paint. And the Pakistani one had a place for the family to eat on the floor, as is traditionally done in that country. The dollhouses on the first floor of Kansas University’s Nunemaker Center were being decorated by 18 women from six countries: Morocco, Sudan, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and Egypt. The women are all undergraduate students in their home countries and are at KU as part of the Heartland U.S. Institute on Women’s Leadership, a program sponsored by the U.S. State Department.
The dollhouses they were making this week are part of a fundraising effort for the Douglas County Court Appointed Special Advocates program. The women in the leadership institute will contribute six dollhouses in all, joining 14 others that will be on display starting Saturday at the Lawrence Arts Center, 940 N.H. Members of the public can vote for their favorite at the arts center and bid on them at a silent auction at the Douglas County CASA’s Playhouse Celebration from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. July 16 at the center. That event will feature a dinner and live music from the band Thundercat. The winner of a large playhouse that has been on tour at several Lawrence locations will also be announced at the event. The winner will be randomly drawn from ticket entries that have been made during the tour and at the event. Admission to that event
is $40 per person online at dccasa.org or at the door on July 16. The women in the KU leadership program have been learning some of a traditional women’s studies program and hearing presentations that focus on the process of leadership, said Mary Banwart, a KU
Report: Kansas obesity rate 4th fastest growing in U.S. KANSAS CITY, MO. (AP) — A new report says the percentage of Kansans who are obese has more than doubled in the past 15 years, with 29 percent of the adult population fitting that category. That’s the fourth-fastest growth rate in the nation since 1995, when Kansas ranked 36th with a 13.5 percent obesity rate. Thursday’s report puts Kansas at 16th overall. Two public health groups on Thursday released their annual obesity report, which for the
first time looks at how obesity rates have grown over the past two decades. Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation issued the report, which recommends increasing access to healthy foods and exercise opportunities as ways to trim the nation’s waistline. Nine out of the top 10 mostobese states were in the South, led by Mississippi. ● Read more about the
fattest states, page 7A.
HIGHWAY 24-40 ACCIDENT
Tonganoxie student killed By Matt Erickson and Shawn Linenberger merickson@theworldco.info, slinenberger@theworldco.info
A Tonganoxie High School student died in a rollover accident Thursday afternoon on U.S. Highway 24-40 in Basehor. Kylee Nicole Wilson, 16, Leavenworth, was driving a 2005 GMC Envoy west on U.S. 24-40 just east of 150th Street when she lost control of the vehicle and drove into the north ditch, according to Kansas Highway Patrol reports. She swerved for about 500 feet before entering the ditch, KHP Lt. Josh Weber said. Wilson was pronounced dead at 3:20 p.m., according to reports. She would
have been a junior in the fall at the high school, a school official said. A passenger, Hayle L. Sparks, 14, Leavenworth, was taken to Kansas University Hospital in Kansas City, Kan., with what Weber said were nonlife-threatening injuries. A nursing supervisor there could neither confirm nor deny Thursday evening that Sparks was a patient. Wilson was following another vehicle, a 2000 Ford Expedition, according to reports. The driver, Jacob Ryan Lynch, 17, Tonganoxie, and a passenger, Samuel Christopher Cook, 15, Leavenworth, were not injured, according to reports. Weber said officers were investigating Please see FATALITY, page 2A