Former Osawatomie State Hospital patient facing murder charge

Murder charges against a former patient at Osawatomie State
Hospital is prompting questions about mental health system.

The recent filing of murder charges against a former patient at the Osawatomie State Hospital is prompting questions about the state’s mental health system.

On May 14, Brandon Brown, 30, was released from a five-day stay at Osawatomie. He was sent to the state hospital after threatening other patients at the Haviland Care Center, a nursing facility in Kiowa County that specializes in treating adults with serious and persistent mental illness.

Brown, who has long struggled with schizophrenia, was returned to Haviland and on May 17 allegedly assaulted Jerry Martinez, 61, another patient there. Martinez was flown by air ambulance to Wesley Medical Center in Wichita, where he died 18 days later.

Brown, who now is being held in a locked security unit at Larned State Hospital, has been charged with second-degree murder.

“The allegations are that he pulled the victim out of bed and slammed his head to the floor several times,” said Kiowa County Attorney Scott James.

The Haviland incident and a recent report in the Topeka Capital-Journal about staffing shortages are intensifying concerns about operations at the state’s two hospitals for people with mental illness. The newspaper report said that nearly 40 percent of the full-time staff positions at Osawatomie State Hospital and 35 percent of those at Larned State Hospital recently were vacant.

“I’ve had a few incidents like this now,” James said. “I have to say they do lead me to wonder if the pressures — whether they be staffing pressures or budget pressures — are really starting to tax these mental health entities to a degree that’s not healthy for the state. I mean, if the state hospital isn’t there to house Mr. Brown, who is it there to house?”

James’ question is at the center of a long-simmering debate over the role of the state’s mental health hospitals in Osawatomie and Larned since lawmakers in the mid-1990s decided to close Topeka State Hospital and expand the state’s network of community-based programs.

This shift from institutional care to in-community care was driven by a desire to provide treatment that is less expensive, more effective and more humane.

But there are growing concerns about the adequacy of the safety net for those who continue to need intensive, inpatient care.

“This is all about having enough ‘ports in the storm’ for when people are in crisis,” said Frank Denning, sheriff of Johnson County. “When 17 percent of the people in (Johnson County) jail have been diagnosed as having a serious and persistent mental illness, it means we don’t have enough ‘ports.’ And when Osawatomie stopped taking voluntary admissions, it leaves us with fewer ‘ports.’”

KDADS officials limited voluntary admissions at the Osawatomie hospital late last year after federal inspectors cited the facility for having too many patients and inadequate staffing levels, and for not doing enough to protect potentially suicidal patients.

Patients admitted voluntarily are those who have been deemed to be potentially dangerous to themselves or others but have not committed a crime and haven’t been sent for treatment under a court order. The limit on voluntary admissions was intended to reduce the patient census at the 206-bed hospital, which had a record 260 patients in October 2014.

Read Entire KHI News Article

InterHab Update - June 29, 2015

Do you know of someone worth celebrating? Nominate someone you know who goes above and beyond for your organization and the people you support! Submit your nominations no later than July 1st!

Click here to watch last year's awards video.
Click here to download the Call for Awards nomination form.

Watch this week's InterHab Update and learn the latest on what's going on in the legislature. Find out why it is up to us to speak up against any solution to the State budget mess that could throw a greater burden of inequity onto the backs of Kansans in need. Write to your Governor today and talk to your legislators and urge them to find realistic answers to the budget woes facing our state.

Oral Health Kansas announces free toothbrush kit program

Oral Health Kansas announced that Kansas organizations are eligible to apply for free toothbrush kits for the people they support.

The Delta Dental of Kansas Toothbrush Kits Grant Program is a great way to have toothbrush kits for individuals being served who don’t have resources on their own.

You can learn more about the toothbrush kit materials, guidelines for submitting the grant and the grant application by clicking here. The grant proposal is due July 31, 2015.

Admissions suspended at state hospital

A state official announced on Wednesday that Osawatomie State Hospital has stopped admitting patients.

Addressing a meeting in Topeka of the Kansas Mental Health Coalition, Ted Jester, assistant director of mental health services at the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, said admissions were suspended Saturday evening when the hospital’s census reached 146 patients.

“This is an unprecedented time in the state of Kansas,” Jester said, noting that the law allowing the hospital to turn away involuntary-admission patients, all of whom have been found to pose a danger to themselves or others, passed in 1986. “That law has never been used until last week,” he said.

Earlier this year, KDADS officials limited the Osawatomie hospital’s daily census to 146 patients after federal surveyors cited the facility for having too many patients, not having enough staff and not doing enough to protect suicidal patients.

Read full KHI News article. 

InterHab Update

InterHab urges you to contact Gov. Brownback and your local Legislators to protect the I/DD network from any budget cuts. Watch the video below for specific instructions.

Download Gov. Sample Letter
Download Legislator Sample Letter

No criminal charges for Kansas Governor

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, left, and Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer
 at a Capitol press conference last year. | John Hanna AP

Federal prosecutors will bring no criminal charges after an investigation into loans made to Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s re-election campaign by his lieutenant governor, the U.S. Attorney’s office said Wednesday.

“The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Kansas has completed an investigation involving loans made by Kansas Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer to the Brownback re-election campaign,” said Jim Cross, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Wichita. “No federal charges are expected to be filed.”

That statement came after Colyer and Brownback, on the governor’s officials website, said in a joint statement the U.S. attorney’s office was bringing no charges after completing its investigation “regarding campaign finance matters.”

Colyer and his attorney did not respond to phone and email messages Wednesday.

He made three loans totaling $1.5 million to the campaign. That raised eyebrows not only because their size was unusual in Kansas politics, but because the first two were repaid within days. Democrats speculated they might have been timed to inflate campaign finance reports. They came as the Republican governor in a deeply conservative state faced the real prospect of losing to the well-financed Democratic challenger, Paul Davis.

Read entire article

Brownback defends budget, claims tax package is not a tax increase

Gov. Sam Brownback talks about the
record-long legislative session & taxes
during a news conference today.
Photo courtesy of the Wichita Eagle. 

In comments given at the Statehouse today, Kansas Gov. Brownback discussed the two bills legislators passed on Friday to raise $384 million during the fiscal year that begins July 1. One measure raises the sales tax to 6.5 percent, and the other increase the cigarette tax to $1.29. In passing these measures, the legislature averted a deficit that is prohibited by the Kansas constitution.

Gov. Brownback denied that an increase in sales and other taxes counts as a tax increase, because it comes on the heels of massive income tax cuts passed three years earlier.  The Kansas Governor stood behind his aggressive tax cuts of 2012, and maintained that economic growth would fuel the state’s needs.

Gov. Brownback described taxes on income as ‘productivity’ taxes, as opposed to ‘consumption’ taxes, which he said was a sales tax.

Republican Senator Jeff Longbine had asserted late last week that Gov. Brownback "blackmailed the legislature" into getting what he wanted in the budget and tax plans. Gov. Brownback denied this claim and also denied that business are the ones benefiting from the tax structure and budget plan (the cuts of 2012, included a policy that freed Kansas business-owners and farmers from paying income taxes on their profits).

Even with the new revenues from sales tax increases, Gov. Brownback might have to cut up to $50 million in spending.

Discussing the forthcoming cuts, Brownback said his administration "haven't started much of a serious look." Brownback said he hopes to make that $50 million cost-cutting goal by “looking at efficiencies and privatization” of state government operations where possible.

The governor said he had not decided on what cuts to enact with one exception. When he signed the budget he made a line item veto based on a recommendation from the Kansas Board of Regents, cutting $1.9 million both this coming year and next for a program that grants funds to post-secondary institutions that provide GED accelerators for students.

InterHab Update

InterHab hits the road this week to Lenexa for a meeting of the Executive Committee, and for the Governmental Affairs retreat.

As the 2015 legislative session comes to a close, we have our work cut out for us to make sure that I/DD interests are not sacrificed. Watch this week's update to hear a full summary of the conclusion of the legislative session and what we can do now to protect I/DD supports.

At the end of the day Kansas Governor shifts blame for State's problems, refuses compromise

It is still Thursday, June 11, and as the day is approaching the evening, the Governor has just doubled down on the legislative mess that he has helped to create.

Before a joint GOP House and Senate caucus, the Governor  essentially said there will be no compromise, that the work of the Senate or the proposals he has offered thus far are perfectly fine, and the House must act before the week is out.

Reports from the caucus meeting indicate that Gov. Brownback:

• Once again threatened deep cuts to important education and social service budgets, 
• Blamed the State's problems on Medicaid, schools and Obama, and 
• Reiterated his view that there will be NO compromise. 

Something may break later today, after sufficient other things are first broken, but know this, its a mess and the likely outcomes will be a mess which will have to be addressed again if not in a special session then surely as the first order of business in January 2016.

Stay tuned to your local media outlets, and your internet news services and follow along as this soap opera approaches its sordid sad ending today or tomorrow or Saturday or Sunday?

Stay tuned, and find out.  For more information, watch the video below. To take action, email your legislators using this link.

Clouds hang low over Kansas statehouse as little progress is made on tax policy

The day has opened in Topeka with thunder, lightning and rain, while inside the Capitol the climate is unprecedented and the forecast is confused.

When the House recessed last night at midnight, the House version of the Senate/Brownback final-ultimatum tax package had secured only 29 votes, falling from a peak of 44 to 29 while House leaders kept the chamber locked, and kept phone lines humming with last minute appeals to pass the bill.

This morning's extended "call of the House" was something never seen before. After an additional two and a half hours, the call was lifted and the tax plan failed on a final vote of 21-94.

Watch InterHab's latest news update to find out more. Also, make sure to continue your advocacy with legislators and the governor. Click here to send a message to your legislators urging compromise, and contact the governor at 1-877-579-6757.

Services for Kansans with I/DD are in jeopardy

Gridlock in Topeka could force funding reductions for Kansans with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

As the Legislature wrestles with how to fill a $400 million budget hole, the Administration has indicated that budget cuts may be the next step - including an 8% to 10% cut in reimbursement rates for the services that Kansans with intellectual and developmental disabilities rely on every day.

Take action today and urge your legislators to find a solution to the state's budget crisis that doesn't punish Kansans with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

CLICK HERE to use our automated email system to send a message to your legislators. Simply input your zipcode and InterHab will automatically populate a letter to your legislators, fill in your contact information and hit send. It's that simple! 

Political dysfunction rules in Kansas

According to U.S. News, the Kansas majority party is openly at war with itself and the state government is in meltdown.

Splintered into conservative and far-right factions, the Kansas majority party is openly at war with itself over an $800 million, two-year budget deficit gnawed open by the tax cuts nobody wants to roll back. If they can't fill the hole by week's end – against long odds – furloughs of government employees will follow.

Then there's the high-stakes showdown between lawmakers and the state Supreme Court over disparate funding between rich and poor school districts, an unfortunate development in the state that prompted the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case. The clash of political titans, spurred by power moves and score-settling, could trigger a constitutional crisis, and hinge on whether Republicans can fire the court and pack it with their allies.

Meanwhile, Brownback, who won re-election in a come-from-behind race last year, is an instant lame duck hobbled by job-approval numbers only Richard Nixon would envy. Since his second term swearing in, the governor has enacted a series of what critics call mean-spirited restrictions on welfare recipients, and national Democrats call him the poster boy of the majority party's war on the poor.

Brownback himself famously called Kansas' incoming, one-party rule a real-world experiment in fiscal and social policies. He and his allies wasted no time installing the supply-side economic idea that tax cuts will stimulate economic growth, a sure-fire, fiscally responsible way to grow the economy.

"Our new pro-growth tax policy will be like a shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy," Brownback wrote in a Wichita Eagle editorial in July 2012.

What followed, however, was an economic face-plant: growth flatlined, state revenue dried up and the conservative brain trust found itself on the business end of consecutive nine-figure deficits...

Read the entire U.S. News article "The Dysfunction of Oz" 

House rejects plan - committee back to the drawing board on budget bill

Tax conference committees will go back to the negotiating table today after the House resoundingly rejected a plan that suspended Gov. Sam Brownback’s “glide path to zero” income tax but did not substantially roll back a business tax exemption included in the 2012 tax-cut law.

The bill that made it to the House floor on Day 105 of the traditionally 90-day session relied largely on sales tax increases for the $406 million in new tax revenue needed to finish closing an almost $800 million structural deficit in the budget.

Furloughs loom if the Legislature does not approve a budget by Saturday night, but that was not enough motivation to sway House members who voted 108-3 against the plan.

Thursday’s proposal froze individual income tax rates at present levels through 2018 before allowing them to drop slightly in 2019 and 2020. The tax cut law calls for the bottom income tax rate to drop from the current 2.7 percent to 2.4 percent in 2016 and 2.3 percent in 2017. It lowers the top rate from the current 4.6 percent to 3.9 percent in 2018.

House and Senate tax negotiators on the conference committee agreed Thursday afternoon to reduce the bottom rate to 2.3 percent but not until 2019. Their plan also would have lowered the top rate to 4.3 percent in 2019, stopping short of the 3.9 percent called for in the 2012 law.

“The (tax reduction) formula is repealed in our offer,” said Rep. Marvin Kleeb, an Overland Park Republican and leader of the House negotiating team.

Repealing the tax reduction formula is necessary, Kleeb said, to ensure the state has sufficient revenue to fund education, Medicaid and the public employees’ retirement system in future years. Allowing the income tax reductions to continue as scheduled, Kleeb said, would force lawmakers to approve large sales tax increases to keep state government operating.

“It’s a trade-off,” he said. “Do we want to raise sales tax rates to 7 percent to keep driving down income tax rates?”

For most House members, Kleeb said, the answer is “no.”

Read entire KHI News Article

The Kansas House yesterday passed a conference report for the budget, but don't count your chickens yet...

Yes, the House adopted a budget that they have been working on all session with the Senate, but there are two other reduced-spending budget plans already written, either of which might get traction in the Senate before the version which was just adopted in the House will be considered.

Hawver Statehouse Newsletter reported it this way:

"The House action sends the conference committee report to the Senate, where it is unlikely to be considered because Senate Ways and Means Chair Ty Masterson, R-Andover, has two budget conference committee reports in hand, one with 2.7% cuts to most agencies, another with a 5.7% haircut to state spending that eliminates the need for any new taxes to balance the budget and produce an estimated $50 million general fund balance."

So, the real question to be answered before any budget is adopted is this: Where will the revenues come from to pay for the budget? And, since there is no revenue plan adopted, no budget bill should yet be passed. Right? Yes, but...

It could happen, in this strange year, that the cart will actually be placed in front of the horse.

Some reports have suggested the legislators will pass a budget bill without adequate financing, and force the Governor to call them back for a special session to adopt a tax plan. That is not likely, but this is a year of unlikely events.

Stay tuned. And, if you see a cart rolling down the street, with a horse behind it...rub your eyes, it is either an illusion, or maybe it is your Kansas government leadership at work

Kansas to restrict access to funds for low income families

The Kansas legislature recently approved a new measure that limits the amount of money a recipient of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) can withdraw from an ATM at one time. The limit is $25. An issue with this restriction is that there are fees on ATM withdrawals. So, a person needing assistance could pay as much as $30 in feeds in order to withdraw $200.

According to an article in the National Catholic Reporter, the rationale for the new restrictions is to prevent people on assistance to spend money on luxuries. Many people who qualify for assistance rely on walking or public transportation, so they do not go to the grocery store everyday. Many do not have regular bank accounts, so they rely on ATMs to withdraw their funds, and $25 doesn't go very far at the grocery store when you are feeding a family.

The NCR article titled "Meanness and Irony in Kansas" states: "...the new legislation in Kansas is demonstrably not the way to move forward. It is mean spirited. It is hypocritical. It is stupid." Read more on what NCR claims are the three ironies behind this legislation.

InterHab Update

Kansas Supreme Court challenged Gov. Brownback and his allies. Their solution: replace the judges

Photo by Thad Alton/Topeka Capital Journal via Mother Jones

According to an article in Mother Jones, Gov. Sam Brownback's tax-slashing crusade threatens to become a full-blown constitutional crisis.

Since Republican Sam Brownback became governor of Kansas in 2011, he and his allies in the GOP-dominated state Legislature have implemented drastic tax cuts—part of a "real, live experiment" in conservative governance, as Brownback put it in 2012, that has resulted in precipitously falling revenues. But Brownback's tax slashing hit a snag last year when the state Supreme Court ordered the Legislature to increase education funding, potentially forcing the governor to roll back his signature tax cuts in order to increase school spending. So conservatives in Topeka declared war on the court.

In the year since the court's education decision in March 2014, conservatives in the Kansas Legislature have proposed giving the governor more power to pick state Supreme Court justices and making it easier to remove justices from the bench. They've voted to strip the state's top court of its authority over lower courts and threatened to defund state courts if they rule against the Legislature in a key case. The escalating power struggle between the state's three branches of government has put Kansas "on a direct collision course to a constitutional crisis," says Ryan Wright, executive director of Kansans for Fair Courts, a nonprofit dedicated to keeping partisan politics out of the judicial selection process in Kansas.

The school funding issue, meanwhile, still hasn't gone away. The current battle began in 2010, when a coalition of school districts sued the state, seeking to force the Legislature to reinstate school funding that was cut during the Great Recession, under a provision of the state constitution that mandates adequate levels of school funding. When Brownback took office in 2011, in the midst of the litigation, he prioritized tax cuts that have made it impossible to restore the funding due to dwindling revenues.

In March 2014, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that school funding was not equitable between rich and poor districts. The court ordered the Legislature to fix the equity issue right away while sending a second piece of the case—whether overall school funding was adequate—back to the district court, which last December ruled that spending was indeed inadequate. In early 2015, the Legislature passed a new school funding bill that a coalition of school districts argue undid increased funding to create equity between districts, prompting the issue to go back to the district court this month. Once that courts issues its ruling—possibly this week—the state Supreme Court is expected to take up both pieces (adequacy and equity) and could issue a final verdict on the issue this year. If the top court finds school funding too low, it could force the Legislature to make a choice: raise taxes in order to find enough money for schools, or buck the courts.

Because right now, Kansas lawmakers can't pass a budget even without additional school funding, thanks to Brownback's tax cuts.

Read entire article on motherjones.com

Promising new jobs and a reinvigorated economy, Brownback and the Legislature slashed income tax rates in 2012 and 2013, reducing top earners' liability by a quarter, and eliminated taxes on profits for about 200,000 small businesses, including multiple subsidiaries of Wichita-based Koch Industries, which brings in annual revenue more than $100 billion. But the economic boom the cuts were supposed to trigger never came. Instead, Kansas' economy lagged, its credit rating was downgraded, and job growth slowed. By 2014, projected revenues had fallen by nearly $4 billion over the next six years. In the first four months of 2015, Kansas lost jobs. Lawmakers in Topeka are currently working overtime, at a cost of $43,000 per day to taxpayers, to plug an $800 million budget gap. Unwilling to raise taxes, the Legislature has thus far been unable to find the money the state needs.