2016: The Year in Review

as we kick off the new year a look back at two thousand sixteen i'm j mcintyre and today on k pr presents we'll revisit some of the top news stories of the year gone by we'll hear from kbr is news department and a few winners remembering some of the highlights and low points of two thousand sixteen we start today's program with kbr is morning edition host tom perkins and and this story from january fifth two thousand sixteen kansas legislative leaders are calling for a shorter less rancorous session in twenty sixteen top republicans say they hope the kansas legislature can close a projected state budget deficit quickly this year and avoid the infighting that made last year's session the longest ever the legislature convened january eleventh and its agenda is packed with issues but republican leaders have said their goal is to wrap up the year's business unless than the scheduled ninety days last year's session where some bargains and host of morning edition a kansas public radio stephen koranda is k pr statehouse bureau

chief says even abigail well they didn't set a record lengths like it did in twenty fifteen so that was good on their part and in some ways it did turn out less rancorous but that's partially because ultimately they didn't create a balanced budget rather than have a big long to knock down drag out fight about the budget and possible tax increases at all that they ended up coming up with a school funding solution at the end of the special session that passed almost unanimously and they ended the regular session by passing a budget that was unbalanced that required the governor to make if memory serves around almost a hundred million dollars in cuts to make a balanced budget so it was less rancorous but part of the reason it was that way is because they kind of sidestep some big issues one of the recurring stories that we followed throughout the year well let's just give a listen corporate income tax collection that were well below the estimates and sales tax receipts also came up short revenue kansas tax collections for only weeks thirteen million dollars short of expectations in july the state department of

revenue reported the kansas collected four hundred twenty five million dollars in taxes last month compared to the state's official forecasts of nearly four hundred thirty eight million shortfall was to point not even that in a revenue estimates over and over and over again in the last years you remember kansas collected nearly forty five million dollars less in taxes than expected and september state department of revenue reported monday the tax collection for five hundred twenty one million dollars or seven point nine percent short the newest revenue numbers show individual income tax collections in kansas bp estimates but that was outweighed by other types of taxes that did not perform retail sales tax collections were down and corporate income tax collections were off by a huge margin the state expected ten million dollars and corporate tax collections but only three hundred thousand dollars came in over the last you listening to myself was one of my favorite things to do we had as you can tell by that

a pretty consistent trend over the last year of the statement saying the tax collection estimates month the month that interview you talked about it depends on the reason the governor's office argues that agriculture industry sagging and the energy industry sagging are hurting kansas and i heard in our tax collection critics of the governor's tax policies say well yes that's true that's not responsible for everything they argue that we kind of upend everything so much with our tax cuts that it's kind of hard to get beyond where we should be said in the numbers so if i'm remembering correctly i think ten out of though last twelve months we missed the estimate and only to a month's we headed and we didn't you know hit by huge amounts of that has ended up adding to the budget shortfall our face how big of a problem is this that we're missing are estimates month improvement well it used to be that when we had a sizeable ending balances it didn't really matter that much if you came up thirty million short one month because maybe the next month you come up ten million above and so ultimately you'd end up ok

even if you end up beating up a little bit of your ending balance the problem right now is we've been operating on either a razor thin and imbalance or now we're into a deficit so these monthly tax collections really kind of our fortunes hinge on them in some ways before we had the deficit if we had a good month you know that really helped our bottom line if we had a bad month that potentially could plunge us into a deficit so it does matter out especially when you have a big month where like seventy five million down or something like that if you're you know ten billion here or there that's not a huge deal but they add up over time and they've helped make our situation worse the real challenge is now that they're hoping they have accurate numbers we were building the new budget the governor's office has kind of been critical love the process for creating the estimates say we need to rethink how we do this so that they're more accurate but again critics of the governor's tax policies say it's not the estimates fault that we've kind of really all change our tax policies and made it harder to figure out where we're headed with revenue february the

kansas supreme court says kansas schools are not being funded fairly so what they did initially is they just kind of moved some money around hoping to reduce disparities between school districts are as we will here probably in the coming months on the show the court didn't buy into that ultimately what happens the court said this isn't doing enough and lawmakers had to add some additional funding from other places to balance everything out in the court did accept that this is one of the things where it was really more of a challenge than it would have been in better financial times because we ultimately if i'm remembering correctly it cost more than thirty million dollars to add additional funding and smooth out some of the differences and in somebody's years that wouldn't be a big deal but one year really a tight budget that have tried to find ways to fix the problem without adding additional money but ultimately ended up having to have some additional money to comply with the court that's stephen koranda kansas public radio's state house bureau chief we'll hear from him throughout this hour as we reviewed this year's top

kansas news stories jay shafer is k pr is news director he takes us to february twenty fifth two thousand sixteen harvey county in south central kansas well there was a shocking story in late february in the small town of hesston where at a manufacturing plant a gunman entered the building and killed four people he was killed himself and fourteen people were injured now thirty eight year old cedric ford was the shooter and he had been served with a protection from abuse order earlier in the day about thirty minutes before he decided to go to work and just are taking out his rage and anger among people the gunman was an employee of the plant which manufactures lawnmowers heston has long been known as a small tight knit community that's a really all about

manufacturing these lowers the high school mascot is called the swath years that's one of the devices or farm implements that has been manufactured there over the years so obviously quite shocking for us a small town to experience this that all happened at the xl plant where cedric ford the shooter were police say he a wounded three people on the street before storming into the building in and shooting some or the sheriff of harvey county says that the shooter had been served with a protection from abuse order about an hour to half the forties attacks began and authorities did find the gunman dead and we later discovered that it was a local law enforcement authority who went into this factory before backup arrived and took up the shooter jay shafer is k pr is news director i'm kate mcintyre on today's kbr presents we're reviewing some of the state's top news stories of two thousand sixteen the kansas presidential caucuses

took place on march third donald trump and hillary clinton would go on to win their respective party nominations but neither of them won in kansas bob beatty is a professor of political science at washburn university in topeka kansas had a bit of interesting presidential caucus because it's always a crapshoot for kansas as to whether you kansas will be relevant by the time the kansas comes around and usually it isn't and of course it was in this wacky presidential year and both the democratic side and the republican side so what an ideal year to be watching the television and see in kansas tv ads for hillary clinton which i actually saw and of course also bernie sanders and marco rubio a lot of other candidates those very strange so it was interesting because governor brownback endorsed

marco rubio and in the polls it showed that donald trump was going to do well in kansas and it was ted cruz who won the republican kansas caucus hour with trump getting second and marco rubio way down in third place and you know maybe we should have paid more attention on that because he you know for example here in kansas the establishment republicans are just the establishment was saying vote for marco rubio and pretty much most voters just ignored the establishment and that you know that happened to some extent in november with donald trump on the democratic side bernie sanders won a decisive victory over hillary clinton part of the reason for that is that kansas has a caucus so despite a lot of publicity and in tv commercials and everything else still

less than ten percent of registered republicans and registered democrats participated in their caucuses and so kansas in that sense did not do a very good job is as a very low low participation really kansas needs to have a primary the kansas didn't want to spend the money so a lot of publicity but really not a lot of people criticizing lab at teaches political science at washburn university in topeka he'll be weighing in on the year in politics throughout today's kbr presents when we're reviewing the top news stories of two thousand and sixteen greg echlin takes us to march madness two thousand sixteen and a recap of jay howard basketball in the unthinkable a basketball tournament ks season came to a disappointing end in louisville the jet hawks lost to villanova and villanova went under when the national championship however

k you won its twelfth straight big twelve regular season title that's one short of ucla is streaked of thirteen straight until nineteen seventy nine which took place under two coaches they use a streak is under one coach bill self who was named the ap national coach of the year last season and he was also nominated for the base where's basketball hall of fame that with k pr sports correspondent greg echlin speaking of big twelve titles later in two thousand sixteen the university of kansas women's volleyball team clinched its first conference championship returning in large kansas suffered its worst ever wildfire again we hear from key pierre news director j schafer of grass fire started to develop that actually began in northern north central oklahoma and then spread up into southern south central kansas and i mean the total tab is in the millions i don't know that they ever came up

with a final figure because we know your cost a million dollars for some kansas national guard blackhawk helicopters to dump water on that fire so that alone was just a millionth that we estimate to back in march didn't include the head damage to personal property holmes livestock a number of cattle were killed in this wild fire which raged for weeks not just the fires or through a barber in comanche county is in fact i think it was a six hundred toy square miles as we're showing us that as a huge swath of land involved in what i say it was the state's largest wildfire and people lost a lot of cattle no human beings were killed in the fire in the bar were in comanche calories but it took a long time to put out and eventually firefighters were helped by snowfall

so there you go that's k pr news director j schafer i'm kate mcintyre we're revealing that top news stories of two thousand sixteen on today's k pr presents we've got one more story for the month of march on march fourteenth two thousand sixteen an amtrak train derailed in southwest kansas this from kbr morning edition host tom perkins is about a half hour after the train itself was chief i had departed from the garden city station course the southwest chief is amtrak's train that runs from la to chicago and back regularly runs through lawrence in many parts of kansas and urges couple minutes after midnight and the trainee hit a section of damage track but one of miles west of cimarron actually and the engineer operating they drained saw the damage track had him put on the breaks was too late and the two locomotives and two cars directly

behind the locomotive stayed on the tracks but a chorus behind that derailed six and turned over on this side so considering that was really rather fortunate that only twenty eight people were injured and none of them were injured critically although several people did later on file suit against the company that caused the accident the yeah it was so cimarron crossing at feeders they ear to feeding operation located near summer on an apparently the day before for whatever reason some workers had left a truck on the tracks war or merely tracks that get out of gear you know be neutral pretty pretty good size of a farm truck that rolled downhill slammed in their tracks and damage the tracks moved the track shifted about a foot maybe fourteen inches and that of course christmas alignment in the tracks and dumb that's what derailed the track with that muscle i never reported to anyone you know nobody knew

it happened at about nine o'clock in the morning on this thirteenth the accident occurred just after midnight that same not enough trouble to mars forty ce so injured people were taken to area hospitals and dancey and garden city and of course the ntsb came into a check things are determined and the engineer had not done anything wrong the crew veteran you're supposed to do their crowing about sixty mph soon as the engineer saw something was wrong my head as i said he put on the brakes but it was just it was just too late tom ferguson is the host of morning edition on kansas public radio we're revealing the year's top kansas news stories in main the kansas supreme court said the law makers had not done enough to reduce funding inequities in the state's k through twelve schools governor sam brownback called the kansas legislature into special session in june to work and school finance stephen koranda how did that go well they

ultimately create a plan that passed almost unanimously with both democrats and republicans supported it took some wrangling to do that basically the first plan that was being floated by leadership critics would say it cut schools to fund a school so what it does it cut money from one part of school funded move that oversees equalization find to smooth out differences between districts in a certain area and that was the goal of complying with the state supreme court a lot of especially moderate leaning republicans and democrats did not like that idea so they put a lot of pressure on the leadership and ultimately what they ended up creating was a plan that did take the money from other places but not from schools and added some additional funding to help smooth out differences between schools that's the bill that ultimately passed with huge majorities and the court ultimately approved says even are we done with school finance well the two dozen seventeen legislature need to revisit this issue were never done a school finance for it because we have these ongoing

lawsuits so one of the things we have waited in the next special session is the other part of the latest school funding lawsuit now which is are we spending enough on schools are we adequately funded schools so we're just waiting to see what the court says if their past rulings are any indication it seems likely that they'll say the state is not adequately funded schools but that's just a guess they could say the schools are not been adequately funded with some qualifications so you as we'd like to see you do they could just come down and say you have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars extra we don't really know so we're waiting for that but also lawmakers throughout the old school funding formula last year and replaced with temporary block grants and now those block grants are set to expire in the future so the plan is to write a new school funding formula in the twenty seventeen legislative session that in itself is a huge deal so we have various school funding issues going on right in the new formula and waiting for the latest

lawsuit to see what happens there some i right in thinking that equity part of the lawsuit has been result now the courts are focusing on antiquated quaint two so this is where it gets into the really nerdy details is it having it on the two parts of a lawsuit that equity which we talked about smoothing out the differences between the school district and the adequacy part which in alton ill eat raw dollars is much bigger because that has the potential to cost the state hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars if the court rules a certain way whereas in the equity part it only cost the state you know thirty or so million dollars to fix the problem i'm a jumper had all of it in terms of the year that relationship between the legislature and the governor and the courts played into the november elections talk to me about their judicial retention issue which is something that most of us don't pay a lot of attention to when we go to the ballot box year after year but this year it was there in the last couple

cycles it's a bubble more to the surface because of big issues like school funding an abortion and some of the people who wanted to overturn the justices just for a refresher course the way this works is the justices face retention elections so after your pointed every certain number of years there is on the bottom of the ballot should sell and so judge or shoot so and so justice be retained in recent years there's kind of been a fight over some unease and some people especially people who are unhappy about the court rulings on school funding or who are unhappy about the core blocking abortion restrictions or are unhappy well some of the rulings on death penalty cases have wanted to overturn some of the justices so we had this fight this year ultimately all of them survived but with tighter margins than they traditionally would have so how much of that is people not being educated how much of it is people disagree with the argument that they should be thrown out i don't know if there's really a way to know what we know is there was a big push this year to

knock them out and it didn't work so to me it seems like for the forseeable future losses a big scandal or something it seems likely that the justices will be able to hold on to their jobs unless something huge happens that changes a lot of people's minds we are revealing that top news stories of two thousand sixteen on today's kbr presents our next story takes us out of kansas to ohio in july the republican party held its national convention in cleveland kansas secretary of state chris kolb i played an active role at the convention helping draft the republican platform again washburn university professor bob beatty but i was able to attend the republican convention as a reporter and a political scientist is actually fascinating in cleveland and it was probably the most unique convention anyone could observe because so many republicans didn't know how to approach donald trump didn't know they wanted to be involved so for example the governor of ohio john k six simply refused to attend

even though the conventions in ohio governor sam brownback of kansas gives a talk to the delegates from kansas in the hotel that doesn't actually go into the convention that shows you what was going is going on crist called locke the secretary of state of kansas he'd been with trump way before the convention he was an early joiner of the trump crusade and they really were some hot ipo because of trump's emphasis on illegal immigration in this get tough policy on illegal immigration trump was going to build the wall it is going to have an early on he says given the deportation force and chris cole block it made his name talking about illegal immigration and the sector state of kansas had made his name saying he's going to crack down on all the illegal voters now say converts been very controversial in kansas but kovach and trump seemed to be made for each other so the the

benefit for co bach in terms of his relationship with donald trump as not as number one issues the same issue which is illegal immigration and second but kovach was swift trump almost near the beginning so that was going to give kovach an advantage a level of trust the level of the level of access all the way through the campaign and after the november election putting crisco block in a position to meet after the election with donald trump on multiple times to get a lot of publicity doing so got immediate attention and some argue to put some ideas and donald trump's head after one meeting in with donald trump and chris kovach trumpet tweeted out about

millions of illegal boats and some speculated that we're really get that maybe chris kovach an increased kovach defended those statements by donald trump so that relationship started into early two thousand sixteen and grew and going to the point where crisco block from the state kansas home at certain way had some influence on trump that's washburn university professor bob beatty our next story takes us out of kansas and to brazil a number of kansans competed in the two thousand sixteen summer olympics this from k pr sports correspondent greg echlin the two most notable kansans who stood out in the olympics were nico renee and as and jack sock jack sock was a graduate of blue valley north high school he won a gold medal in mixed doubles and a bronze medal in men's doubles he was ranked twenty third in the world and singles and earlier in the year had

competed as part of the us team on the davis cup early in the week while he was unreal sack overcame walking pneumonia to win that gold medal match nico hernandez became the first olympic medalist from wichita since len that woodard mr wald the who competed in men's volleyball that was in nineteen eighty four he competed in the light fly weight division last of the semi finals but still won a bronze medal that's kansas public radio sports correspondent greg echlin i'm j mcintyre today on k pr presents were revealing some of the top cancers news stories of two thousand sixteen the next story is the most tragic accident of the year perhaps one of the most tragic accidents in a while on august seventh two thousand sixteen ten year old caleb schwab of a later was killed at the slaughter but water park in kansas city kansas he was writing as seventeen story attraction billed as the world's

tallest water slide laura lorson is the host of all things considered and kansas public radio for many years they've been in the process of constructing a very large water slide becoming a very large is is underselling a tremendously in short a child was killed while writing this water slide in a particularly horrific way horrific enough that it made national news it wasn't just a sad accident it was a terrible acts and there's no way to get around that but the questions that dr brady used in in the wake of this i think we're very important which have to do with any issue that we saw come up in the national elections action which has to do with the role of regulations in everyday life there are many things that have regulation arm there are certain politicians and certain voters to feel like these are

absolutely onerous and in many cases they can they can seem silly and they can seem owner ss your sink officially seven point four feet away from the door and all of these things seem like they're not that big a deal on until something terrible happens and particularly it seems like on the issue of regulation and oversight of amusement park something that should be find something you don't even think about twice the issue of we're the regulations in place and were those regulations strictly enforced became a very important issue about with regard to this child's death can cities started actually yeoman work requesting documents filing a freedom information act look into what exactly big kansas as a state do about regulating these parks because obviously they need some regulation as as safe as a ride

may seem to be as safe as a water slide me seem to be they're still have to be rules and regulations to make sure that people stay safe and so the kids who started this also other to the capital journal just put in a ton of time trying to track down what exactly are the regulations how often do these things need to be inspected to what extent was due diligence done to keep the public safe and what it came down to is kansas is pretty flexible about this there are regulations in placing the inspections need to be made but in the case of this particular water slide because it's like nothing else in the world really and was far more dangerous than anything else in the world they didn't have a good set of regulations to work with because he didn't know what they were looking for so the onus in some part falls on the shorter <unk> water park because they ate with the experts' they're needed to stay here so we need

to look at here is what can go wrong so it ended up that the state had to take a hard look at what's the status of our regulatory apparatus and is it working the way it needs to work on friday that something were still figuring out that's k pr as laura lorson host of all things considered i'm j mcintyre if you're just joining us today on k pr presents we're remembering some of the year's top kansas news stories we started in january two thousand and sixteen at the topeka statehouse we're now to august when voters went to the polls in the kansas primary elections and express their dissatisfaction with the state of kansas politics again stephen koranda yet you're an outsider and you just look at kansas the incoming legislature and the one from last year you'd say well they're pretty similar mean there are virtually all republicans but the august primary really shook things up

big time because what you had were a lot of moderate republicans defeating conservatives in the primary or conservators retiring and being replaced with moderates to what is ultimately means is fast forward to the fall election democrats did pick up some seats not as many as they ultimately would have liked to but when we go and now this next legislative session has a lot more moderates they have power now in the legislature they have a committee chairmanships they have a strong voices in the legislature so it's really criticism where we went from conservative solid majorities in both chambers to now we still have conservative republicans and quite a lot of them but now these moderates kind of become a swing vote where if they side with conservatives while that all the republicans join together you can pass a bill but with the moderates decided to jump ship on a piece of legislation and join with the democrats than they can block bills obviously not every moderate leaning republican is ideologically to say and some are more

moderate on certain issues but they still like you know strong second amendment bills they still like abortion restrictions a really comes down to an issue but boy the primary changed a lot here in kansas to the point where we're going to have a lot of lawmakers who want to create a major change in the twenty seventeen legislative session who want to reconsider tax cuts you want to look at big structural changes our budgets there's a lot of things that are up in the air now would have to see with some of these new lawmakers come down stephen koranda is k pr statehouse bureau chief in september university of kansas chancellor bernadette gray little announced that she would retire in the summer of two thousand seventeen again k pr as laura lorson chancellor bernadette gray little came to kill you and has i served in that capacity as cancer since two thousand nine came to us with a tremendous amount of experience obviously she's female first female chancellor of the university of kansas she's

african american first african american cancer of the university of kansas and particularly at this point in current events i'm having a chancellor without a diverse background has been extremely helpful as we have seen college campuses all across the nation sort of controls as we've been trying to figure out what do we do about the issues of diversity what do we do about a significant number of students who feel an welcome home at a bare minimum seeing an african american woman leading this institution has to be comforting to a lot of people who maybe don't feel so welcome on campus and i think i give to you credit for wanting to addressing getting out ahead of the curve on that it's not like oh my gosh there are there a lot of students were angry about putting diversity by the wayside we better get some people here we already had chancellor great little who was already working on some of these issues so so that was to the

credit of the people who brought her an arm she is certainly then an advocate for the university she certainly has been an advocate for diversity programs and she has been an exxon fundraiser for the university in a time when funding for lending institutions and research universities has been very tight in addition all of becky you spent on pursuing designation as a national cancer center which is not the easiest thing in the world to accomplish and she has spearheaded that effort and help make that happen as well so she has certainly made her mark on the university chancellor gray levels announcement that she would step down in summer two thousand seventeen followed the resignation of kansas state university president kirk solves earlier in the year again laura lorson he also has has been at the helm of a huge fund raising campaign

arm has really done a lot to solidify the future of cased eight i know he was in for gurley involved in securing the end bath for that area uptown in manhattan junction city has done an exceptional job and raise the profile of kansas state as an academic institution in addition to being a mom a place for federal research dollars to go he is moving on to washington state university which i would imagine would do nothing but benefit from his leadership as well he announced his resignation in march to get the army in a broad kansas state now under new leadership but he did write out that richard meyers ike a state graduate himself it is that has taken over the presidency of kansas state university and he knows this area so well he knows he knows

the landscape he comes from a military background highly decorated and very successful as a special military man i am again i can sing of good things to come from his leadership and with the added bonus i love having a stake in the university as an alumnus from september two thousand sixteen and news story that rattled many cancers including yours truly and kbr news director jay shafer absolutely i myself was rattled out of bed this is the labor day weekend earthquake the epicenter was not even here in lawrence it was in oklahoma law but it was felt in as many as sixty eight states and this earthquake rattled in a big swath of the great plains from kansas to texas and according to the us geological survey it was a five point six magnitude earthquake it struck in the morning around seven o'clock in the morning about seven oh two they

say about nine miles northwest of pawnee oklahoma that in the north central part of oklahoma and ok i know you were on the air at seven goto on that morning to be very specific i felt it here at the kipp yesterday as at seven oh four i was in the middle of a newscast and the first thing i noticed was head and shaking and a pretty pronounced taking on the chair that i was sitting on and what'd you think his goal as well but there's more i looked up and the weather forecast which we have scotch taped to be a lot of tumult microphone it's very it was just swaying like i looked up and i could actually see and it was making it was actually making livable know it's maybe not that misery that i looked up and i remember thinking we're having an earthquake and i remember sometime as a novel the newscast taking a moment to think should i say something kind of violence that we are having an earthquake but honestly the only thing i could think of to say was i

believe we may be experiencing an earthquake it and it catches you make such a strange thing to say that i've got no just plows through the newscast and especially here in kansas i mean and for all you know you could have a squirrel boss that the billionaire something you know or some i have a lot of experience to interface that it was a fairly freak experience and within the newscast ends at seven a six week in seconds the phone started ringing with one call after another after another people saying did we just have an earthquake after i was rattled out of bed on that saturday morning and i immediately send a text message to rex buchanan who at the time was the head of the kansas geological survey he keeps track of earthquakes he served on the governor's earthquake taskforce and i wrote rex did we just you know have an earthquake here go back and set it up probably from oklahoma and then you know then the rest is history five point six magnitude just a tremendous

earthquake that was felt in many states end of louisville reports that was filled up an oh so this thing takes place in northern oklahoma and seven o'toole you feel a two minutes later here in lawrence and then the real people in omaha were tweeting about in commenting on facebook so pretty big but no real damage other than perhaps a little bit of damage to buildings at the epicenter and although we are pinpointing this particular story in this particular earthquake they think it's a number of earthquakes is a recurring story that was it has become a part of a kansas news landscape my goodness hundreds we've had hundreds of earthquakes many of them are originating in the northern oklahoma but many of them are originating in southern south central kansas a lot of their related to oil and gas exploration and the kansas corporation commission did put some new rules and regulations into effect concerning the number of wastewater disposal wells that companies can have and just

how much waste water they can accompany these wells under high pressure which is what many believe are actually triggering some of these quakes so we've seen a reduction from from the real past year were so but there still happening not just in kansas but in oklahoma as well that's k pr it is director j schafer remembering the september third two thousand sixteen earthquake that rattled much of kansas and oklahoma in october three kansas man were arrested and a plot to bomb a garden city apartment complex we have this report from natty afoul of clay and you debbie you in wichita followed by k pr as laura lorson curtis allen gavin right and patrick stein are charged with domestic terrorism acting us attorney tom diehl says the men were going to detonate a bomb at an apartment complex where approximately one hundred twenty muslim immigrants from somalia live these charges are based on eight

months of investigation by the fbi has alleged to have taken the investigators deep in to a hidden culture of hatred and violence the defendants are members of an anti muslim anti immigrant militia group called the crusaders the complaint states that they chose the apartment complex based on the number of somali muslims that live there they planned to carry out the attack the day after election day one of them said the bombing would quote wake people in garden city is home to a sizable somali population many of whom worked at the tyson foods plant the defendants are in custody in centre county if convicted they faced life in prison i think this came as not just a surprise to the rest of the nation and reservations than you have somali immigrants in kansas but i think within the state itself without gordon city is where this happen because they have so many programs the city itself has made i'm a real priority of integrating its immigrant populations there've been several

waves of immigrants come through that area because of the meatpacking industry which is well known for having been ruling difficult work that you could almost never find as many people to take those jobs as there are jobs they pay quite well but i don't think i'm casting a calumny about to say these are terrible jobs they are grueling difficult physically demanding jobs and it's not a huge surprise if you've studied the history of the united states to find the recent immigrants to take those jobs that they pay well if you can physically stand to do the work you can support a family on these jobs now minimum wage jobs there they're legit ticket to the middle class jobs so garden city particularly in its school system has been very aggressive about integrating immigrants into the curly an existing

structures because i think we've learned over time as a nation that acceptance starts when when kids are young and an end so garden city has gone out of its way to make immigrants feel welcome and to provide a sense of stability for the children of immigrants say they feel like this is home and not were just staying here to we can figure out how to get back to somalia central america vietnam whatever but to say no this is our home and the schools have done a great job with that so i think people were surprised to see if it was gonna happen anywhere that it would happen in garden city i think he was a bit of a surprise what basically happened was this this group we're hoping to ignite a religious laura lorson is the host of all things considered and kansas public radio i'm kay mcintyre if you're just joining us were revealing that top news stories of two thousand sixteen we started in january were now

to november eight election day again bob beatty of washburn university is political science department and in the state of kansas city was always expected that donald trump would win the state what was interesting about kansas was he was not holding a massive lead in the polls previous republicans would win by twenty plus points from kansas and the polling which show that and in kansas' trump was pawing at about twelve point lead over hillary clinton and a lot of people said wow look at this this is this trepidation by people to vote for trump and there was a large undecided vote in kansas on election day trump ends up with a traditional kansas republican twenty they're basically around twenty plus percentage victory and so i found that very interesting because it showed that the republican

base largely came home to trump even though they might have been trepidations are telling pollsters i don't know about trump kansas is a great example and probably he was always ahead by twenty points and the number of kansans kansas republicans or independents just and oneness and they were going to vote for that when election day camp they went and the reforms a lot of people say oh the polls are so wrong were when you throw in those undecideds they're not so wrong he just maybe didn't wanna say in kansas with their voting for trump so is as unusual as the election was in some places like kansas it was a very normal presidential election republican by twenty plus around twenty points let's turn our attention to the statewide elections statewide elections a really interesting because you have voters we know that when in and voted for republican donald trump that also might have voted for

and the state house level for a state legislative race might have voted for a democrat or someone who he's a moderate republican running against governor brownback so the state level boats were sort of more complicated and so what happened of course is that democrats picked up twelve seats in the house one seat in this state senate but that doesn't really tell the story the story is is that even many republicans that one word it's so there's some analysis that shows that a possibly half of the state senate and at least maybe half of the house are no moderate moderates in some fashion and that's a real change for for kansas so it actually makes sense because donald trump was selling change so you could you could see a voter voting for trump and then

voting quote unquote against the establishment sam brownback the governor and so when you look at that falls in line with the kansas caucus in march in which governor brownback and others said vote for marco rubio and the unknown lot of kansas voters republicans ignored and they did that to some extent in november and voted for moderates where's the governor's race obviously supporting have some income and conservative candidate so very different legislature will be in kansas and came came out of the elections in november talking about the race for the big first district the big first district is a very unusual phenomenon in the state of kansas because it is an agricultural district votes republican in for many many years duran was a congressman from the first

and jerry moran like to sell itself as being independent to some degree from the party at recall is looking out for the district and it is also also looking out for their cultural interests so when jim moran last time heals camp became the republican congressman and the heat was kicked off the agricultural committee and he was so independent help from his own party that that he alienated the party and this was a phenomenon because for political scientists and political watchers that made no sense because you had a district that was losing all its influence in washington and agricultural district that the new normal voice on agricultural matters in it was frankly bizarre so when roger marshall

defeated tim huelskamp in the primary it made much more sense so on the one hand there's a national observers trying to say what's going on your own income the losing end you know he's very unique to kansas and big first in that we're so many people were shocked that he was camp had survive that long the big deals getting kicked off the ag committee and i think it shows camp had done they're gone national he was seen on all sorts of tv programs msnbc cnn and another's and i think it was a fairly easy sell for roger marshall to convince voters that they could get a conservative republican to replace his camp that would represent their interests match in agriculture so that yeah i was a big upset national inaudible talk about it but really what it was

was politically universe coming more back into normalcy at least in that first one of the narratives of two thousand sixteen have to be that decrease in popularity of governor sam brownback governor sam brownback has had a relatively tough year politically and governor brownback himself blames the media sometimes but he also has mentioned that every month revenue statistics come out and dave more often than not the money that's coming into the state kansas does not meet the projections of what needs to come in and he complains a lot a lot of other states don't do it that way it gives him and his administration on a bad publicity cars every month it looks like things are going well well the fact of the matter is is not enough money coming in and therefore cuts

have to be made in the texas after an increase in all sorts then things have to happen so that that there may be some truth to that but that's not very helpful with the fact is is that over the last year an average governor brownback scribble ratings have been ranked number fifty of all fifty states so to clarify that means he's has the lowest approval ratings of all fifty governors now to be fair to chris christie new jersey looks like he may be overtaking governor brownback but the ratings are really really low we're talking anywhere from eighteen to twenty five percent approval in the past year over a bill passed you know the period and the result has finally caught up to him a bit politically probably contributed his disapproval two defeats by conservative republicans and our guest probably contributed to defeat by

conservatives and just some of the republicans in november in fact of the republicans of senator brownback said fine when they said were at republicans or after a campaign against you by november and it's also contributed to some republicans that late in two thousand sixteen coming out against the governor and some of his proposals or lack of discussing certain proposals so it's been a tough year for him and so the big question going into two thousand seventeen is really the big question for kansas is where does brownback end up politically and that's who will people be looking forward to seeing that probably is one of the toughest years for her any governor in one recent kansas history bob beatty teaches political science at washburn university we started today's k pr presence on the top stories of the year with

kbr statehouse bureau chief stephen koranda we'll wrap up this hour with steven and his take on the two thousand sixteen elections and beyond well we've already head of the wichita congressman mike palmdale be chosen as the cia director or so will be given a replacement for him and theres all these rumors floating around about governor sam brownback and secretary of state kris kovach going to the drug administration for brownback the rumors are low originally around either like an agricultural trade tight position or maybe even someday like ambassador to the vatican and so the reasoning behind him going as he has lower approval rates here in kansas and the next two years the last two years of his term arnott could be probably that fun for him because he's got these low approval ratings and now he has legislative majorities in both chambers that are not that friendly to some of his main accomplishment specifically the tax cuts so it could be two tough years for him trying to

defend the policies he's put in place and possibly butting heads with some lawmakers who want to change that that's not an argument why he made they'll also the executive director of the kansas republican party clay barker said this panel discussion i was at at the trump team told him that there are jobs for governor brownback in a trump administration if he wants that so it all comes down to what is brownback wanted it as he was staying kansas he'll continue defending his policies or his he won a kind of stepped on the national stage the other big candidate is chris kolb he's been a trump supporter since day one and there's really been a lot of talk about him going to the trump administration of course he met with donald trump and you could see in the paper under his arm that he was meeting with him about dhs policies he didn't get a show of homeland security yes i should clarify that you ultimately was not selected to be the secretary and dhs but that doesn't mean that there aren't many many jobs still there that would be attractive rico but for me as someone who has

covered both these candidates i really see co bought as someone who fits more in the executive type of the ledger slate of type that is my perception you know he's really driven he really wants to accomplish what he wants to accomplish and he's willing to take the lead and so i see him more as a good fit in a drug administration as far as maybe heading not a full cabinet level department buttered you know a department within an agency or something like that i see as a good fit for secretary kovach governor brownback surely there are jobs there that would be a good fit for him too but at this point i can't get either way whether he'll go estate argue has to be made each way for secretary co bought it really looks to me like there's some attractive jobs for and they're probably that he strongly considering singing he just had an end of the year interview with governor brownback what did he lay out for the year ahead well what's interesting is he did not put in place any budget cuts in november when the revenue numbers were lower which basically grew a

sizeable deficit for us here in kansas he's waited until january and he's not giving any hints about what his budget plan will include well let me say that again he's not giving any details but he is dropping some hints so i you know we ask a mini interview about his budget plan of course he wouldn't give details but he did say it will include both revenues and cuts to balance the budget so at this point we don't know if its revenues as in changes to our tax policy to raise taxes if it's one time things like securitize in the tobacco settlements that be a state gets every year and instead get in a one time payment we don't know but we know he's in a blow out something to balance the budget he says is going to include both revenue and budget cuts so waiting for that or waiting to see if he goes to the trump administration we're waiting to see what he put forward on k twelve education he also told me in the interview that he will not be proposing a specific model our k twelve funding plan that will put forward some ideas saying here's what i'd like to see it to know waiting for

those and waiting to see how state lawmakers react it felt that sixteen was an interesting year as well be to pardon seventeen yeah when you look back at all the changes we've seen here in kansas as far as the elections the real impact from those will be next year so it's not as if you know we had the primary and the general election and now we can say about all that's done all the big changes are done the changes really haven't even taken effect largely a cousin's new lawmakers haven't kicked off the new session speaking of the new session do join us for next week's k pr present will be previewing the two thousand seventeen kansas legislature and what's ahead in kansas politics that's our year in review a special thanks to stephen koranda bob at j schafer laura lorson tom parkinson and greg echlin for their help with today's program i'm j mcintyre kbr prisons is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas