Top Stories Wichita

By Eyewitness News (TOPEKA, Kan.)

It’s no secret. School districts across Kansas are looking for ways to make as they deal with budget deficits.

Now, the Kansas State Board of Education knows just how bad it is.

During its March 9th meeting, the B.O.E. discussed Governor Parkinson’s budget plan and how it affects schools. 

School board members also saw the results of a statewide survey, detailing area each district could cut.

BY TIM CARPENTER

Topeka Capital-Journal

TOPEKA — An amendment offered in the Senate budget committee this week would restore $5.3 million in fuel tax revenue denied Shawnee County due to a series of computer errors by officials in
the state revenue department and the state treasurer’s office.

Butler County also would receive nearly $2 million in revenue it was shorted.

The Senate Ways and Means Committee voted in favor of a measure that would correct the problem by modifying fuel tax appropriations to all 105 counties during the next five years. Counties receiving more than their share of this tax
revenue in the past would see a corresponding decrease in future allocations until shorted counties were made whole.

“This is the long-awaited correction,” said Sen. Ty Masterson, R-Andover, who proposed the amendment.

Sen. Laura Kelly, D-Topeka, said phasing in the fix would minimize financial disruption in the 100 Kansas counties that received too much in the past. Five counties — Shawnee, Barton, Butler, Douglas and Leavenworth —
were shorted a total of $11.1 million during the past decade.

“It’s about as fair a way it can be done,” Kelly said.

Sen. Vicki Schmidt, R-Topeka, said the amendment wouldn’t cost taxpayers money because the solution depended on reallocation of existing revenue.

“I’m thrilled,” she said. “It’s a much better option than taking it out of state general funds.”

Other than Shawnee County, big winners — if the committee’s $11.1 million remedy is passed by the full Senate, House and signed by Gov. Mark Parkinson — would be Douglas County, owed $2.5 million; Butler County,
shorted $1.9 million; Leavenworth County, missing $1.1 million; and Barton County, shorted $159,000.

Vic Miller, a Shawnee County commissioner, said movement of the amendment in the Senate committee was welcome news.

“I think it’s very, very reasonable,” he said. “I’m grateful.”

Now-corrected computer programming errors and mistakes in calculating reimbursements poured millions of dollars in extra payments to counties across the state. For example, Johnson and Sedgwick counties received $2.3 million more
than they should have.

The fuel tax funding is forwarded to counties and shared with cities and townships for the purpose of fixing roads.

The Kansas Department of Revenue helped skew the calculations by providing incorrect data about vehicle registrations to the treasurer’s office. At the same time, a software programming error introduced at the treasurer’s office went
undetected for years.

State audits from 2000 through 2007 hadn’t uncovered the problem, but in 2008 then-Treasurer Lynn Jenkins notified Republican legislative leaders she had learned problems existed in allocation of tax revenue on fuel. Jenkins, a Republican,
didn’t share that information with Democratic leaders in the House and Senate. The issue wasn’t made public until Jenkins was campaigning for the U.S. House against Democratic Rep. Nancy Boyda.

The 2009 Legislature attempted to correct three years of fuel tax accounting miscues by authorizing payment of $6.6 million to 20 counties thought to have been shorted by the state. Overpaid counties weren’t required to repay funding in that
bill. In that budget bill, Shawnee County captured $3.3 million.

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Geography Surveyed: Kansas
Data Collected: 03/09/2010
Release Date: 03/09/2010 20:35 ET
Sponsor: KWCH-TV Wichita

There is a proposal to tax 12 ounce cans of soda one cent for every teaspoon of sugar it contains, about a dime a can. Would you support? Or oppose? this proposal?

• 28%  Support
• 63%  Oppose
•   9%  Not Sure

Would you support? Or oppose increasing the tax on cigarettes to 55 cents per pack to help save programs and generate other revenue for the state?

• 64%  Support
• 32%  Oppose
•   4%  Not Sure 

Would you support? Or oppose a tax on alcohol to help save programs and generate other revenue for the state?

• 55%  Support
• 41%  Oppose
•   4%  Not Sure 

Complete Interactive Crosstabs

By JOHN HORN

Los Angeles Times

HOLLYWOOD – “The Hurt Locker,” a gritty, challenging and little-seen drama about bomb disposal in the Iraq war, won a leading six Academy Awards on Sunday night, including best picture and the first directing honor for a female filmmaker.

Academy Award organizers had doubled this year’s best-picture contest to 10 movies to rope in more mass-appeal hits and boost the ceremony’s ratings; but “The Hurt Locker,” an emotionally exhausting account of an Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal team, stands apart as the lowest-grossing film in modern history to capture Hollywood’s highest award.

“This has been such a dream – beyond a dream – for all of us,” screenwriter and producer Mark Boal said in his best picture acceptance speech, calling the film’s performance in the 82nd annual ceremony “beyond anything we could have imagined.” The film also was honored for its original screenplay, editing and two sound awards.

The Iraq-bomb-defusing drama’s Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the Academy Award for directing. “There’s no other way to describe it. It’s the moment of a lifetime,” said Bigelow, who was only the fourth woman nominated for directing in academy history.

“The Blind Side’s” Sandra Bullock was named best actress, and “Crazy Heart’s” Jeff Bridges won for best actor. Mo’Nique won for best supporting actress for “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” and Christoph Waltz was named best supporting actor for “Inglourious Basterds.”

Already on DVD shelves with domestic theatrical receipts of less than $15 million – about 2 percent of the domestic haul of James Cameron’s box-office behemoth “Avatar” – “The Hurt Locker,” like many other movies about conflict in the Middle East, has sold substantially fewer tickets than several low-grossing best picture winners, including 2005’s “Crash” and 1987’s “The Last Emperor.”

But the film, released last June, scored where it mattered most – with the 5,532 voters of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Although almost every film producer and distributor passed on making Bigelow’s film, financed independently for $11 million, “The Hurt Locker” was among last year’s most critically acclaimed releases, and won any number of key awards in the weeks leading up to the Oscars ceremony. To win the best picture prize, it had to get past “Avatar,” the first feature from Cameron (Bigelow’s former husband) since his 1997 disaster epic “Titanic” swept the Oscars. Cameron’s futuristic thriller, the most expensive production ever, was awarded with Academy Awards for visual effects, art direction and cinematography.

“The Hurt Locker’s” Oscar ascendancy was not without controversy.

Just as ballots were due early last week, one of “The Hurt Locker’s” producers, financier Nicolas Chartier, sent an e-mail to friends and colleagues suggesting they vote for his film and not “Avatar.” Because academy rules prohibit negative campaigning, Chartier was forced to apologize and forfeit his tickets to the show.

Many film critics praised “The Hurt Locker’s” authenticity, yet some active and retired soldiers said the movie was inaccurate and made the military look unprofessional; citing similar concerns, the Department of Defense pulled its production cooperation at the last minute when the movie was being shot in 2007.

The evening’s winner for best actress, Bullock, represented a far more popular movie, the blockbuster football story “The Blind Side.” Best known for crowd-pleasing (and critically dismissed) works such as “Miss Congeniality” and “The Proposal,” Bullock won the Oscar with her very first nomination for playing Leigh Anne Tuohy, the real-life adoptive mother of a homeless teenager who went on to become an NFL standout.

Bullock dedicated her win “to the moms that take care of the babies and the children no matter where they come from.”

Bridges, one of Hollywood’s most respected performers, won the best actor Oscar for depicting alcoholic singer Bad Blake in the fictionalized country music biography “Crazy Heart.” The son of the actors Lloyd and Dorothy Dean Bridges said on stage, “I feel an extension of them. This is honoring them as much as it is me.”

Stung by declining television ratings and an aging television audience (2008’s ceremony was the least-watched ceremony ever), the academy expanded the best-picture race from five to 10 movies (the field hadn’t been that size since 1942’s “Casablanca” took the best picture prize).

While “Avatar” likely would have been shortlisted had their still been five best picture picks, the expanded best picture field did sweep up several mass-appeal movies that probably would have stayed home on Oscar night, particularly “The Blind Side” and the aliens-on-earth thriller “District 9.”

The broadcast’s two producers – former studio chief Bill Mechanic and director/choreographer Adam Shankman – larded the show, hosted by Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, with youthful presenters who no one would mistake as Oscar contenders, including “Twilight’s” Taylor Lautner, “High School Musical’s” Zac Efron and “Hannah Montana’s” Miley Cyrus.

The show’s producers also excised performances of the year’s five nominated songs (condensing them into a quick montage of clips), and delayed the presentation of the best actress award (considered one of the closest races of the show) until after the best actor prize.

Even in the other main categories that kept to five nominees, this year’s contest had a noticeably populist feel. “Up,” the winner of the animated feature and score award, also was nominated for original screenplay. The story of the balloon-buoyed septuagenarian became the first animated movie selected for the best picture race since the academy added a separate animation category in the 2002 ceremony.

While many of the major awards went to assumed favorites, there were several minor upsets.

Most prominent among the surprises was the adapted screenplay triumph for Geoffrey Fletcher, a first-time writer who won for “Precious.” “This is for everybody who works on a dream every day,” said Fletcher, who struggled selling his writing for a decade and was forced to take temp jobs to make ends meet. The presumptive favorite in the category, “Up in the Air,” went home with no awards.

Mo’Nique, a stand-up comedian who made her dramatic acting debut as an abusive mother in “Precious,” dedicated her award to her husband, saying, “Thank you for showing me that sometimes you have to forego doing what’s popular in order to do what’s right.”

In the evening’s first award, Waltz collected the supporting actor statuette for his depiction of a fastidious Nazi in the World War II revenge fantasy “Inglourious Basterds.” But the film’s writer-director, Quentin Tarantino, lost the original screenplay race to “The Hurt Locker’s” Boal.

In addition to Bridges’ best actor triumph in a movie that almost debuted not in theaters but on Country Music Television, “Crazy Heart” collected the original song Oscar for “The Weary Kind.”

Argentina’s “El Secreto de Sus Ojos” was named best foreign language film, while the harrowing dolphin slaughter story “The Cove” won the documentary feature prize.

Said Bigelow backstage: “This has been an extraordinary year for content that is diverse and rich and complex and exciting.”

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BY STAN FINGER

The Wichita Eagle

Had Tornado Alley become a thing of the past? Meteorologists and weather researchers were asking that question as the 1980s came to a close. The last half of the decade had seen the number of tornadoes drop
dramatically — even in Kansas.

“And most of those were weak ones,” weather researcher Jon Davies said.

That all changed March 13, 1990.

A massive outbreak erupted in the heart of Tornado Alley, producing at least 60 tornadoes from Texas to Illinois.

One storm cell produced back-to-back F5 tornadoes near Wichita: one that tore through Hesston and another near Goessel that ranks among the strongest ever recorded.

It was, as Hesston survivor Margo Buscher put it, “an awful day.”

The Hesston tornado, which the Wichita branch of the National Weather Service is highlighting as it observes Severe Weather Awareness Week in Kansas this week, also marked the dawn of a new era for tornadoes and the public’s awareness of
them.

“It was the first video-age tornado,” said Mike Smith, president of WeatherData Inc., a Wichita-based private forecasting service and subsidiary of AccuWeather.

People with video cameras shot footage as the tornado approached and tore through Hesston, and that footage drew national attention.

For years afterwards, Russ Buller, Hesston’s director of emergency services, would go to conferences around the country and hear, “You’re from Hesston? Wow, you had that tornado!”

“We were known all over the country,” Buller said.

“Tornadoes didn’t just start in 1990, but for some reason, our tornado that day seemed to hit the mark with a lot of people.”

More large tornadoes struck in the years that followed — including the April 26, 1991, tornado that ravaged Haysville, Wichita, McConnell Air Force Base and Andover.

Forecasters say the Hesston outbreak reawakened the public to the dangers of tornadoes and offers timeless lessons for the residents of Tornado Alley as another storm season looms.

Severe weather can develop quickly, Smith said, so people need to be alert and ready to seek shelter on short notice.

Hesston’s residents heeded warnings about the approaching tornado and took cover, Smith said, and no one was killed in town.

That reaction wasn’t a given, Smith said, considering it had been 11 years since a large tornado had hit a town of any size: Wichita Falls, Texas, in 1979.

“The Great Plains had gone a long time without any major tornadoes,” Smith said.

Taking aim at Hesston

The Hesston tornado touched down at about 4:30 p.m. northeast of Pretty Prairie in Reno County and churned across the countryside between Haven and Yoder.

“It was the first real large tornado I saw,” said Davies, who began tracking the thunderstorm near Medicine Lodge and photographed the tornado after it touched down. “It kind of knocked my socks off about how big it was and how fast it
formed.”

The tornado crossed the Arkansas River and hit the Fisher farmstead south of Burrton. Lucas Fisher, 6, was killed when the tornado slammed a tree into the chimney, knocking it into the basement, where the family had taken shelter.

The tornado then seemed to take aim on Hesston.

Hesston Mayor John Waltner was driving home from work in Newton on old U.S. 81. As he listened to radio reports of the tornado, he could see it in the distance.

It didn’t look like a classic tornado, he said — just a big, black wall churning across the prairie.

“It was massive,” Waltner said. “It was really an awesome thing — no question about it.”

The mayor and tornado seemed to be “on a collision course,” Waltner said.

“I thought it was going to miss the town,” he said. “I wasn’t seeing debris. And all of a sudden…”

A microburst developed in front of the tornado, pushing it a little to the right — taking it through the heart of the city instead of through the largest employer in town, Hay and Forage Industries.

At the Kropf Lumber Co. a few blocks away, Donnie Hostetler and Joe Detweiler had moved materials indoors to keep them from getting wet, then decided to see whether they could spot the tornado.

What they thought was just a big black cloud was the tornado bearing down on them.

“We never really saw the funnel… until the debris started falling all around us,” Hostetler said. “Then we said, ‘We probably ought to get inside.’ “

The nearest door led to a small bathroom in the back of a storage building.

“We stayed there through it all,” Hostetler said. “I never did hear the roar of the train or anything… it sounded like somebody threw a big shovelful of gravel against the garage door.”

When it grew quiet again, they stepped outside — and were stunned by what they saw.

“Where that little bathroom was is about the only corner that wasn’t damaged,” Hostetler said.

More than 225 homes and 21 businesses in Hesston were damaged or destroyed. Damage estimates in Harvey County alone reached $25 million.

The tornado was on the ground for an hour, Davies said, traveling 48 miles before it lifted. At one point, it was 3/4 of a mile wide — though it had narrowed to about 2 1/2 blocks by the time it struck Hesston.

Weather researchers said it grew stronger just outside town as the base narrowed — much like a figure skater spinning faster when she draws her arms in.

Dean Alison stood on the front porch of his house 1 1/2 miles east of Hesston with his brother, Ben, and shot video as the tornado approached and struck the town.

“The one thing we thought of when we saw it pass through town was that there’d be dead people everywhere,” Dean Alison said.

They raced to town after the tornado passed and were amazed to discover there were no deaths and few injuries.

Two F5 tornadoes

Even as the tornado was shredding the center of Hesston, another twister touched down just northeast of the city.

Research later showed that the two tornadoes traveled parallel to each other for about two miles before the second tornado intensified and choked off the first.

It quickly grew to F5 strength, the top ranking on the Fujita scale with winds estimated at more than 300 mph. It moved northeast into Marion County, where it killed 68-year-old Ruth Voth at her rural homestead.

The thunderstorm system produced tornadoes so close to each other that researchers initially suspected one tornado had been on the ground for 105 miles.

But two videos captured the Hesston and Goessel tornadoes on the ground at the same time, and closer study of the damage paths confirmed five separate tornadoes.

Tornado research pioneer Theodore Fujita, for whom the tornado strength scale is named, was so intrigued by the Hesston and Goessel tornadoes that he traveled from the University of Chicago to conduct his own damage surveys.

“The newly formed tornado was becoming stronger… and it was so close to the original tornado it pulled the original tornado into it,” Davies said. “I don’t know of any other case where that’s been documented.”

The Goessel tornado belongs in any discussion of the strongest tornadoes on record, weather researchers say.

So many people came to Hesston’s aid after the tornado that the debris was cleared in two weeks. Visitors today would not be able to tell where the tornado struck, Buller said.

That day in the city’s history rarely comes up in conversation. But that doesn’t mean it’s forgotten.

“It’s always in the back of our minds — the ones that were there,” Buller said. “You don’t go through one of those and not have it become a part of you.”

Reach Stan Finger at 316-268-6437 or sfinger@wichitaeagle.com.

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By Dave Roberts (WICHITA, Kan.)

For the first time since 2004, Wichita will be represented by not one, but two women in the Miss Kansas Pageant.

Alex Miller was crowned as the new Miss Wichita, and Melissa Walthers is Miss Air Capital Saturday evening.

Organizers say the pageant can send one winner for every four contestants to Miss Kansas.

They beat out nine other competitors for the crowns.

Along with the titles of Miss Wichita and Miss Air Capital, several other awards were handed out, including the Spirit Award and the People’s Choice Award. That means more than $1800 in scholarship money was awarded.

The Miss Kansas Pageant will be held in June.

Duane Goossen

March 3, 2010 at 4:06 p.m.

As our current budget situation began to worsen, we first focused on trying to find more efficiencies in our operations. Then we began focusing on lower priority programs. Then we began asking agencies to do more with fewer people. We have also used savings and fund balances to ease things. However, by now the situation has become so much worse that we have had to make painful cuts to important programs.

We will continue to look for savings wherever we can, but if we do not add new revenue, we will have to cut deeper into education and human services. When budgets must be cut deeply, we have no choice but to look at education and human services because they make up such a large part of our budget. About 50% of the General Fund budget goes to K through 12, another 13% goes to higher education, and about 23% goes to Human Services, most of which is Medicaid expenses.

By Michael Schwanke (WICHITA, Kan.)

What could you do with a dollar? Could you serve your child a nutritious meal?

Wichita schools have to. The district must serve more than 22,000 meals every day.

“We have challenges with funding,” says Vicki Hoffman, director of Nutrition Services for USD 259.

Wichita has just $1.07 for elementary school lunch, and $1.30 for secondary schools.

“Keep in mind that includes milk and a carton of milk is it’s a least 20 cents. So you’ve used that for milk before you start with the food,” says Hoffman.

Parents know the other challenge. Debby Cowdin says even if the food is healthy, she knows her youngest daughter isn’t eating it.

“Because of her being so picky I know she’s not eating good at lunch so I have to do something else at night,” says Cowdin.

So just like schools, Debby has to sneak in healthy foods. “Because she’s not eating a good lunch I have to make it better at home.”

Not only are schools serving these meals for about a dollar a day, food costs increase every.  Hoffman says funding isn’t keeping up with inflation

“Food costs keep going up labor costs keep going up,” says Hoffman.

So can schools prepare a healthy meal with so little money?

• CBS News: Schools Get Better Grades on Junk Food

We asked Wichita Clinic dietitian Cheryll Clarke. “Overall they’re getting what they need from the school lunch program.”

Clarke studied the school lunch menu for the entire month. Although she found kids are getting what they need, she also found room for improvement.

“If there’s a place they falter it may be on the sodium end, but generally speaking they’re meeting their guidelines.”

Clarke says for the money they have to do it, they’re doing a pretty good job “It is really hard. They’re doing good, their doing good for the meals they’re providing.

When asked to grade your child’s school lunch, Clarke says it passes.

“That’s one is hard. They’re meeting their needs it looks like their repeating so there’s not a lot of variety. So it looks like a B.”

• CBS News: Fast Food Safer Than School Lunch?