Westar Energy is proposing a substantial rate hike and changes in the way you're billed for electricity.
And the opening shots in a months-long battle over new rates will be fired in a public hearing next week in Topeka..
If the company's proposal is approved, rates would drop briefly by a small amount and then rise by a much larger amount early next year.

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Solar enthusiasts said Westar's plan for an extra demand charge on customers who generate some of their own electricity is discriminatory and wrongheaded.

Westar vice president Jeff Martin said in a question-and-answer session before the hearing that solar customers use the power grid like everyone else does, but they don't pay their fair share to maintain the equipment because they're buying less energy. (thats right moron)

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/news/local/article211718559.html#storylink=cpy
"We are a high-cost energy state," Ward said. "Homeowners, renters, businesses, schools, hospitals, manufacturers, all pay too much for electricity. We pay more than Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Colorado. And we pay more than the national average.

"There have been 30 rate increases over the last 10 years. Westar rates have increased 67 percent since 2007."

Goodbye Westar Energy and KCP&L, hello Evergy; most Kansans to get new power company

May 24, 2018 01:04 PM
Updated 12 minutes ago

In a change that promises some rate relief, the merger of Westar Energy with Kansas City Power & Light has been approved, forming a new company to be called "Evergy."

The deal, approved Thursday by the Kansas Corporation Commission and the Missouri Public Service Commission, creates a mammoth power company with about 1 million Kansas and nearly 600,000 Missouri customers.

The new combined utility will be renamed to "Evergy," a combination of the words "ever" and "energy," said Westar spokeswoman Gina Penzig.

It will probably take until next year to implement the name change, she said.

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article211832124.html#storylink=cp

Eighteen people were arrested Monday afternoon during a protest at Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s office.

Dozens of protesters with the Poor People’s Campaign entered the building at 120 S.W. 10th Avenue around 1:30 p.m.

Kevin Bryant, of Manhattan, said an officer with the Capitol Police made an announcement that they were subject to arrest.

While one group was led out of the building, a smaller contingent stayed understanding they would be arrested.

“It would be nice if he’d (Kobach) have come and listened to his constituents,” Bryant said.

The event was the second protest that is part of a 30-state, six-week program. Last week, two dozen protesters were issued citations for blocking a downtown intersection. This week’s theme focused on systemic racism.

Protesters honed in on Kobach, chanting against his immigration and voting rights policies.

Kobach, who is running for governor, has championed stricter voter registration laws to prevent noncitizens from voting. However at a trial last month, he struggled to provide evidence to support claims of widespread voter fraud and was also found in contempt of court. Kobach has also been an outspoken opponent of sanctuary cities and benefits such as in-state tuition for undocumented students.

In response to Monday’s protest, Kobach released a statement defending his stances.

“What these protesters do not seem to understand is that the law is the law, and illegal means illegal,” Kobach said. “I have fought illegal immigration throughout my entire career. When I am governor, Kansas will stop giving in-state tuition to illegals, and sanctuary cities will cease to exist in the state.”

The building was locked and several Capitol Police vehicles responded to the scene.

Organizer Rachel Shivers called Kobach the “lead architect of voter suppression across Kansas and across the nation,” and said that he has promoted an “anti-immigrant sentiment.”

Several speakers shared their experiences.

Monica Ramero, a student at Kansas State University, spoke about her family’s struggle to build a better life in the U.S. and the importance of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Rev. Letiah Fraser, of Kansas City, Kan., talked about the “preschool to prison pipeline.”

“Jail bars are now the new form of enslavement,” Fraser said.

She also recalled how her parents had the “race talk” with her and her brothers.

“At a young age, I also remember my parents sat my brothers and I down to have the race talk,” Fraser told the crowd. “My brother was told that when he saw a police officer, they were not his friends. That if and when he was stopped by a police officer, he was to do anything they said because it is a matter of life or death.”

Often protesters responded by yelling, “That ain’t right,” in response to the speakers’ stories.

Moussa Elbayoumy, board chariman of Council on American-Islamic Relations Kansas, spoke about Islamophobia.

He said artificial lines have been created to stoke divisiveness, adding that various groups need to stand together.

“Our issues are the same, our plight is the same, our struggle is the same and our fight has to be the same,” Elbayoumy said. “We have to stand side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder, fighting together for our freedom, for our voice and for our rights.”

Just before 2:30 p.m., the group of arrested protesters, in handcuffs or zip ties, were led out of the building and loaded onto an awaiting bus.

Protesters continued speaking on the west side of the building until 3 p.m., when a Capitol Police officer told them the gathering wasn’t permitted.

They moved across the street to the south steps of the Kansas Statehouse where they had a planned news conference.

Eighteen people were arrested in connection with criminal trespassing, a misdemeanor, said Kansas Highway Patrol Lt. Adam Winters.

Roughly four months after Jeff Colyer became Kansas' governor, nearly half of likely Republican primary voters have no opinion about him, according to a new poll.

Colyer, an Overland Park plastic surgeon who succeeded Sam Brownback as the state’s top executive in late January, held a lead within the margin of error over Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach in a poll of Republican candidates that was conducted this week by Remington Research Group, a GOP polling firm based in Kansas City.

But nearly a third of Republican voters — a plurality of 30 percent — were undecided about which candidate should be the GOP nominee for governor when the party holds its primary in August.

Colyer found support from 29 percent of the poll’s respondents, while Kobach drew 27 percent. Colyer’s lead falls within the margin of error of plus or minus 2.58 percentage points.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/the-buzz/article211363209.html#storylink=cpy

Stressful living conditions in Kansas are contributing to a dramatic increase in the mortality rate among middle-aged whites and concentration of the phenomenon in regions marked by prolonged economic insecurity and lower educational achievement, new research said Friday.

Death rates of U.S. residents have generally been on decline during the past century with minority populations suffering higher mortality due to socioeconomic inequities of employment, education and housing. On a national level, the recently documented rise in deaths among whites ages 25 to 64 has drawn scrutiny of researchers, including a deep dive into Kansas.

“What we found is that it is happening in Kansas,” said Steven Woolf, a physician at Virginia Commonwealth University and the study’s lead researcher. “Since the 1990s, mortality rates have been increasing significantly in that age group primarily from what we call stress-related conditions.”

He said a 112 percent rise between 1995 and 2014 in Kansas’ death rate within the 25-64 age category likely resulted from people adopting unhealthy coping behaviors and being at greater risk of lethal substance abuse and suicide.

In terms of the change in Kansas, here are key numbers over the two-decade period studied: drug overdose, 585 percent increase; alcohol poisoning from binge drinking, 440 percent increase; alcoholic liver disease, 54 percent increase; and suicide, 52 percent increase.

Another way to examine the trend is to compare the mortality rate among 100,000 whites in Kansas from 1995 to 1999 against the rate for 2010 to 2014. In that sense, the rate for drug overdoses shifted from 2.2 percent in the early period to 15.1 percent in the more recent period. Alcoholic liver disease escalated from 4.1 percent to 6.4 percent, while suicide broadened from 15.4 percent to 23.3 percent.

The Kansas project, a collaboration of the Kansas Health Institute and Sunflower Foundation, left to future researchers questions of precisely why middle-aged whites in particular had been disproportionately affected. Still, Woolf offered a reasoned theory of the culprit.

“The areas that are more severely impacted are those that have been going for a long period of time at the bottom of the economic ladder,” Woolf said. “I can’t prove A leads to B, but it seems highly plausible.”

He said the largest relative increase in mortality associated with stress conditions in Kansas between 1995 and 2014 occurred in regions with lower household incomes, greater poverty and income inequality and a higher proportion of single-parent households.

The largest transformation of mortality among middle-aged whites -- 147 percent --- occurred in north-central Kansas. The escalation in east central Kansas, including Topeka and Kansas City, Kan., was 115 percent. Northeastern Kansas’ rate expanded by 112 percent.

“Frustration and hopelessness over these conditions would be expected to increase anxiety and depression,” the report said. “Over time, chronic stress, despair and the pain they produce can induce harmful coping behaviors.”

The report also said: “These upstream conditions are not solved by doctors and addiction specialists, but by policies that create the social and economic conditions necessary for each person, family and community to be healthy and survive -- including strong schools, affordable housing, transportation options and more.”

In 2016, the Commonwealth Fund’s analysis of data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed rising death rates among middle-aged whites was associated with the nation’s stalled progress in fighting leading causes of death -- respiratory disease, diabetes, heart disease. That work also pointed to suicide and substance abuse as culprits for working-age adults from 1968 to 2014.

That report followed the assessment of two Princeton University researchers who pointed to a “mortality gap” related to a rising death rate for non-Hispanic, white Americans ages 45 to 54 since 1999, despite several previous decades of decline.