U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts announced today in Manhattan, Kansas, that he will not seek re-election to the Senate in 2020 and will retire at the end of this term.
Sen. Roberts, 82, is serving his fourth term in the U.S. Senate, starting in 1997, and previously served eight terms in the U.S. House, representing the 1st District in Kansas, from 1980 to 1996. He is the longest serving member of Congress in Kansas history.
Making the announcement in Manhattan, Kansas, near his alma mater, steps from the National Bio and Agro-defense Facility (NBAF) and flanked by Ft. Riley and the pastures of the Flint Hills, Roberts chose the location for its proximity to the various efforts for which he has worked tirelessly over the course of his career in public service.
“Manhattan is an example of all that I have worked for on behalf of Kansans and the nation,” Roberts said. “It is the tangible realization of hope and progress, prosperity and growth.”
Choosing points of the compass, Roberts reflected upon his ongoing work in agriculture, for the military, for economic development, for life science research, for education, for aviation, for national security and much more for the daily lives and pocketbooks of all Kansans.
Concluding his remarks with his agenda for the remaining two years of his current Senate term, Roberts said, “I will be forever grateful to the people of Kansas for allowing me to represent you – and you can bet I still have a very long ‘to do’ list. The fighting for you is a long way from over. I’ve said it before, ‘Marines always take the Hill!’ You can count on me to march forward and press the battle on behalf of our great state and nation.”
Sen. Roberts is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and is the most senior Marine in the House and Senate. He created the Senate Marine Corps Caucus.
He currently is the chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, and is a senior member of the Senate Committee on Finance, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, the Senate Select Committee on Ethics and the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration. He is the co-chairman of the Senate Rural Health Caucus.
Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, issued this statement: “Senator Pat Roberts has had an impressive tenure as a leader in both the House and the Senate, and has served Kansans honorably as chairman of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Ethics Committee. Pat’s leadership, wit and ability to bring individuals on both sides of the aisle together, skills he honed in service to our nation as a U.S. Marine, will be missed in Congress. It’s been an honor to work with the senior senator from Kansas on behalf of our state. Thank you, Pat, for your friendship and many years of service.”
Gov. Jeff Colyer sent out this statement: “Senator Pat Roberts has spent more than 30 years serving the people of Kansas, and during that time he has been a shining example of statesmanship. The work that he has done for our state, especially in the agricultural sector, is second to none. Throughout his time in office, Kansans have been able to rely on Pat Roberts’ expertise, energy, and gravitas. It is essential that our next U.S. Senator bring these same qualities to the job.”
Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt offered this statement: “Pat Roberts has long been a solid cornerpost in the sometimes-unfenced chaos that can be Washington, D.C. From his unparalleled leadership for Kansas agriculture to his unwavering support for the U.S. military and America’s ever-evolving national security requirements, Pat always has led with the needs of Kansas foremost on his mind. I am personally saddened to know he plans to exit the stage. In this strident political era, Pat Roberts’ often humorous and frequently tempered conservative voice will be sorely missed. Thanks for your lifetime of public service, Pat.”
A fire at a vacant house at 616 S. 10th, Kansas City, Kansas, is under investigation, according to a Kansas City, Kansas, Fire Department spokesman.
The fire was at 11:31 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 3.
When firefighters arrived, they saw heavy fire showing from the first and second floors of the single-family house, according to the spokesman.
Crews attacked the fire and a general alarm was sounded. The structure was ordered to be evacuated as the fire spread throughout the attic and was starting to burn through the roof, the spokesman stated.
Firefighters went into a defensive mode of fighting the fire, with elevated master streams set up, according to the spokesman. Once the fire was under control, crews worked on overhaul.
While doing overhaul, a section of the floor gave way and two members of the Kansas City, Kansas, Fire Department fell to the first floor, according to the spokesman. The firefighters received assistance in leaving the building, and there were no injuries, the spokesman stated.
In all, 36 fire personnel responded to this fire, and the estimated dollar loss is unknown, according to the spokesman.
The cause of the fire is undetermined, and it is under investigation, the spokesman stated.
Governor-elect Laura Kelly spoke at a Kansas News Service event in December. On Thursday, Kelly announced a new interim head of two state agencies, and called for a halt to recently awarded grants for private foster care contractors. (Kansas News Service file photo)
by Madeline Fox, Kansas News Service
Kansas governor-elect Laura Kelly announced Thursday that she’s replacing the head of the state’s embattled child welfare agency, and at the same time putting on hold new grants for private contractors to manage foster care and family preservation services.
Kelly’s announcement signals rapid and potentially dramatic change for an agency that’s been under heavy scrutiny for the ballooning number of kids in state custody, some of whom have slept in social workers’ offices or bounced around to single-night placements.
Kansas has one of the most privatized foster care systems in the country, and it currently delegates foster care and family preservation services to two private contractors. In November, the Department for Children and Families announced that five providers would manage foster care and family preservation under a new grant system.
Kelly called the grants “essentially no-bid contracts,” saying in the Thursday press release that she’d asked DCF to delay their implementation. Current DCF secretary Gina Meier-Hummel defended the grants and the process for awarding them, but she said in a subsequent statement that she will pause the grants per Kelly’s request.
Laura Howard, director of the Public Management Center at the University of Kansas, will replace Meier-Hummel as the interim head of DCF as well as take over as head of the Department for Aging and Disability Services when the Kelly administration begins later this month.
Howard was the regional administrator for substance abuse and mental health services within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She has also led Medicaid, behavioral health and disability programs for the state over more than 15 years at what was then the Department for Social and Rehabilitation Services. SRS was parceled out into DCF and KDADS under former Gov. Sam Brownback.
Kelly spokeswoman Ashley All said putting one person temporarily in charge of both agencies doesn’t mean they’re planning to recombine the two, but said the incoming administration hasn’t ruled anything out.
At KDADS, Howard said she’ll be focusing early on mental health services, and on resolving difficulties Kansans are encountering in getting Medicaid waivers that allow people to receive care in their communities, rather than a hospital or group home.
She said examining how the child welfare grants were awarded will be a top priority when she takes over DCF.
Child welfare advocates have expressed concern that the selection process for those grants was opaque, and that Eckerd Connects, a new provider based in Florida, has a record of some of the same headline-grabbing problems that have plagued Kansas foster care in recent years.
Others are worried simply about what upheaval swapping in new providers with the grants might bring and have questioned whether overhauling how the cases of children under the state’s watch are managed makes sense with a new governor coming in. Meanwhile, a federal class-action lawsuit alleging Kansas rendered children in state custody effectively homeless with frequent moves between foster care placements could bring further disruptions.
Rep. Jarrod Ousley, a Merriam Democrat who’s introduced several child welfare bills and sat on a task force that examined the foster care system, said he supports the Kelly team’s decision to put the grants on hold.
“The new administration should have an absolute say-so in how we move forward regarding our foster care and child welfare system,” Ousley said. “The grants were kind of rushed into.”
Kelly’s spokeswoman said the incoming governor wants to make sure the grants, as awarded, are legal and in the best interest of Kansas children and families.
As the new administration reconsiders how child welfare is managed, Howard said she also plans to dig into DCF’s data on whether parents who had received cash assistance and lost their benefits saw children end up in foster care.
“It’s just common sense,” Howard said. “If families are more fragile by having supports taken away from them, there’s certainly a greater risk of interaction with the child welfare system.”
Under Secretary Meier-Hummel, DCF has denied any connection.
Preliminary results of a KU study linked the higher number of kids in foster care to restrictions under a Brownback law called the HOPE Act that tightened time limits, upped work requirements and placed other expectations on welfare recipients.
DCF just this week released an evaluation of the KU study it commissioned, to the frustration of the study’s authors and some child welfare advocates. The evaluation found KU’s study “deficient and inconclusive.”
Doug Besharov of the University of Maryland, who led the team revisiting KU’s research, complained that the authors declined to share their data or models as their study was still ongoing. Besharov concluded the KU study “should not be used as the basis of causal conclusions or policy recommendations,” calling it a work in progress. But he also wrote that his examination of the study’s claims shouldn’t be interpreted to reject any possible link between welfare restrictions and the rising number of kids in foster care.
In the evaluation, Besharov raised concerns about whether the KU researchers had adequately factored in increases in the minimum wage, changes to what constituted maltreatment of a child and how much proof was needed to remove children, and changes to who was considered a mandatory reporter of child abuse during the time period examined in their study.
Donna Ginther, a KU economist and one of the study’s authors, said her team has made adjustments to include some of those issues already, and that Besharov also raised some valid concerns that they hope to address as the study continues.
“They gave us a laundry list of additional criticism that we can respond to in the paper when we revise it,” she said, “But that doesn’t change the fact that we continue to find this kind of empirical regularity [of a connection between welfare changes and rising foster care caseloads] in our analysis.”
DCF spokeswoman Taylor Forrest said in an email that the agency’s own internal study of data, outcomes and analysis of welfare policies didn’t find a correlation between welfare policies and an increase of abuse, neglect or foster care placements.
Governor-elect Kelly has said reexamining the HOPE Act will be a high priority when she takes over the governor’s office later this month.
All, Kelly’s spokeswoman, said the governor-elect thought the KU study raised important issues about Kansas’ child welfare system.
“It’s remarkable that the current leadership at the Department for Children and Families thinks it is wise to use $24,000 of TANF funds to pay for this ‘evaluation,’” All said in an email.
The use of department resources to rebut criticism of state welfare policies has been a frequent source of frustration for child advocates, like Kansas Action for Children president Annie McKay.
“The amount of energy that Secretary Meier-Hummel and other members of the administration have expended in circling the wagons around an ideology that has literally cost children their lives, that has thrust thousands of kids into a failed child welfare system,” McKay said, “is astonishing to me.”
