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BPU plans budget review meeting Monday, Dec. 5

The Kansas City, Kansas, Board of Public Utilities will review the 2023 proposed budget during an all-day workshop to be held Monday, Dec. 5.

The workshop will begin at 8:30 a.m. Monday at the BPU administration building, 540 Minnesota Ave., Kansas City, Kansas.

The workshop will include budget reviews for all departments and divisions, including the election production; accounting and finance, general management, customer service, information technology, water, electric operations and electric supply divisions.

The final budget will be presented to the BPU board for approval during the Dec. 14 BPU board meeting, according to a BPU spokesman.

The public may access the meeting through the telephone to listen, and if they have access to the internet, they can click on a Zoom meeting to observe the meeting.

To join the Zoom meeting, persons may click on https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84523139724.

To join by telephone, call toll-free 1-888-475-4499.

The meeting ID number is 845 2313 9724.

For BPU meeting information, visit https://www.bpu.com/About/MediaNewsReleases/BPUBoardtoReview2023ProposedBudget.aspx.

Zusi, Espinoza and Fontas sign again with Sporting KC

Graham Zusi, Roger Espinoza and Andreu Fontas have signed contracts again with Sporting Kansas City, according to an announcement Friday from the club.

One-year contracts went to Zusi and Espinoza, while Fontas received a two-year contract, according to a Sporting KC spokesman.

Sporting KC now has a roster of 26 players heading into 2023 competition, which begins the last weekend of February, a spokesman stated.

Zusi has spent his 14-year career at Sporting and won four major championships for Kansas City, including the 2013 MLS Cup and three U.S. Open Cup titles. He is Sporting’s all-time appearance leader with 395 matches played in all competitions, including 341 in the MLS regular season and 20 in the MLS Cup Playoffs.

He was the first MLS player in history to play all 14 seasons with one club.

A 13-season veteran at Sporting, Espinoza is one of the league’s longest-serving midfielders. He helped lead the club to three U.S. Open Cup championships and nine playoff appearances.

A 2012 MLS All-Star, Espinoza has logged 316 regular season appearances since joining KC in 2008, the third most all-time among one club MLS players behind Zusi and Portland midfielder Diego Chara.

Espinoza leads Sporting with 24 appearances in the U.S. Open Cup. Espinoza began his professional career in Kansas City as a 2008 MLS SuperDraft selection out of Ohio State University.

Fontas, who arrived in Kansas City in 2018, has been a backline staple for Sporting over the last two seasons. The Spanish center back has started in 62 of the club’s 70 MLS matches since 2021, flourishing as one of the league’s best ball-playing defenders.

In the previous two seasons combined, Fontas leads MLS in total passes, successful passes and touches while also leading the team in interceptions and clearances. He has finished back-to-back campaigns ranking in the top 10 of MLS in goals added, an advanced metric that measures a player’s total on-ball contribution in attack and defense.

Fontas earned Sporting’s Defender of the Year award for the second straight season in 2022, finishing the campaign with starts in 31 of 32 appearances across all competitions.

He helped the club reach the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup semifinals, starting in all four matches of the tournament run, and bagged goals in consecutive matches for the first time in his professional career by scoring at Austin FC on Aug. 13 and against the Portland Timbers on Aug. 21.

A native of Banyoles, Spain, Fontas developed in FC Barcelona’s famed La Masia youth academy.

Biden chooses former Jackson County prosecutor to head U.S. Attorney’s office in Kansas

Kate E. Brubacher was part of a team that fought for the exoneration of Kevin Strickland, who spent 43 years in prison for a triple murder he didn’t commit. Strickland was exonerated in late 2021.

by Dan Margolies, KCUR and Kansas News Service

President Joe Biden’s pick to be the next U.S. Attorney in Kansas is a former assistant Jackson County, Missouri, prosecutor who last year helped free a man wrongly convicted of murder.

Kate E. Brubacher, a native of North Newton, Kansas, comes from a Mennonite farming background. She served in the Jackson County Prosecutor’s office from 2016 until August of this year. She has extensive experience in private practice and a graduate degree in religion from Yale Divinity School.

In 2016, she oversaw a program to stem violent crime in Kansas City, Missouri’s urban core. The program focused on the East Patrol Division, the most violent part of the city.

She was part of a team of Jackson County prosecutors who fought for the exoneration of Kevin Strickland, who spent 43 years in prison for a triple murder he didn’t commit. Strickland was exonerated in late 2021.

Reached at her Kansas City area home, Brubacher said she was “honored to be nominated and am looking forward to the confirmation process.” She declined to say more.

Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said Brubacher was one of the most accomplished attorneys in her office, with stellar skills as a legal researcher and writer. She said Brubacher did much of the briefing in the Strickland case and was instrumental in his exoneration.

“I will tell you in all earnestness that she is one of the best lawyers that I’ve met, to come through this office,” Baker said.

Baker said that Brubacher handled a wide variety of cases, ranging from property crimes to murder.

Brubacher received her undergraduate degree in philosophy and religious studies as well as a master’s degree from Stanford University in 2003. She received her law degree from Yale Law School in 2010 and her M.A.R. (Master of Arts in Religion) in ethics from Yale Divinity School in 2007.

Before joining the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office, she was a lawyer with Cravath Swain and Moore in New York and Cooley LLP in New York, both prominent corporate law firms.

In law school, she was a founding director of the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project (now the International Refugee Assistance Project) and an editor on the Yale Journal of International Law.

Before law school, she lived in Ghana and, through the Mennonite Mission Network, co-founded the Liberian Widows Initiative, which provided small business loans to Liberian women in the aftermath of the civil war in that country.

Brubacher is married and has three children. She serves on the board of Bethel College in North Newton. The college is affiliated with the Mennonite Church.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Kansas has been headed by Acting U.S. Attorney Duston J. Slinkard, a career prosecutor, since Stephen McAllister resigned as U.S. Attorney in February 2021. McAllister stepped down along with all 92 other U.S. Attorneys in the country, which is customary when a new president takes office. U.S. Attorneys serve at the president’s discretion and must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Kansas has about 50 prosecutors and 50 support staff at offices in Kansas City, Kansas, Topeka and Wichita. U.S. Attorneys are the chief federal law enforcement officers in their districts and also handle civil litigation in which the United States is a party.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Kansas has a rich history. One former U.S. Attorney, Cyrus Schofield, left in the 1870s under a legal cloud after he was accused of taking bribes from railroads.

In 1916, U.S. Attorney Fred Robertson prosecuted Robert Stroud, the “Birdman of Alcatraz,” for murdering a federal prison guard. Another head of the office, Newell “Punk” George, managed a string of boxers on the side in the 1960s.

The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy. Kansas News Service stories and photos may be republished by news media at no cost with proper attribution and a link to ksnewsservice.org.

See more at https://www.kmuw.org/2022-11-29/biden-chooses-former-jackson-county-prosecutor-to-head-u-s-attorneys-office-in-kansas