Tag: Kansas

Final Kansas budget locks in public university tuition freeze, but fee hikes are still on table

Kelly: $37.5 million budget hike sufficient to hold line on student tuition

by Tim Carpenter, Kansas Reflector

Lawrence — Kansas public university students uneasy about the cost of their education dodged a tuition hike this fall, but won’t know until mid-June whether they’ll be dinged with higher campus fees.

Maneuvering by the Legislature and governor on tuition added complexity to the task of pulling together university budgets for the fiscal year starting July 1. The Kansas Board of Regents are preparing to vote on what campus fees get elevated at the system’s six universities.

The $37.5 million allocated by the Legislature to universities governed by the Board of Regents, and Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of a budget provision that would have allowed tuition increases, mean students wouldn’t pay more in tuition during the 2022-2023 school year. It would be the fourth consecutive year without a tuition rate adjustment at the University of Kansas following the 2.8% boost in 2019. The five other universities in the system have each adopted tuition increases twice in the past five years.

Cheryl Harrison-Lee, chairwoman of the Board of Regents, said affordability of higher education was a center piece on the system’s priority list. Status quo tuition rates and more need-based student financial aid will combine to improve student access to education, she said.

In January, Kelly and the Board of Regents requested a $45.7 million increase from the Legislature. The justification was a desire to restore funding cut in the past, acknowledge a projected inflation rate of 1.9% and initiate a 2% budget increase to put off higher tuition rates.

The budget adopted by the House and Senate was $8 million less than sought by the Board of Regents. To cover the gap, university administrators in Lawrence, Manhattan, Wichita, Emporia, Pittsburg and Hays drafted proposals for tuition increases ranging from 1.07% at KU to 3.07% at Fort Hays State University, which has the system’s lowest tuition. Officials at the other state universities in Kansas set their sights on tuition increases of 1% to 1.3%.

Those plans were withdrawn after Kelly line-item vetoed the budget proviso opening the door to higher tuition. Kelly said higher education in Kansas was on solid footing because the universities could expect to receive $1 billion in the new fiscal year.

“I believe that the regents institutions will be able to continue to hold tuition flat, making college more affordable for Kansans of all backgrounds. This is especially important if we, as a state, are going to provide the workforce needed to fully actualize the benefits and opportunities of our recent economic growth,” Kelly said.

KU chancellor Doug Girod said the governor’s rejection of the tuition-increase option left university officials no choice but to embrace a tuition freeze, but wouldn’t necessarily block changes to campus or academic fees.

He said Board of Regents universities were grateful for nearly securing their full budget request to the 2022 Legislature.

“It played out as well as we could have hoped,” Girod said. “We certainly are most grateful to the governor and the Legislature for the support they have passed our way.”

Ken Hush, interim president at Emporia State University, said the university had concluded after the legislative session ended that a 3% tuition increase would have been appropriate. That idea was trimmed to 1% before abandoned in response to the veto. A 1% increase in ESU tuition would equate to $221,000 in new revenue.

“We felt it was a good investment,” Hush said. “We embrace what’s happened.”

Kansas Reflector stories, www.kansasreflector.com, may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
See more at https://kansasreflector.com/2022/06/01/final-kansas-budget-locks-in-public-university-tuition-freeze-fee-hikes-still-on-table/

Kansas man who performed fraudulent autopsies pleads guilty to wire fraud

Shawn Lynn Parcells, 42, faces up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced on Aug. 25

by Dan Margolies, KCUR and Kansas News Service

A Kansas man who held himself out as a pathologist even though he had no medical degree and duped hundreds of people into paying for autopsy services pleaded guilty on Thursday to wire fraud.

Shawn Lynn Parcells, 42, admitted that he falsely represented his credentials to a Maryland family that had contracted with him for autopsy services and sent them a fraudulent pathology report and cause of death.

Parcells faces up to 20 years in prison. Sentencing has been set for Aug. 25.

A federal grand jury indicted Parcells in November 2020 on 10 counts of wire fraud. Parcells’ admission of guilt was not part of a plea agreement with the government and the other nine counts in the indictment remain pending. But the government is expected to dismiss those counts once Parcells is sentenced.

Parcells’ company, National Autopsy Services, charged clients thousands of dollars up front for pathology reports. At least 375 clients paid him more than $1.1 million in fees between May 2016 and May 2019, according to the indictment.

National Autopsy Services’ website claimed it had locations throughout the United States and several abroad, “giving the impression that NAS was a large business operation when in fact the defendant operated only one morgue facility and a ‘Corporate Office’ in Topeka,” the indictment stated.

At his plea hearing, Parcells’ attorney, David Magariel, related the facts underlying Parcells’ guilty plea. He said the Maryland family of James Welch, who had died in July 2016, found National Autopsy Services through an internet search. It then paid $5,000 to NAS for a pathology and toxicology report, believing that Parcells was a medical doctor and pathologist. Parcells signed the report with a listing of his qualifications, including initials falsely indicating he held a doctoral degree. No pathologists reviewed or signed off on the report.

Magariel said that while Parcells was not pleading guilty to the other counts in the indictment, “we do understand that others had a similar experience, although different as to some particularities.”

“We also agree that there were other cases in which a pathologist was listed on the report, but when interviewed, those pathologists denied involvement with cases on at least some of the reports,” Magariel said.

Last year, a Wabaunsee County jury convicted Parcells of three counts of felony theft and three misdemeanor counts of criminal desecration. He is awaiting sentencing there.

Between 1996 and 2003, Parcells worked in the Jackson County Medical Examiner’s Office. At his plea hearing on Thursday, Parcells told U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree that he holds an undergraduate degree in biology from Kansas State University and a master’s degree in human anatomy and physiology from New York Chiropractic College. He admitted that he does not have a medical degree or doctoral degree, as he claimed.

In 2014, he appeared frequently on cable news shows as a supposed expert in the investigation into the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

A separate civil lawsuit in Shawnee County against Parcells is pending. The lawsuit, brought by Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, alleges that Parcells misled at least 82 Kansas consumers who contracted with him to perform autopsies that he failed to complete in accordance with Kansas law.

The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of High Plains Public Radio, Kansas Public Radio, KCUR and KMUW 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.kcur.org/news/2022-05-26/kansas-man-who-performed-fraudulent-autopsies-pleads-guilty-to-wire-fraud.

Flags at half-staff in memory of shooting victims in Texas

In honor of the 19 children and two adults killed in the mass shooting Tuesday at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Gov. Laura Kelly has directed flags be lowered to half-staff throughout the state effective immediately until sundown on Friday, May 27.

“Today, I’ve ordered flags in the state of Kansas fly at half-staff as Kansas mourns alongside the community of Uvalde, Texas,” Gov. Kelly said, in a news release. “Our thoughts are with the families who have lost their loved ones to this senseless act of violence. We must do more to protect our children and ensure that schools are safe places for learning.”