Tag: Kansas

Virtual job fair to be Wednesday and Thursday

A statewide virtual job fair will take place Wednesday and Thursday.

It begins at 8 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 29, and ends at 5 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 30.

Job seekers will have the opportunity to meet virtually with multiple businesses, with the ability to live chat and conduct interviews through computers, tablets and mobile devices. Job candidates also will be able to upload their resumes to their virtual job fair account for employers statewide.

Gov. Laura Kelly is encouraging Kansans looking for employment to participate in the KansasWorks Statewide Virtual Job Fair.

“KansasWorks has done an exceptional job of adapting to the circumstances and continuing to connect Kansas employers with qualified job seekers,” Gov. Kelly said. “Our workforce plays a key role in attracting people and businesses to our state, and I applaud KansasWorks for emphasizing safety in helping Kansans seek employment and helping Kansas businesses fill open positions.”

In 2020, the Department of Commerce partnered with the Local Workforce Development Boards to offer virtual statewide job fairs as a way to continue to provide job opportunities and maintain a ready workforce for Kansas businesses. That led to 10 virtual job fairs, with the 10th in March 2021 attracting 159 employers and 538 registered job seekers. There currently are over 130 employers participating in the upcoming fair with hundreds of open positions.

“These statewide virtual job fairs offer a tremendous opportunity to help Kansans find meaningful employment opportunities in our state,” Lt. Gov. David Toland said. “The previous 10 virtual job fairs all succeeded in connecting job seekers with employers, and the virtual job fair to come will do the same in achieving more real results.”

The Virtual Statewide Job Fair portal features a Job Seeker Training video, a list of participating employers, and channels for attendees to register and login.

Open positions are listed on the registration page. Registration is required for each individual virtual event, regardless of previous attendance. As employers may request to engage in a video interview during the virtual job fair, job seekers are encouraged to dress professionally.


The registration page is available from a link on the the KansasWorks page at https://www.kansasworks.com/.


Any individual with a disability may request accommodations by contacting their nearest workforce center at 877-509-6757 prior to the event.

Politicians and former students mourn death of longtime KU political scientist Burdett Loomis

Burdett Loomis, known as ‘Bird,’ died over the weekend at 76 after being a fixture on the Kansas political scene for decades.

by Jim McLean, Kansas News Service and KCUR

Topeka, Kansas — Burdett Loomis, a longtime University of Kansas political scientist known affectionately as “Bird,” died Saturday at his home in Lawrence just months after being diagnosed with an aggressive form of thyroid cancer. He was 76.

Elected officials and political figures mourned his death and recalled how he inspired them as students during his 40-year KU teaching career.

“I’m one of thousands of former students working in government and politics because they took a class with him at KU,” Christie Appelhanz said in a Facebook post on Sunday.

Appelhanz is a former reporter, lobbyist and congressional staffer who now heads the federal Administration for Children and Families office in the region that includes Kansas and Missouri.

The head of KU said the flood of comments shows the influence Loomis had.

“Bird embodied KU’s mission of education, service and research,” KU Chancellor Doug Girod said. “The outpouring of love and respect for Bird during the past day has been remarkable, and it confirms the impact he had on students, colleagues, elected officials and journalists who had the pleasure of engaging with him.”

Eric Pahls, a Republican consultant who managed U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall’s 2020 campaign, said on Twitter that while he and Loomis agreed on little, “we greatly enjoyed talking about the horse race.”

Another former student, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, called Loomis “a respected commentator on Kansas politics.”

“He will be missed,” said Schmidt, a Republican gearing up to challenge Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.

Before arriving at KU in 1979, Loomis was an assistant professor at Knox College, a small liberal arts school in Galesburg, Illinois. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Carleton College in Minnesota and his master’s and doctorate’s degrees from the University of Wisconsin.

While at KU, Loomis chaired the political science department twice and served as interim director of the Robert J. Dole Institute for Public Service and Public Policy. He also managed internship programs that placed students with elected officials in Washington, D.C. and the Statehouse in Topeka.

In 2005, he took a brief break from teaching to work as a communications adviser to Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

Former Topeka Mayor Larry Wolgast, a longtime friend who with Loomis belonged to a breakfast group that met regularly to talk politics, described him as “warm, genuine and self-effacing.”

“He had so much yet to give and will be sorely missed,” Wolgast said.

Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly joined others in saying Loomis’ voice would be missed.

“Burdett was a fixture and a voice of reason in Kansas politics for decades, and a mentor to countless political science students at Kansas University,” Kelly said Sunday on Twitter.

For reporters, whether writing for the Washington Post or the Iola Register, Loomis was the go-to person for a comment on Kansas politics, said Steve Kraske, host of KCUR’s “Up to Date” talk show and a former reporter for the Kansas City Star.

“He helped me understand the nuances of Kansas politics for 30 years and he was always insightful — I mean always,” Kraske said, during a segment devoted to Loomis on Monday’s “Up to Date.”

After learning of Loomis’ illness last week, Democratic U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids took to the floor of the U.S. House to praise him as “an irreplaceable member of our community.”

“He’s been a trusted friend and advisor to many Kansas officials over the years and I’m personally grateful for his guidance throughout my time in Kansas,” Davids said.

Loomis and Michel, his wife of 53 years, lived in a stately house near downtown Lawrence that friends likened to an art gallery. They frequently opened it to groups for receptions, book signings and musical performances.

After retiring, Loomis busied himself editing books, writing columns with other political scientists for Kansas newspapers and playing tennis.

In his last Insight Kansas column, published Aug. 9, https://hayspost.com/posts/a5f87452-c2cb-47de-b714-68d3a6ecb8a6, Loomis called for a statewide vaccine mandate.

“As the delta variant wreaks havoc, unnecessarily, with our lives,” he wrote, “it’s past time for Kansas institutions to require vaccinations.”

“We have tried pleas to reason, we have used incentives, we have appealed to a sense of community,” he wrote. “Now we must push the unvaccinated hard to do the right thing.”

Jim McLean is a political correspondent for the Kansas News Service, a collaboration based at KCUR with other public media stations across Kansas.
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.
KansasNews 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/2021-09-27/elected-officials-and-former-students-mourn-death-of-longtime-ku-political-scientist-burdett-loomis.

Kansas labor department teams with new federal office on unemployment modernization

Legislators on unemployment improvement council question pandemic response

by Noah Taborda, Kansas Reflector

Topeka — The Kansas Department of Labor is engaging with the federal government to aid in identifying and developing a framework for the modernization of the beleaguered state unemployment system.

Since the onset of the pandemic, the agency has been inundated with unemployment claims for the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, resulting in a reinvigorated push for system modernization. Department leaders are optimistic that assistance from the U.S. Department of Labor could primarily aid in ID verification and address other areas of need.

Kansas labor deputy secretary Peter Brady told legislators earlier this month on the Unemployment Compensation, Modernization and Improvement Council that the USDOL would be opening a new office to oversee state modernization plans and administer $2 billion worth of funding allocated to them by the American Rescue Plan. Kansas was selected as one of the first six states to be a part of the initiative.

“They have not made grant funds available to states at this time,” Brady said. “However, USDOL has indicated that they will potentially make grant funds available to address some of the issues identified through the engagement which was one of the reasons that we wanted to engage them early is any issues that are identified. We want to be able to fix it sooner rather than later.”

The overwhelming volume of unemployment claims throughout the pandemic has caused significant delays with the department’s archaic computer system and limited resources. Legislators tasked state auditors with addressing what factors caused these KDOL delays and investigating the surge in fraudulent claims made.

The audit reaffirmed beliefs that a historic volume of unemployment claims and a lacking computer processing system where largely at fault and called into question whether additional staff hirings helped process calls.

The report released in late August indicated that because Kansans could apply for the federal program as self-employed, traditional verification through the employer proved difficult, subsequently inviting fraudsters to pounce.

“Our work on this audit showed, you know, about 59% of the roughly 1 million unique claims filed during the pandemic could have been fraudulent,” said Matt Etzel, principal auditor at the Kansas Legislative Division of Post Audit.

An updated estimation in the audit showed the state processed $700 million in fraudulent benefit payments, about half from federal and half from state funds.

The audit raised questions from some legislators about why the state agency waited until February 2021 to install a dual-identification system. The federal government warned in March 2020 of fraud, and funding was made available to KDOL in August 2020.

“You guys have been through a thunderstorm that is just extremely violent … my question and concern is why the gap?” said Sen. Caryn Tyson, R-Parker. “That’s a fairly large gap from your first notice to be in March and then action not to be taken until February next year.”

Brady, who was named deputy secretary in September, said while those discussions precede him, he understood that the agency would have liked to work quicker but had to deal with what the unemployment system could handle. The system is based on 1970s coding, and an attempt to overhaul the technology was halted a decade ago.

“The question was how do we find a way to make this work with our current system,” Brady said. “That just took more time than any of us would have liked it to, but that was the situation we found ourselves in.”

The legislators on the modernization council also aired concerns about progress made in addressing the roughly 7,000 people kicked off benefits because of new state requirements of the My Reemployment Plan. The work search program, inserted into House Bill 2196, required individuals to submit resumes and actively seek employment.

“Hopefully we weed through the 7,000 people that we had to suspend benefits because of the glitch or the fact that they couldn’t all get their resumes to you on time,” said Rep. Sean Tarwater, a Stilwell Republican and chairman of the council.

Mike Beene, director of workforce development at the Kansas Department of Commerce, said the agency was still working to sift through the various reasons someone may have been found in noncompliance. About 1,200 people so far have worked with the agency to get back in compliance.


“I’ve had many conversations about those numbers,” Beene said. “Are they claimants who have found work and not reported they found work? Are they claimants who have just said, ‘OK, I’m done.’ Or are they claimants somewhere still in the pending process or adjudication process?”

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/2021/09/27/kansas-labor-department-teams-with-new-federal-office-on-unemployment-modernization/