The Internal Revenue Service is under fire for giving extra scrutiny to conservative organizations that asked for tax-exempt status. But the scandal begs a broader question: Why are political organizations getting this government subsidy anyway?
Kansas state government could be barred from lobbying for or against gun control in Washington by a gag rule designed to prevent local governments from lobbying in favor of gun control at the Statehouse.
GOP calls year a historic success. Democrats call it a historic failure.
Jay Nixon is a hands-off governor. That’s the word in the statehouse. He’s out of sight, disconnected, a distant presence rather than a dominating force, Republicans and more than a few Democrats say. But six hours spent with the two-term governor just two days before final adjournment revealed a chief executive anything but disengaged.
Higher-education funding trips up House-Senate negotiators, and tax policy is up in the air, too.
It may be weeks before Kansans know if prosecutors will seek the death penalty for Kyle Flack, accused of killing four people in Franklin County this spring. It will take far longer — 10 years or more — before anyone in the state is actually put to death for a crime. And that time gap, advocates on both sides of the death penalty debate say, suggests the state remains deeply uneasy about the punishment — an ambivalence that muddies its value.
House Minority Leader Paul Davis of Lawrence said he'll take an unspecified “course of administrative action” against Tyler Longpine, his director of special projects, for posting disparaging tweets about Republican legislators.
Kansas House and Senate negotiators resumed budget talks Thursday, reaching agreement on numerous issues that included authorizing the state to issue $202 million in bonding to construct a new federal research lab in Manhattan.
Missouri welfare recipients could not spend their cash benefits at casinos, liquor stores or adult-entertainment establishments under legislation sent to Gov. Jay Nixon on Thursday.
The Missouri House has made a final offer to senators on a plan authorizing new business incentives and trimming some existing tax credits.
Kansas House and Senate budget negotiators have agreed to authorize issuing $202 million in bonds to build a federal biodefense research lab in Manhattan.
Missouri lawmakers want county sheriffs rather than the state Revenue Department to print concealed weapons permits. The Senate passed legislation 24-5 on Thursday handing the task to sheriffs. The measure now heads to Gov. Jay Nixon.
Kansas City Mayor Sly James has passed the midway point in his first term, and the grades are pretty good. But he walks a path that was paved by others.
It's one thing to legalize marijuana. It's another to figure out how to sell it, grow it, regulate it, test it and tax it.
A top Senate Democrat plans to revive legislation that would protect journalists and their employers from revealing their sources, days after it was revealed that the Justice Department secretly obtained Associated Press phone records.
President Barack Obama succumbed to days of withering criticism Wednesday, releasing dozens of emails in an effort to demonstrate that the White House did not try to cover up information about the September 2012 attacks on diplomatic facilities in Libya that killed four Americans.
White House releases dozens of emails regarding the 2012 attacks in Libya.
The City Council’s Finance and Ethics Committee supports new rules that require more frequent disclosure of gifts and that call for an ethics compliance officer. The full council votes May 23 on the new ethics code.
Moving to quell a growing scandal, President Barack Obama on Wednesday fired the acting chief of the Internal Revenue Service and vowed to work closely with Congress in determining who ordered lower-level employees to target tea party groups and other conservative organizations.
The bill is one Senate roll call away from the November 2014 ballot. But with only two days left before the end of the legislative session, a filibuster has put its chances in doubt. If supporters of the bill — primarily construction companies and organized labor — truly want to raise the sales tax, Republican Sen. John Lamping said, they can put the question on the ballot themselves.
A simmering standoff between the Kansas House and Senate over taxes cooled Wednesday amid a compromise extending part of a controversial addition to the state’s sales tax. House negotiators offered to extend three-tenths of a penny sales tax that was approved in 2010 to help the state limp through a recession-driven dip in revenues.
