Government

A city council committee has endorsed an ordinance that would outlaw bullying throughout Kansas City, Missouri. As with the city's youth curfew, the onus falls on parents.

The 14 school districts in the city already have policies to protect students from being bullied, as is required by Missouri law.

Missouri Democrats will  be picking a new state party chair when they meet in late August.

Current Chairman Mike Sanders  is stepping down from the post.

The incumbent Jackson County Executive is in his second term as Missouri Democratic Chairman. 

Breaking news update: Mike Sanders has announced he is stepping down as chairman of the Missouri Democratic Party. 

Jackson County is really hopping these days. Between fluctuating property assessments and the courthouse renovation, the county’s missteps and triumphs are keeping people talking. 

The income tax bill that would eventually reduce income tax rates by about a half of a percent is likely to not be brought up in veto session next month, according to Missouri House Speaker Tim Jones a Republican from Eureka.

Jones said he currently doesn't have the votes necessary for an override of the governor's veto.

"Overriding the veto would be monumental at this point," Jones said. "I likely would not attempt an override."

Jones added that lawmakers' stances on the bill could be in flux.

The mayoral commission looking at how Kansas City should alter its basic operating doctrine hopes to get suggestions from all living ex-mayors, but the Charter Review Commission is having spotty success.

Because the outcome is so important to the basic layout of government function, members decided former mayors have a lot of valuable history to describe. The panel is trying to schedule former Mayor Charles Wheeler; former Mayor Richard Berkley is ill and unable to appear in the next week or two.

The chair of an interim Missouri House committee looking at ways to downsize state government says they've handed off their findings to the Speaker's office.

The Kansas City city council is asking city pension fund boards not to invest in companies that manufacture guns – and will request that the Board of Police Commissioners consider the same policy for police retirement funds.

Mayor Sly James told the council that the goal is discussions with firearms companies on letting cities with gun violence problems enact more restrictive gun control laws within their jurisdictions.

The final day of hearings into the Department of Revenue's now-defunct policy of scanning and storing documents of driver's license applicants featured the agency's former director answering questions under oath.

Alana Barragan-Scott told the House Bipartisan Investigative Committee on Privacy Protection that during her tenure, the department sought to safeguard driver's licenses from fraud and were not trying to skirt a 2009 state law barring compliance with the federal Real ID Act.

President Obama's Warrensburg speech drew unified and quick disapproval from Republican officials. In one case, the critique came before the president spoke.

The White House was very open in advance about the fact that the president would be urging acceptance of his existing priorities, including investment in education, infrastructure and health care.

Missouri Senator Roy Blunt took advantage of the pre-release information to make a speech of his own on the Senate floor before Air Force One had touched down in his state.

In 2003, Scott Wagner moved to the city's historic Northeast and got interested in neighborhood issues. A year later, Wagner joined the mayor-appointed Kansas City Museum Advisory Board. "I've been involved now for nine years. I've seen quite a bit in that time," he laughs.

The Kansas City Museum Advisory Board has formally approved the business plan calling for the city to break Kansas City Museum's ties with Union Station Kansas City.

Missouri’s House Committee for Downsizing State Government has finished holding a series of public hearings around the state for citizens to share their ideas on how to cut down on state government spending. 

The committee began the hearings Tuesday in St. Louis, and finished up Thursday at the Capitol. 

Republican Representative Paul Curtman, the committee’s chairman, says citizens across the state turned out to express concerns and ideas about reducing the size of state government.

Kansas Senators Jerry Moran and Pat Roberts say funding for a federal lab to be built in Manhattan has passed an important hurdle.

The National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, or NBAF, will study diseases that could be used to attack the nation's food supply. A Senate subcommittee voted earlier this week to approve more than $400 million for the lab.

Moran says that a full Senate committee has now also voted to approve the funding.

“It is a determining factor in NBAF’s future,” says Moran.

Traffic lights, animal cruelty and backyard chickens highlighted Thursday's Kansas City, Mo. city council meeting.

City yields on traffic signals

Half of the Kansas City traffic signals that were turned off late last year will be turned back on, as the city yielded to neighborhood pressure.

Thirty seven traffic lights were turned off in the first wave of phasing out signals at intersections where federal standards say are no longer needed. The lights were also old and in need of replacement at a cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars each.

The two Kansas Cities have won a $600,000 federal grant from the Environmental  Protection Agency to restore a score or more environmentally blighted areas. 

The project to be called One-KC Brownfields Coalition will include hazard cleanup, urban farms, orchards and gardens.

The properties are in a swath across state line. They lie in the central city of Kansas City Kansas and roughly bordered by  the Missouri River and 31st in Kansas City, Mo. 

Three years after taking effect, the Clean Indoor Air Act remains overwhelmingly popular among Kansas voters, according to a statewide public opinion poll. It finds that 78 percent of Kansas voters approve of the law that prohibits smoking in most public places. 

One of the tradeoffs made to get the law passed exempts state-operated casinos from the smoking ban.

Perplexed by the inner workings of our nation’s capital? Baffled by Beltway politics?

Mike Allen, the man behind the daily Politico Playbook knows how to untangle it all. 

If the Kansas City Council agrees, city pension system funds will  not be invested in companies that make guns. 

The resolution passed a Council Committee with one dissenting vote.

The police commission retirement board will be asked to do the same.

The Finance, Governance and Ethics Committee voted to forward the resolution after hearing Mayor Sly James argue it’s  time to send a message to gun manufacturers.

A state regulatory board has rejected a proposed change to voter registration rules requiring Kansans to show proof of citizenship.

The rules took effect in January. Since then, around 12,000 voter registration applications have been missing citizenship documents. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach pushed for the citizenship law, and for the proposed rule change.

The Kansas City Court of Appeals has taken testimony to help judges decide factors that will affect timely construction of a new downtown streetcar. 

The case centers on protests of taxes to support building and operating the line.

On one hand, City Hall argues the cutoff date to contest the vote on a taxing district is long past.

On the other, lawyers for two property owners think opponents of the 1 cent sales tax and a property tax increase had proper time to object.  That’s the heart of it.

Kansas City, Mo. started a collaborative process in January 2013 when the public was invited to a series of brainstorming sessions to map out the city’s role in arts and culture. Top recommendations were announced on Monday.

The draft report, revealed in the auditorium at the Kansas City Public Library's Plaza branch, includes 10 goals, with strategies based on public input and subcommittees of the Mayor’s Task Force for the Arts.

 America has had a long and complicated history with foreign oil, with a specific impact on our political relationships abroad.

Tuesday on Up To Date, we're joined by Jay Hakes to discuss the role that oil has played in our foreign relations. He’s an energy analyst and director of the Carter Presidential Library and Museum and the author of a book about what freedom from foreign oil can do for our country. 

A city council committee set a hot button issue aside to cool for another week. The debate is over the city turning off 37 traffic lights in east-central Kansas City which by federal standards are no longer needed.

Traffic light changes stopped for one week

Some area residents did not agree with the city manager that four-way stop signs would be safer at intersections that were near schools. And a resolution to turn 23 of the 37 back on was introduced.

The commission assigned the job of deciding whether the City Charter for Kansas City, Mo. needs change heard an admonition Wednesday from a longtime civic activist.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon signed several pieces of legislation on Wednesday aimed to benefit veterans and their families on a tour that included stops at Cape Giardeau and Springfield.  

The Kansas State Board of Education will be asking lawmakers to increase school funding by more than $600 million in the coming fiscal year. That would be an increase of more than 20 percent. That decision came at a meeting in Topeka Tuesday.

The board members voted 7-3 to make the request for increased funding. More than $400 million would go to the base state aid per student that is paid to districts. The money would also increase funding for professional development and school lunch programs.

Eight arts groups, including one in Olathe, will receive funding from the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission. This marks the first round of grants from the organization that rose from the ashes of the former state arts agency.