Kate Clause

Legislation that cuts Kansas income taxes over the next five years is now law.

Gov.  Brownback signed House Bill 2059 this morning during a signing ceremony at a construction site in Overland Park.  Brownback followed that event up with a signing ceremony this afternoon at the McGinty Machine Company in downtown Wichita.

Read a summary of the bill here.

The Kansas Department of Transportation has awarded nearly $18 million to 35 projects around the state through its transportation enhancement program.

Transportation Enhancement  is a federally funded program that provides cities, counties, and other groups with funding for transportation projects like bike paths, pedestrian traffic, bicycle safety education, historic restoration, scenic highway programs, and the conversion of abandoned railroad lines into trails, among other things.

Kansas House Speaker Ray Merrick has named Wade Hapgood as his new chief of staff.

Hapgood replaces Christie Kriegshauser, who is leaving to join the Kansas Chamber of Commerce as vice president for political affairs.

Hapgood has been Merrick's legislative director since January. He was previously an aide to Merrick when the Stilwell Republican was House majority leader from 2007 through 2010. Merrick says he'll name a new legislative director soon.

Fort Hays State University will begin generating most of its electricity from wind turbines by the end of the summer.

After more than six years of planning and a $9 million investment, work crews are installing two 400-foot wind turbines at the university in Hays. Crews started installing the first turbine last week.

Fort Hays President Edward Hammond says the turbines should be operational by Aug. 1.

The Kansas Housing Resources Corporation is asking for proposals for using $2 million in state funding for rural moderate-income housing.

The program is open to communities across Kansas with populations of less than 60,000 residents. The grants and loans are for building multi-family or single-family housing, to rehabilitate housing and to build utility extensions to support new developments.

Via Christi Health is eliminating 360 positions in its workforce this month.

The Kansas-based health care provider says the layoffs will affect 230 full and part-time workers statewide. The remainder of the reductions will come from recently vacated positions that will not be filled.

“This is an extremely difficult undertaking as these staff members have made valuable contributions to Via Christi during their careers in our ministry,” said Jeff Korsmo, Via Christi Health’s president and CEO, in a news release Wednesday.

The inmate case files for convicted murderers Richard Eugene “Dick” Hickock and Perry Edward Smith have been added to Kansas Memory, the Kansas Historical Society’s online archives of photographs, manuscripts, and government records.

The Kansas Historical Society recently placed six Santa Fe Trail locations in Kansas on the National Register of Historic Places. With the addition of these sites in Marion and Morton counties, the state now has 1,310 registered historic sites.

Thirty properties were nominated for the Santa Fe Trail project, and these six were the first to be approved by the National Park Service.