Kansas House bill allows KCC to tweak electric utility profits based on customer rate changes
Chuck Caisley, a lobbyist with Evergy, said the company opposed House Bill 2032, which would authorize the Kansas Corporation Commission to raise or lower Evergy's return on equity based on fluctuation of consumer electric rates. (Kansas Reflector screen capture from Legislature's YouTube channel)
TOPEKA — Agribusiness lobbyist Randy Stookey praised a Kansas House bill allowing state regulators to lower by as much as 0.5% the return on equity for shareholders of an electric public utility when retail rates increased more than 1% in a calendar year.
The legislation would also grant the Kansas Corporation Commission authority to increase by 0.5% a utility's return on equity for investors when the total cost of electricity paid by retail customers, including fees, taxes and charges, didn't climb above a 1% threshold during the year.
Stookey's interest in the bill reflected his representation of grain elevator companies, biofuel processing plants and businesses supplying inputs to Kansas farmers — all of which were heavy consumers of energy.
'Kansas electric energy rates are some of the highest in our region,' he said. 'We must continue to seek ways to decrease our high energy costs for all Kansans. We stand in support of this reasonable legislation.'
The House Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications Committee didn't take action Tuesday on House Bill 2032. The measure drew firm opposition from Evergy, which has 1.7 million electricity customers in Kansas and Missouri. The legislation was supported by the Kansas Industrial Consumers Group and the Kansas Chamber. Neutral testimony was offered by KCC staff and consumer advocates at Citizens' Utility Ratepayer Board.
Chuck Caisley, an executive with Evergy, said the company firmly opposed the policy intent of the House bill. He said the KCC possessed the power to alter investors' return on investment when considering regular utility rate adjustment cases.
'This bill is a solution in search of a problem,' Caisley said. 'It is a significant departure from how rates are currently set in Kansas and in most states in the U.S. No other state in the U.S. has a mechanism that works like this. The 1% level of all-in average retail rates increase or decrease is completely arbitrary and is not indexed against any other economic factors or forces.'
He said the bill created a 'severe disincentive' for Evergy to invest in the electrical grid at a time when the company sought to replace infrastructure and deploy technology to improve reliability of service. Enactment of the bill would place in jeopardy plans to build two natural gas power plants in Reno and Sumner counties by 2030, he said.
In response to questions from Rep. John Carmichael, D-Wichita, Caisley said Evergy had a proposal pending before the KCC to elevate electric rates by 10% to cover infrastructure investments. The new natural gas plants could trigger escalation of utility rates by 3% to 5%, he said.
Paul Snider, who lobbies on behalf of large-volume energy users with the Kansas Industrial Consumers Group, said the organization would like to see HB 2032 approved by the Legislature and Gov. Laura Kelly. He said the consumer group had been sounding an alarm about high electric rates in Kansas since 2018.
'We have highlighted Evergy's highest-in-the-region rates compared to their investor-owned peers,' Snider said. 'We believe that excessive capital spending is the root cause of our high rates and the chief impediment to achieving regionally competitive electric rates.'
He said the assumed financial return granted shareholders for investments in Evergy was 9.4% to 9.5%. He said Evergy had been increasing capital spending at an 'unsustainable rate.' And, he said, whenever Evergy invested in new poles, wires, substations and power plants the cost of those projects was passed to consumers and the elevation of return on equity meant more money in the pocket of shareholders.
Snider said the House bill would incentivize Evergy to limit rate adjustments to 1% annually in exchange for the KCC's expansion of the company's return on investment by 0.5%.
'Let me be clear,' Snider said. 'We are not asking Evergy to stop spending money. Reliability and competitive rates can coexist.'
Justin Grady, deputy director in the utility division at the KCC, said examination of Evergy's electric rates for residential customers showed that from 2001 to 2023 the 'all-in' rate charged consumers increased or decreased by more than 1% in 15 of those 22 years.
'Utility rate changes do tend to be larger than 1% per year on average,' Grady said. 'A 1% annual rate increase threshold may be an unrealistically low expectation, especially in the current environment of increasing capital expenditures to replace aging infrastructure and to support reliability and economic development in the state.'
Grady said the prospect of a 0.5% change up or down in return on equity could create uncertainty in financial markets and influence investor support for the utility infrastructure in Kansas.
He said lawmakers should realize the purchase of fuel and produced power were the largest components of electricity rates and were mostly outside control of a utility company. He also said the bill properly offered the KCC flexibility to make rate-of-return decisions on a case-by-case basis.
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Proposed federal budget cuts could have ‘grim impact' on Kansans with disabilities
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Protection and Advocacy for Traumatic Brain Injury and Protection and Advocacy for Assistive Technology, which serves people with disabilities who need access to assistive technology, were maintained at current funding in the proposed budget, $4.96 million and $5.27 million respectively. Budget information for two programs is still unknown — Protection and Advocacy for Beneficiaries of Social Security, which helps people who receive Social Security disability and who have barriers to employment, and Representative Payee, which is a program that conducts monitoring and review of representative payees who oversee Social Security benefits. 'At this time, it's too early to comment on how these proposals may translate into actual policy changes or what the downstream effects on state programs might be,' said Cara Sloan-Ramos, Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services spokeswoman. 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Meerut, India – The last of the paint had begun to peel off Mohammad Mohsin's house two years ago. The faded green, white and yellow paints on the walls still bore stains from last year's monsoons. A narrow, 3-foot-tall (0.9 metres) passage only possible to enter by crouching, led from the kitchen into a courtyard lined with buffalo dung, a rusting scooter, and a creaking cot in northern India's Meerut district, about 100km (62 miles) from New Delhi. 'We will get the house painted when it's finally wedding time,' Mohsin had said, leaning on an iron shovel, when Al Jazeera visited him in February earlier this year, referring to his sister Aman's wedding plans. But the date for the wedding came and went – without it being solemnised. In 2023, Mohsin had borrowed roughly $1,440 under the Indian government's Kisan Credit Card (KCC) scheme. 'Kisan' means 'farmer' in Hindi. 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India's farmers receive limited state support for unexpected or heavy personal expenses, such as hospital bills, children's education, social obligations, or even weddings – often forcing them to rely on informal credit or agricultural loans meant for farming needs. For instance, India's public healthcare spending is among the lowest globally, consistently under 2.5 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). The limited resources put a significant strain on poor families in cases of medical emergencies. As a result, across India's agrarian belt, mainly in the north, the KCC scheme is being drained to plug life's emergencies, exposing a deep rural distress. A farmers' union leader and a politburo member of the Communist Party of India, Vijoo Krishnan, says that in addition to weddings, farmers are increasingly using KCC loans for healthcare and education. This diversion of money leads to what Krishnan calls a 'development debt trap', where farmers are forced to take on loans just to meet basic survival needs, rather than to invest in productivity or growth. A 2024 study published in The Pharma Innovation Journal, an Indian interdisciplinary publication that also features research in agriculture and rural development, found that only a fraction of KCC loans go towards agriculture. About 28 percent of the KCC-holding farmers who were respondents in the study said they used the fund for household needs, 22 percent for medical expenses, 14 percent for children's education, and nearly 10 percent for marriage-related expenses. 'Farming barely pays enough to sustain a family,' said Mohammad Mehraj, the former head of Mohsin's Muslim-majority village of Kaili Kapsadh. 'If there's a medical emergency or a wedding, the pressure is too much.' The fear of repayment haunts farmers, rooted in the deep shame that failure brings. Everyone has heard the stories. 'In a nearby village, a man in his forties was declared a defaulter. His name was read out in the village square. The shame was so unbearable that his wife moved back to her parents' home,' Mohsin recalled. The man in question, he says, has not been seen since. No one knows if he fled, or if he is even alive. Mohsin lives with the same fear. 'The system doesn't break down your door, it breaks your dignity,' he said. In small villages with close-knit communities, a bank official's visit to the house to seek repayment of loans is seen as an embarrassment to be avoided at all costs. 'I'd rather starve than have a bank man knock on our door,' said Mohsin's father, Kamil, who is in his 70s, his voice barely above a whisper. Around him, others nodded in agreement. To escape shame, farmers like Mohsin rely on the middlemen who charge a steep interest rate to help them renew KCC loans without settling the principal. Thomas Franco, a former general secretary of the All India Bank Officers' Federation, said that while schemes like KCC have expanded credit access for farmers, they have also created a debt trap. 'At the harvest time, many farmers, already burdened with earlier debts, are forced to take additional loans. Loans intended for productivity often get diverted to meet immediate social obligations,' he told Al Jazeera. By 2024, the Indian government's official data shows that the KCC scheme had disbursed more than $120bn to farmers, a sharp rise from $51bn in 2014. But those numbers mask a more complex reality in which banks become a part of the serial indebtedness crisis, while showcasing high numbers of loan disbursals, Franco said. 'The loans get renewed every year without actual repayment, and in the bank's books, it shows as a fresh disbursal, even though the farmer does not get the actual funds. This exaggerates the success numbers,' he said. Meanwhile, as India's farmers find themselves buried in mountains of debt, many are taking their own lives. In 2023, Maharashtra, India's richest state, contributing about 13 percent to the country's GDP, reported the highest number of farmer suicides – at 2,851. This year, Maharashtra's Marathwada region is one of the worst hit. In the first three months of 2025 alone, the region recorded 269 suicides, marking a 32 percent increase from the same period in 2024. In neighbouring Karnataka, between April 2023 and July 2024, 1,182 farmers died by suicide, primarily due to severe drought, crop loss and overwhelming debt. In the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, farmer suicides rose by 42 percent in 2022, compared with the previous year. Similarly, Haryana, also in the north, reported 266 farm suicides in 2022, up 18 percent from 225 in 2021. Critics argue that without deep structural reforms aimed at providing better public welfare systems for farmers and their families, such as affordable healthcare, quality education, and reforms to make farming profitable, schemes like the KCC will remain short-term solutions. Jayati Ghosh, a leading development economist and professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said that India's agricultural credit system is fundamentally out of sync with how farming works. 'Crop loans are typically structured for a single season, but farmers often need to borrow well before sowing, and can only repay after harvesting and selling. Forcing repayment within that narrow window is unrealistic and harmful, especially when farmers lack the support to store crops and wait for better prices,' she said. Ghosh, who co-authored a 2021 policy report for the Andhra Pradesh government and has studied agrarian distress for more than three decades, told Al Jazeera that key Indian financial institutions – the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the central bank and NABARD, the apex rural development bank – were to blame for treating agriculture like any other commercial enterprise. 'The failure lies with NABARD, the RBI and successive governments. Agricultural lending needs to be subsidised, decentralised and designed around real conditions in the field,' she said. Schemes like the KCC, she said, are built on the flawed belief that cash alone can solve rural distress. 'We've built a credit system assuming farmers just need money. But without investment in irrigation, land security, local crop research, storage and market access, loans won't solve the crisis,' she said. The KCC scheme has also been riddled with controversies, with multiple loan scams surfacing across India in recent years. In Kaithal, a town in northern Haryana state, six farmers used forged documents to secure nearly $88,000 in loans, which ballooned to $110,000 before detection, due to accrued interest over time after the farmers failed to repay them. In the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, agricultural dealer Mohammad Furkan, in collusion with a bank manager, created fake bills and ghost loans worth $1.2m in 2014, earning him a three-year sentence in March 2023. In Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh state where Meerut is located, three State Bank of India managers sanctioned about $792,000 in fraudulent KCC loans between 2014 and 2017, using forged land records and fake documents. The federal Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) booked them in January 2020 after an internal bank inquiry. The matter is still being probed. Yet, bank officials say that despite years of scams and red flags, the KCC scheme continues to suffer from weak oversight. 'There's no systemic check in place,' said a loan disbursal agent affiliated with the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), who has been processing KCC applications in rural Uttar Pradesh for more than a decade. He spoke to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, as he is not authorised to speak to the media. But even if the KCC was cleaned up and all scammers punished, it would not solve the problem, say some farmer leaders. 'This is not about debt. It's about dignity,' said Dharmendra Malik, the national spokesperson of the Indian Farmers' Union, a prominent group. 'You can't solve agrarian distress with easy loans. You need investment in irrigation, storage, education and guaranteed prices for the crops.' Back in Kaili Kapsadh, Mohsin's buffalo stood tethered in the courtyard, swatting flies with its tail. It is worth $960 and, in this village, that is a status symbol, akin to owning a vintage car in a wealthy urban suburb. But prestige does not pay back loans. Mohsin has not been able to renew his family's KCC loan, worth about $1,500, for more than two years. He is still repaying the last one. Each harvest yields the same bitter crop for him: more bills and losses. Looking at his sugarcane fields, already browning under a harsh sun, he said: 'Sometimes I wonder if farming even has a future.'
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Kansas abortion clinic leader was ready for Missouri abortion ban, fears it won't be short-lived
Kathryn Boyd, the new CEO and president of the Wichita-based abortion clinic Trust Women, appeared on the Kansas Reflector podcast to discuss how Missouri's abortion ban might affect Kansans. (Submitted) TOPEKA — In May, as Kathryn Boyd began her new role as president and CEO of the Trust Women clinic in Wichita, one of the first conversations she had with the clinic's leaders was how to deal with a new ban in Missouri and what it might mean for Kansas. A late-May decision from a Missouri judge triggered an all-out ban on abortion in the state, but that wasn't much of a surprise to Kansas abortion providers who were preparing for the worst. The majority of abortion patients in Kansas already come from out of state, and now, Trust Women is making its physicians more available and expanding its hours to brace for an influx. 'This is a case of lawmakers who, despite what Missourians voted for, have decided that they're going to just throw that out the window and do what they want anyway,' Boyd said on the Kansas Reflector podcast. 'So I think my first reaction was like, OK, here we go again.' 'Before the ban, Missourians were able to receive abortion care in major cities, reversing years of restrictions implemented by state lawmakers. Those rulings came after voter approval of a constitutional amendment in November enshrining reproductive freedom in the state constitution. All of that was undone in a two-page ruling last month from Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice Mary Russell, who ordered Jackson County Circuit Court Judge Jerri Zhang to vacate the December and February decisions and reevaluate the case, restoring a ban on abortions and restricting facility licensing. Health centers in Missouri provided care to people who wouldn't have to travel as far as they do now, Boyd said. Following the anger, fear and worry in the wake of the decision in Missouri, Boyd said the primary focus of Trust Women is to expand access. The clinic's message, she said, is, 'We're still here.' 'We're still providing care. We need to expand, and we need support. You know, that's really what it comes down to. And I think that that is a similar story of many, many providers throughout the country, regardless of what state they're in,' Boyd said. However, her fear is that the ban won't be short-lived. Boyd, who has worked in the field of abortion and reproductive care for years, entered the top job at Trust Women about a year after intense turmoil within the clinic. Reports of mass resignations and multiple leadership shakeups led the clinic to temporarily close its doors. Boyd, though she wasn't working at the clinic at the time, describes it as 'very, very hard' for the organization. 'Coming in after a culture shock like that can be really challenging for any leader,' Boyd said. 'Making sure that I come in with that in the back of my mind, I don't want that trauma to, like, dictate what we do going forward, but it definitely is like a side dish.' Her goal is to create a culture of transparency and collaboration, and that requires building back trust and listening, she said.
