Latest news with #MorganChilson
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Leavenworth refiles lawsuit against CoreCivic to enforce development regulations
The city of Leavenworth is continuing its legal fight in state court to get CoreCivic to comply with development regulations. (Morgan Chilson/Kansas Reflector) TOPEKA — The city of Leavenworth has not given up its fight to force CoreCivic to follow development processes before reopening its prison facility as an ICE detention center. The city refiled in Leavenworth District court this week after losing its case in U.S. District Court last week. Leavenworth officials asked for an injunction that would stop CoreCivic from housing detainees until the court could decide whether the private prison company must obtain a special use permit. CoreCivic operated the Leavenworth Detention Facility until 2021 and has signed a contract with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to reopen the prison as the Midwest Regional Reception Center. However, city of Leavenworth officials said CoreCivic must apply for a special use permit before it can reopen. City manager Scott Peterson said in an email the city refiled in state court because it was 'following the logic' of Judge Toby Crouse, whose ruling dismissed the case because he was not convinced it should be heard in federal court. At a city council meeting Tuesday, several people stood up to thank city officials for fighting to keep the prison from reopening. Mike Trapp, a former Columbia, Missouri, city councilman, noted how important it was for CoreCivic to follow development regulations. 'Land-use decisions are the fundamental core government response,' he said. 'You function as the board of directors for the city, you pass the laws, but the biggest thing you do is deal with zoning and platting issues, and land-use as the most fundamental and core function of government. And to see that challenged is unfortunate.' Peterson said the case has never been about politics, as CoreCivic's lawyer claimed during the U.S. District Court case. 'The city commission, composed of a healthy mixture of liberals and conservatives alike, chose unanimously to file this suit to protect the city of Leavenworth's power to govern development within its jurisdiction,' he said. 'All that the city of Leavenworth has ever asked of CoreCivic in this matter is to go through the Special Use Permit process, as outlined by the Leavenworth Development Regulations.' CoreCivic had agreed that it would not allow any detainees in the facility until June 1 while the case was in court. Peterson said the city hopes that remains true. 'We also hope that CoreCivic will act upon their vocal commitment to be good partners with the city of Leavenworth by not proceeding with any use of the Midwest Regional Reception Center until such time that this matter has been resolved,' he said. Ryan Gustin, CoreCivic spokesman, would not answer questions about when the company would begin accepting detainees after last week's win.
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
The resurgence of measles in Kansas
Stories by Wichita Eagle and Kansas journalists, with AI summarization Kansas faces its largest measles outbreak since 2018, driven by several factors. Vaccination rates have dropped in key counties, including a 24 percentage point dip in Gray County since 2019. Several recent cases, such as the one in an unvaccinated child in Sedgwick County, highlight the ongoing risk for those without up-to-date protection. Health officials are urging residents to check their vaccine status, especially those vaccinated between 1957 and 1967, due to less effective early vaccines. Clinics and pharmacies across Kansas are expanding access to MMR shots and immunity testing, as measles continues to spread statewide. Kansas reported its first case in Stevens County Thursday. | Published March 18, 2025 | Read Full Story by Lindsay Smith Vaccinations are required for school in Kansas unless there is a religious or medical exemption. | Published April 6, 2025 | Read Full Story by Morgan Chilson Sedgwick County confirmed its first measles case May 7. | Published April 4, 2025 | Read Full Story by Lindsay Smith The Sedgwick County case joins more than 40 measles cases statewide. | Published May 7, 2025 | Read Full Story by Lindsay Smith With a case confirmed in Sedgwick County, here's what you should know at any age about getting the vaccine. | Published May 8, 2025 | Read Full Story by Lindsay Smith The summary above was drafted with the help of AI tools and edited by journalists in our News division. All stories below were reported, written and edited by McClatchy journalists or its content partners.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Leavenworth sues to keep CoreCivic from reopening Kansas prison as ICE detention facility
CoreCivic plans to reopen its Leavenworth facility, closed since 2021, as an ICE detention facility. City officials have sued. (Morgan Chilson/Kansas Reflector) TOPEKA — The city of Leavenworth and CoreCivic will take their fight to court June 9 to determine whether the company can reopen its prison facility as an ICE detention center without going through a permitting process. Attorneys for Leavenworth filed suit in March in U.S. District Court against the Nashville-based company, which ran the Leavenworth Detention Center before it was closed in 2021. CoreCivic announced its intent to reopen its prison facility as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center, which would be named the Midwest Regional Reception Center. In its initial filing, city attorneys said CoreCivic must apply for and receive a supplemental use permit to reopen and operate the prison. 'Our facility – which has been in Leavenworth since 1992 – is and always has been properly zoned,' said CoreCivic spokesman Ryan Gustin in an email. 'Leavenworth's city code designates our site as an existing special use and lawful conforming use.' The city recently passed a resolution that indicated CoreCivic needed permission to open its facility, Gustin said. 'There's nothing in Leavenworth's code that allows for such a resolution to rescind zoning,' he said. City officials do not agree. In a 211-page filing with attachments, their attorneys said that, while the lawsuit is about the need for proper permitting, there were other problems too. From 1992 to 2021, when CoreCivic operated the detention center, the company 'became embroiled in multiple widely publicized scandals resulting from its gross mismanagement of the Facility and the ensuing rampant abuse, violence, and violations of the constitutional rights of its detainees and staff,' the filing said. 'CoreCivic's mismanagement directly and indirectly impacted the City in countless ways, including for example, by imposing unexpected maintenance costs on its taxpayers, unreasonably increasing the burden on the City's police and law enforcement agencies to address violent crime, and even impeding the City's investigation of sexual assaults and other violent crimes against detainees and staff,' the filing said. The city's lawsuit contends that CoreCivic was already operating the prison when the city enacted its development rules that require a permit, so the business was grandfathered in under the new rules. But by ceasing operations for three years, the filing said, CoreCivic must now apply for the special use permit. In fact, CoreCivic applied for a special use permit in February 2025 but about three weeks later withdrew that application, the city's filing said. Community activists are speaking about against the idea of CoreCivic operating a prison in Leavenworth. Former CoreCivic employees regularly speak at city and county meetings about their negative experiences working in the closed detention center, and state organizations including the Kansas ACLU have helped organize press conferences and rallies. Objections include how CoreCivic operates, whether people held at the facility will be released into the community, and general opposition to immigrant detention centers. Gustin said the company, as of April 30, had received applications from more than 1,100 people who want to work at the site. 'Despite what politically extreme outsider groups are saying, potential new employees and local business partners are excited to be part of what we're creating in Leavenworth,' said Misty Mackey, warden of the new facility, in a press release. 'We're looking forward to operating a safe, transparent, accountable facility that will be a positive for this community dedicated to public service.' Gustin said there has been inaccurate reporting about employees working on a job at the prison to replace the facility's roof. CoreCivic issued cease-and-desist letters to those who accused the roofing company, Bass Roofing and Restoration, Fort Worth, of hiring workers without the proper permits. 'Any claims that our company has a contractor working for us at our Leavenworth facility that has undocumented or unauthorized workers doing the work are completely false,' he said. 'We have been furnished documentation of the legal status of all workers on the roofing project at our facility from the primary contractor and subcontractor.' The company has said that it will use local contractors at the facility, and Gustin said CoreCivic did reach out to local vendors. 'Experience in roofing our facilities and experience working on our federally contracted facilities is a factor we evaluate in reviewing bids,' he said. 'It's important to note that the roofing contractor who was selected for this project has handled similar work at another of our federal facilities, which required special clearances for workers.' Although aware of community disagreement about the facility, Gustin said CoreCivic wants to work with Leavenworth city and county officials. 'In addition to the impact fees we've agreed to pay – and the property tax we already pay – we've worked to both listen to and be transparent with the community,' he said. CoreCivic has offered the following impact fees: One-time impact fee of $1,000,000 to the city of Leavenworth Annual impact fee of $250,000 to the city of Leavenworth Additional $150,000 annually to the police department Gustin said no one detained at the facility will be released directly into the Leavenworth community, which is one opposition point. 'Our facility will operate with strong oversight and accountability from our government partners, including regular audits and onsite monitors,' he said.
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Kansas builders face uncertain prices as U.S. and Canada ‘keep flexing their muscles' on tariffs
Hardware costs associated with building a home in Kansas, like this one under construction in North Topeka, are going up because of tariffs, building supply managers said. (Morgan Chilson/Kansas Reflector) TOPEKA — Building a new house in today's market doesn't yet mean extra dollars for lumber or manufactured wood products, but Kansas building supply managers warn that tariffs have driven up other construction costs. While on-again, off-again tariffs on Canadian timber are currently off, Kansans should prepare to pay more for just about everything else in the house, they said. 'You take the hardware and the millwork portion of our business, and we're getting daily price increases because a lot of that product is imported from China, some from South America,' said Jay Robinson, manager of Wichita's Mill Creek Lumber and Supply Co. 'The import steel business has been affected. It's up about 15 to 18% over the last 45 days, and we're getting pretty much daily price updates. Fasteners, nails, screws, products for building connectors, have all seen 20 to 25% price increases.' Hardware, like doorknobs and door hinges, is up 20 to 25%, he said. Travis Daniels, general manager at McCray Lumber and Millwork in Topeka, agreed. 'It's hardware items. It's things that are not manufactured domestically or from Canada, because so far, the Canadian government, the American government, keep flexing their muscles, and nothing really has happened yet,' he said. In fact, Robinson said, lumber right now is at the lowest price it's been in several years. 'The framing lumber composite is actually back to where it was in 2023,' he said, a price drop that he attributed to Canadian producers and American companies shifting as much product across the border as they could in anticipation of tariffs. But Daniels said he is concerned that Canada's recent election, which gave Pierre Poilievre the Liberal Party win, might have an impact on lumber. 'I'm concerned that may be setting us next up on a collision course,' he said. 'I think that's how he got elected, because he said he'll draw the hard line against the Americans. The thing is, Canadian lumber does have some other places they can export to.' The construction industry will closely watch the tariff situation, said Sean Miller, executive officer of the Kansas Building Industry Association. It's important that Canadian lumber and concrete from Mexico continue to be exempted from tariffs, he said. 'Canada is the source of upwards of 80% of our lumber, so that's a huge issue for the homebuilding industry in particular,' he said. 'There is a 14.5% tariff on lumber, pretty consistent through the last couple of administrations. That lumber was exempted from any additional tariffs at this time, and that's really critical for us.' Miller said possible supply chain disruptions are also a concern. 'We've seen so much, starting really with COVID, and it's never really come back the way we would have liked it,' he said. 'That can really impact us.' As an example, he said electrical transformers can be challenging to source for larger developments, such as 20- or 50-house projects. 'The ability for Evergy or your local electric partner to get the right amount of transformers really got limited during COVID, and it has not come back the way we would have liked to,' he said. 'Electric companies have worked really hard to make sure those things are staged and ready.' Robinson said tariffs have the potential to hurt the cost of projects that are in the works or already started, but most builders won't be affected because they learned hard lessons during the COVID-19 pandemic. 'I would say pretty much 99.9% of all the builders we deal with have language in their contracts for increases due to market conditions,' he said. 'A lot of builders took some pretty serious hits back in '21, '22, during the COVID run, when lumber prices doubled. They were not protected.' 'Unfortunately, the end user is the one that's bearing the brunt of all these tariffs,' Robinson added. As the politics of tariffs and interest rates play out, Daniels said there's no way to quickly bring manufacturing back to the United States. 'If you're a believer that the trade imbalance with these other countries has been tremendously unfair, not America's favorite for years, it's not going to fix quick,' he said. 'It's going to be interesting times.' Robinson said he believes American lumber companies could potentially manage the country's housing starts. 'What we're seeing right now are curtailments with the prices as soft as they are — the mills are actually cutting production back because they're over produced,' he said. 'I'm going to say that our domestic production on framing and lumber commodity products can sustain about 1.2 to 1.3 million housing starts annually, and that's pretty close to where we're at today.' Robinson said he is less familiar with what it would take for the country to keep up with hardware needs in construction, but he said that part of the industry is 'heavily reliant' on imports.
