Latest news with #Reflector
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Kansas Legislature's supermajority makes mockery of open records law over efficiency portal messages
Sen. Renee Erickson chats on the Senate floor during the April 10, 2025, veto session. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector) Since the 1980s, the Kansas Open Records Act has mandated that all public agencies, including the Legislature, produce public records either within three business days or 'as soon as possible' in response to requests for records. But the current Legislature seems to believe those words mean 'whenever we feel like it.' And for almost 20 years, KORA has allowed public agencies to redact information from public records that, if disclosed, would amount to a 'clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.' Such information includes Social Security numbers, dates of birth or other information that could enable identify theft. But this iteration of the Legislature seems to think it is entitled to redact information that could traditionally be found in a phonebook, and that it may do so in a futile attempt to shield the identity of a handful of powerful Kansans but not the rest of us. Isn't it time the Legislature follows its own laws for the benefit of everyone and not just a select few? Wichita Sen. Renee Erickson, chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Government Efficiency and a member of the Republican supermajority, viewed timely KORA compliance as optional this legislative session when she was faced the prospect of disclosing information submitted to the supermajority's online 'government efficiency portal.' The portal itself makes clear that 'submissions are public records that are subject to the Kansas Open Records Act.' But when Kansas Reflector made a KORA request in February for submissions to the portal, Erickson said the Reflector would have to wait, not three business days, but rather two months for a response. Such a long timeline could, potentially, be permissible under KORA if Erickson had offered a 'detailed explanation of the cause for further delay,' as the law requires. But by Erickson's own admission, the delay was necessitated not by the Legislature's inability to produce the records in a timely way, but because it preferred not to. In response to Reflector's request on March 7, Erickson wrote that the requested submissions should be kept under wraps until May 1 because they were to be discussed 'during meetings to be called during the 2025 interim' before next session 'as a basis for possible legislation to be considered during the 2026 legislative session.' Erickson would later amend the timeline, indicating that the records would be disclosed April 9. But Erickson proved even that date was not 'as soon as possible,' as she allowed the records to be disclosed to members of her committee in mid-March — well before April 9. Ultimately, Kansas Reflector received leaked copies of the requested records, and their authenticity was corroborated by Erickson's tardy disclosure. In due course, the real reason for her delay became clear: the portal was a repository for criticism of the supermajority's legislative agenda, and it was in the supermajority's interest to keep that fact from the public for as long as possible. Kansas Reflector's request yielded disclosures of more than 1,600 submissions that Kansans had made to the portal. The names and contact information for just 55 submitters were redacted, while the names and contact information for the other 1,500-plus Kansans were disclosed. Comparing the leaked records to Erickson's disclosure shows that Senate President Ty Masterson's submission is one of the 55 from which the name and contact information were redacted. Redacting the identities of anyone, a potential gubernatorial candidate such as Masterson or not, violates KORA. Redactions due to privacy concerns are authorized under KORA only when disclosure of such information poses a serious risk to the person identified and is not 'of legitimate concern to the public.' There can be no doubt that the submissions to the politically charged government efficiency portal are of legitimate concern to the public, negating application of KORA's privacy provision on that basis alone. Moreover, disclosure of someone's name, address and email address does not put them at undue risk when that information is most likely available through a Google search. Additionally, every person who submitted information to the portal was required to check a box acknowledging that submissions would be subject to KORA. That means each submitter effectively waived any application of KORA's privacy provision. Even so, in the April 9 email in which the Erickson disclosed the requested records to Kansas Reflector, she claimed that redactions were made for 'the portions of records containing information of a personal nature where the public disclosure thereof would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.' Simply put, it is not credible to claim that KORA's privacy provision applied to Kansas Reflector's request. Moreover, the Legislature's attempt to shield information about certain submissions and not others is evidence that it is willing to play favorites at the expense of being fair and complying with KORA in a timely manner. Max Kautsch focuses his practice on First Amendment rights and open government law. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Kansas Reflector staff rakes in recognition with 16 awards in statewide journalism contest
Tecumseh South Elementary Students wheel the "moon tree" across a field before planting it May 28, 2024. The field is adjacent to the school, which is just east of Topeka in Shawnee County. This photo was part of an entry that won third place for best story/picture combination in the 2025 Kansas Press Association awards. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector) The width and breadth of Kansas Reflector journalism was recognized in the annual Kansas Press Association contest results announced Wednesday. From business reporting to commentary to overall recognition, a swath of Reflector reporters, editors and contributors shared the 16 awards in the Division VII category. The task of writing these award summaries has fallen to me over the years, and you might think that the excitement fades, but it hasn't yet. Being part of this staff and effort to bring free, nonprofit journalism to the Sunflower State remains a spectacular privilege. Editor in chief Sherman Smith was named Kansas journalist of the year, his third time winning that award since founding the Reflector in the summer of 2020. He also won first place in the series category for coverage of the Marion County Record newspaper raid anniversary. He shared that award with independent journalist Marisa Kabas. Former Reflector and Missouri Independent reporter Allison Kite and Stateline's Kevin Hardy won first place for local business story. Finally among the first place finishers, opinion contributors Eric Thomas and Mark McCormick were both recognized for column writing. I'm delighted to see Eric and Mark recognized for their determined, consistent and ever-readable pieces. I finished third in the category, which translates to a Reflector sweep of the top three finishers. 'I have the best job in the world because I get to work with all my favorite journalists in a tireless quest to speak truth to power and lift Kansans' voices,' Smith told me Wednesday evening. I couldn't agree more. Further staff members were honored with an array of second-place finishes. Reporter Anna Kaminski received the distinction for her entry in the military story category, while former reporter Rachel Mipro placed for an environmental story. Mipro departed in July, and Kaminski arrived in August. Working with both has been a joy. Now we come to an eternally tricky piece of any awards story. That would be the writer covering his or her own awards. I placed second for journalist of the year for the second time in a row. In this case, however, I'm right behind Smith. I'm sure I'll never hear the end of it. I also finished second in editorial writing. Other Kansas Press Association awards for Kansas Reflector staff included: New Journalist Award: Third place, Anna Kaminski Investigative Story: Third place, Sherman Smith Education Story: Third place, ''Unapologetically loud': How student journalists fought a Kansas district over spyware and won,' Sherman Smith Column Writing: Third place, Clay Wirestone Column Writing: Third place, Max McCoy Best Story/Picture Combination: Third place, 'Kansas elementary school students plant exclusive sweetgum that traversed the moon,' Sherman Smith Military Story: Third Place, 'Bill protecting Kansans veterans from 'claim sharks' vaporized after flat tax failed,' Sherman Smith Each year I repeat some variant on the journalistic truism that no one does these jobs for awards. The most important recognition I receive comes from our readers, both in person and through email. But only the must curmudgeonly of codgers would refuse such distinction when offered. On behalf of Reflector staff, thanks to the KPA, and we hope to keep serving you all. Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
The real meaning behind the words at the bottom of each Kansas Reflector story
Kansas Reflector stories and columns are free for all to use, which means they can spread far and wide. (Eric Thomas/Kansas Reflector) These words are free. Take them. Please. You can use every one of these 1,400 words in your family newspaper, next to advertisements for home renovation companies and the used car dealership. You can run this entire column on your news blog and construct an elaborate takedown of my grammar, word choice and politics. You can build an internet application that gobbles up this story and its headline and automatically robo-publishes it 10 seconds after we do. You have our permission. In fact, you have our encouragement. Kansas Reflector's explicit invitation — posted at the end of every news article and commentary — encourages everyone to steal our work. Please and thank you. The notice reads, 'Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our website. AP and Getty images may not be republished. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of any other photos and graphics.' The Reflector's parent organization, States Newsroom, spreads this generous policy across its network of publications, from the Nevada Current to the Maine Morning Star. Thousands of stories on dozens of websites — for free. Because Kansas Reflector allows all publications — from Yahoo News to the Peabody Gazette-Bulletin — to reprint its reporting and commentary, these words reach an audience that is often 10 to 100 times larger than a single publication. Sometimes Reflector writings get printed on honest-to-goodness paper. This is a particular hoot for me when my hometown metro newspaper, the Kansas City Star, prints one of my columns. When they do, I know my wife's eagle-eyed coworker will clip it out and send it along (Thanks, Dave). Some folks, including me, believe that this republication policy is a central virtue, power and impact of these publications. I have been writing for the Reflector since 2021 (141 columns and counting). Still, I have a bit of journalism vertigo when I explain this republication philosophy to others. The idea of giving away your intellectual work for free lacks a contemporary vocabulary. It's not monetizing. We aren't selling. No subscription required. Because of the cognitive leap, I interviewed Sherman Smith, editor in chief of the Reflector and the person who approached me a few years ago in search of a new commentary writer. (I recruited myself.) If anyone understands the tensions and benefits of allowing other publications to republish the work of the Reflector staff, it's Smith. 'We believe in doing journalism as a public good and making this accessible as part of our public service model,' Smith said. 'We let everybody read us for free, and we let other publications republish us for free, because we want to get our work out to as broad of an audience as possible, and this allows us to do that.' Smith's data, provided to him in Google News alerts and weekly email reports, shows that more people than ever read the Reflector, whether through republication or on the Reflector's website. February 2025, as a matter of fact, was the largest month for readership on the website, Smith said, besides the August 2023 readership spike from a particularly viral Kansas news story. 'What I see so often is this idea that news is dying, but the reality is we reach more people today than ever before,' Smith said. A few decades ago, Smith continues, a brilliant story in a community newspaper might have been restricted to a local audience. Meanwhile, stories on the Reflector are both on the internet and without a paywall. 'Today, when we write that story, we reach a million people nationwide and even internationally,' Smit said. 'It ripples across the globe in a heartbeat. That's a very powerful thing.' Of course, the benefits of a free product are easy to list for the consumer. Low-income readers can get their Kansas news for free. International readers who just want to read one story about Kansas don't need to subscribe for $15 per month just for the privilege of reading one article that they might — or might not — like. Smith also said that the Reflector's growing readership forces some prominent people to agree to interviews. Kansas state representatives, for instance, know that their hometown newspaper is likely to run a free Reflector article — so they may feel pressure to be a source. 'Leveraging information,' Smith calls it. Of course, a complete report with relevant sources is another benefit for readers. Many of my current and former University of Kansas journalism students have worked for the Reflector in one way or another. Smith sees the Reflector's republication policy as serving these young journalists in particular. 'Part of our public service mission here is trying to work with the next generation of journalists to elevate them,' Smith said. 'If you're a young college student, you're trying to establish a portfolio to take to an employer. You could write three stories for us and present it as three different publications, showing, 'My work has been in Hays and Manhattan and Dodge City and Hutchinson, and not just the Kansas Reflector.' ' Like the young journalists Smith mentioned, many other journalists are obsessed by the impact that their work has. Why write if no one is reading? Why podcast if no one is listening? Why publish a photo if no one is looking? In that way, the grand bargain that the Reflector has made with the world — that its reporting and commentary are free — reimagines the typical transactional relationship between a journalist and their audience. My first days in journalism were during the 1990s at a series of community newspapers. The way that I knew people were seeing my work (back then, photojournalism) seems Andy Griffith-era folksy today. I would watch people — at coffee shops, at sporting events and in the local muffler shop — reading the headlines, their chins turned up in a skeptical expression that furrowed their brows. The feedback on our work in the 1990s? They slung those jabs at us in a way that seems antiquated today: As I lugged camera gear into a high school basketball game, moms and dads would walk up to me, telling me exactly what the newspaper got right or wrong yesterday. Some, but few, would write letters to the editor. The publisher of a newspaper in the 1990s had a pretty exact sense of how many people their paper reached. Simply track subscription numbers. Then, ask the circulation folks downstairs about single-copy sales at grocery stores and newspaper racks. Modern journalism, especially when paired with the Reflector's republication policy, upends this previous journalism world. It's unlikely that you are reading this column on a printed page. It's unlikely that you will run into me at your local hardware store. And my work — so tightly guarded by my first employers decades ago — is free for you here. This limitless distribution of the Reflector's content also sends me Google-ing for my headlines to discover who ran them. The publications in the search results form a motley parade of websites. One of these online searches inspired me to write about our republication policy. A few months ago, I wrote about how Donald Trump's make-up routine confused me. Like many pieces by the Reflector, my column was republished by Yahoo News. At the bottom was the biggest response I have seen to anything I have done in journalism, whether photography, editing or writing. I assure you it's not my best writing. Nevertheless, it found an audience. Yahoo recorded 2,200 comments in response to my column before it switched them off two days later. The first comment — 'More unreadable Trump hating fake news from the lib infested fake news media' — sums up the comment-section death match between MAGA and the left, between real people in the heartland and bots in a server farm. An audience like this — even if it's not my dear neighbors — is part of what keeps me writing for the Reflector. I love knowing that you, dear reader, can critique my work without a subscription from just about anywhere on just about any website. The bitter irony of writing this column about our republication policy: It's perhaps the least likely column to demand republication. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote: 'So it goes.' Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
Yahoo
10-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Changes to SNAP and Cash Assistance Programs That Could Come in 2025
In 2015, Kansas passed the HOPE (Hope, Opportunity and Prosperity for Everyone) Act, which made it harder for the state's neediest residents to access federal food and cash assistance funding. Find Out: Try This: 5 Subtly Genius Moves All Wealthy People Make With Their Money The law, which detractors call cruel and ineffective but supporters say encourages work and lowers poverty rates, remains one of the most restrictive in the nation. However, the current governor seeks to overhaul the legislation and expand access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs. It's not just Kansas; other states are also looking to expand access to food assistance programs. The federal government funds SNAP and TANF, but the states have wide latitude in administering them. According to the Kansas Reflector, legislators touted the HOPE Act as a blueprint for reducing generational dependency on public assistance, deterring welfare fraud and reducing unemployment. However, the publication reported that the neediest Kansans are 'falling through the cracks' as application denials pile up and mounting poverty strains the state's foster system thanks to the country's most severe and austere public assistance program. Read Next: Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly is a Democrat who opposed the HOPE Act while serving as a state senator during the administration of Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, who signed the bill into law. Kelly is pushing to revamp the HOPE Act and restore SNAP and TANF in Kansas, which now serve fewer children than anywhere except Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and North Dakota, which have comparatively tiny populations. With Republicans in control of both houses of the state legislature, the attorney general's office and the secretary of state, reform will be easier said than done. Even so, the Reflector reported that Kelley has eyed six factors that she says have reduced access without reducing need. The federal government allows up to 60 months of TANF cash assistance in a lifetime, but Kansas capped it at 48 months even before the HOPE Act. The 2015 legislation reduced it to 36 months, then 24 months — just two years out of the five the federal government allows. In 2022, Kansas distributed less than 7% of the $161 million in TANF funds it had available for basic needs assistance. The act restricted ATM transactions. It also made repeat drug offenders ineligible. The legislation required applicants to work 30 hours a week or enroll in job training. Kansas has slashed its cash assistance programs by 40% but increased its foster care prevention spending by $25 million over the past 14 years. Unlike Kansas, the federal government is not divided. The GOP controls the White House and both houses of Congress and enjoys a supermajority of Republican appointees on the Supreme Court, which advocates say could put the entire country on the Kansas model. A Brookings analysis found that all four of President Donald Trump's first-term budget proposals called for massive reductions to both programs — $20 billion in cuts to TANF and $200 billion, 30%, in cuts to SNAP. Trump has also proposed requiring states to pay 25% of the benefits, a radical departure from 50 years of fully federally funded disbursements. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, federal funds account for roughly one-third of state spending, which makes them highly vulnerable to federal cuts. The Urban Institute reported that the Republican Study Committee, House Budget Committee and Project 2025 all recommend steep cuts to SNAP, TANF and other low-income assistance programs. However, several lawmakers have proposed legislation that would expand access to SNAP and TANF. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Rep. Alma Adams (D-NC) proposed the Closing the Meal Gap Act, which would use the USDA's more realistic Low-Cost Food Plan as the basis for SNAP allotments instead of the restrictive Thrifty Food Plan it currently uses. Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) proposed the Enhance Access to SNAP (EATS) Act, which would give low-income college students the same priority as non-student SNAP recipients. It would also loosen restrictions and requirements regarding course load and work-study participation. Rep. Grace Meng's (D-NY) Hot Foods Act would allow SNAP recipients to use benefits to purchase hot prepared foods from retailers, which is currently prohibited. Editor's note on political coverage: GOBankingRates is nonpartisan and strives to cover all aspects of the economy objectively and present balanced reports on politically focused finance stories. You can find more coverage of this topic on More From GOBankingRates 4 Low-Risk Ways To Build Your Savings in 2025 3 Things You Must Do When Your Savings Reach $50,000 This article originally appeared on Changes to SNAP and Cash Assistance Programs That Could Come in 2025
