The Kansas Black Leadership Council met in Topeka this past Saturday to develop a first of its kind legislative agenda for the upcoming Kansas Legislative Session and future elections.

Geary County Commissioner Larry Hicks attended the meeting and explained that the expansion of Medicaid made the agenda.

“To address the well of over 150,000 who are in need of that service in the state of Kansas,” said Hicks. “The other also deals with criminal justice reform, in terms of trying to seek new progressive ways by which things can be considered to benefit how persons who are placed in prisons and jails can have opportunities to be, I guess, kind of rehabilitated, diversion. A new form of diversion was one of those areas that they were talking about.”

The Kansas Black Leadership Council includes members from Junction City, Salina, Wichita, Kansas City and several other communities.

Hicks did have a point that he wanted to get across to the group on Saturday, that the groups actions weren’t singularly racially oriented.

“It has to represent people from throughout the state of Kansas. From both the public and private sectors and people from all respective forms of ethnicities.”

Hicks represented the Geary County and Junction City area along with Junction City Commissioner Jim Sands.

The group met at the historic St. John AME Church near downtown Topeka, which was built in 1864 and has long been a center of political and cultural activity within Topeka’s black community.