TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas is reporting that unemployment in the state dropped to 3.2% in August and was at its lowest rate in more than 20 years.

The state Department of Labor said Friday that the state gained private-sector jobs during the month and over the past year. Labor economist Emilie Doerksen said the state has seen broad economic growth, and Gov. Laura Kelly hailed the report as good news for Kansas.

The department said the unemployment rate declined from 3.3% in July. It was also 3.3% in August 2018.

It was the lowest unemployment rate since May 1999. The rate has been below 4% since January 2017.

Kansas had nearly 1.18 million private, nonfarm jobs in August, up about 4,200 since July and 17,800 from August 2018. The over-the-year growth was 1.5%.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A Nebraska man and wife who sold fish they had illegally caught in public waters in Kansas and other reservoirs have been sentenced to probation.

Federal prosecutors for Nebraska say 49-year-old Phong Duong and 46-year-old Oanh Pham were each sentenced Friday to two years’ probation for illegally taking, transporting and selling fish. They were also ordered to pay $16,000 in restitution.

Prosecutors say that between May 2013 and July 2016, Duong and Pham exceeded the limits on catching fish from the Kirwin National Wildlife Refuge in northern Kansas and other reservoirs. To avoid detection, the couple would routinely change fishing spots, stash fish at off-site locations, and use “straw fishermen” — including children — to conceal fish taken in excess of limits. They’d then take the fish back home to Nebraska and clean and bag them at their Lincoln home before selling the fish.

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — A 19-year-old woman has been charged in the deadly shooting of a man at a Kansas City Kansas, trailer park over Labor Day weekend.

Alexia Lasha Hendricks is jailed on $150,000 bond on charges of second-degree murder and aggravated robbery in the death of 30-year-old Maurice Hunter Jr. No attorney is listed for her in online court records.

The district attorney’s office alleges in charging documents that Hendricks took a Chevrolet Trailblazer from Hunter “by force or by threat of bodily harm” and killed him. He was pronounced dead at the scene on Sept. 1.

By NOMIN UJIYEDIIN

Mold. No heat in the winter. Leaking roofs.

The most common complaints Teresa Baker hears about rental housing in Kansas revolve around poor living conditions that violate state law.

As part of her job for the nonprofit Housing and Credit Counseling Inc., Baker serves as an advice guru for low-income residents in about 20 Kansas counties.

Tenants come to her if they’ve received eviction notices, forfeited security deposits or can’t get landlords to make repairs. Sometimes, she counsels landlords, too.

“Of course, it’s the landlord’s business to understand what the law says and his obligations,” Baker said. “The tenants are coming at this blindly.”

Kansas law sets some rules for inevitable disputes between renters and property owners. Yet some tenants and advocates contend landlords too often end up on top because they have more money and familiarity with the rules. The imbalance is leading some tenants to take action.

Housing experts also say Kansas lacks protections that other states offer to renters.

For example, state law prohibits cities and counties from establishing rent control and other rental regulations. Another tactic allowed by other states but banned in Kansas: withholding rent to force a landlord to make repairs. State law allows a landlord to evict tenants for being three days late on the rent.

“That’s one of the Number One things that we deal with, with tenants,” Baker said. “They call us when it’s too late, but they withheld rent and they’re going to court tomorrow.”

Ed Jaskinia, a Kansas City-area landlord and lobbyist for the Associated Landlords of Kansas, says the laws fairly balance the interests of both sides — renters who need to be guarded from predatory landlords, and landlords who want to maintain their properties and make money.

Ed Jaskinia, lobbyist for the Associated Landlords of Kansas.
CREDIT NOMIN UJIYEDIIN / KANSAS NEWS SERVICE
“We’ve got the best laws in the country because it protects everybody equally,” said Ed Jaskinia, a Kansas City-area landlord and lobbyist for the Associated Landlords of Kansas. “It tells us what the rules and regulations are, what we can and can’t do.”

He says tenants should take up their proposed reforms to the cities they live in.

In the meantime, he says tenants already have protections. For example, if a landlord won’t make repairs, tenants can call their city’s code enforcement division to make an inspection. And state law prohibits landlords from retaliating against tenants who do so.

But it’s hard to prove retaliation in court, Baker said. And she said many rural towns don’t have the budget to enforce housing codes.

“Even if they have some type of code on the books,” Baker said, “they don’t enforce it because they can’t.”

Legal Options

Another option for tenants is suing a landlord in small claims court for not completing repairs, exorbitant utility bills or not returning a security deposit.

State law requires landlords to return deposits within 30 days with an itemized list of charges taken out. Otherwise, tenants can sue for one-and-a-half times the amount of the original deposit.

“It’s very common for landlords to keep your security deposit for expenses that I don’t think would be legal,” said Casey Johnson, an attorney for Kansas Legal Services who counsels low-income people on housing. “Those are some good protections for tenants.”

But small claims lawsuits often turn out in favor of the landlord.

“It’s very difficult to get evidence and time to present into a court case,” Johnson said. “Kansas, I would say, is fairly landlord-friendly.”

Tenant Activism

Some residents of Lawrence, Manhattan and Kansas City — where renting is more common than in the rest of the state — are trying to change that. They say there’s a shortage of quality and affordable housing.

Data from the Census Bureau shows that the overall rental vacancy rate in Kansas in 2017 was 7.5%. In Kansas City, it was 8.5%, in Manhattan, it was 10.6% and in Lawrence, it was 6.7%. In the U.S. overall, 6.1% of rental units were vacant in 2017.

Generally, cities in Kansas have a higher proportion of residents who are rent-burdened — defined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as spending 30% or more of their income on rent. More than 53% of Lawrence and Manhattan residents are rent-burdened, compared to 44% of all Kansans and 50.6% of Americans overall.

A group called Renters Together, in Manhattan, formed earlier this year, holds weekly meetings with the goal of increasing the number of rental units that the city inspects.

“We’ve noticed that landlords have been retaliating against tenants that do call code services here,” said Jonathan Cole, lead organizer for the group. “We’ve also noticed that people just don’t know that they can call.”

A similarly named group in Lawrence, Renters Together LFK, recently hosted a meeting to tell tenants how to get their security deposits back. The group has knocked on doors and spoken to hundreds of local tenants, said organizer Yoshi Stout.

“At the end of the day,” Stout said, “the tenants need to have some sort of agency for themselves.”

The group encouraged Lawrence resident Kayla Marks to sue her landlord, Manhattan-based company McCullough Development, Inc., in Douglas County small claims court.

In August 2018, Marks and her boyfriend moved into an apartment in Lawrence that she says was a mess. The place was dirty. A window was broken. There was a hole in a bedroom door and the linoleum floor needed to be replaced.

She tidied up and let her landlord know about the repairs. A few months later, the floor and the window were fixed, but by then, she had to move out. She and her boyfriend had broken up, and she couldn’t afford the apartment by herself. Her depression got so bad that she was hospitalized. She got a note from her doctor saying she could no longer live by herself.

Former Lawrence resident Kayla Marks sued her landlord in Douglas County small claims court.
CREDIT NOMIN UJIYEDIIN / KANSAS NEWS SERVICE
In February 2019, Marks applied for a legally required accommodation for her disability, asking to move out of her apartment. Her landlord granted it, but said she owed another month’s rent and sent her a bill for cleanup after she moved out. The company charged her an additional $258, which she disputed.

McCullough Development, Inc., declined multiple requests for comment.

“I’m a clean freak, so this place was spotless,” Marks said. “So I just didn’t think that that was right.”

She sued, asking for money back on her rent and deposit. She didn’t get any money back, but a judge ruled that she didn’t owe her landlord money either.

Marks said she wouldn’t have known how or why to sue without the help of Renters Together.

“I didn’t even know what the actual verdict was until I had to ask somebody,” she said. “But knowing that the verdict was that I don’t owe anything, I’m very pleased.”

Nomin Ujiyediin reports on criminal justice and social welfare for the Kansas News Service. Follow her on Twitter @NominUJ or email nomin (at) kcur (dot) org.

SEDGWICK COUNTY —Law enforcement authorities are investigating a suspect after a violent attack on his stepfather

Just before 10:30p.m. Thursday, police responded to report of a disturbance at a home in the 4800 Block of South Fern in Wichita, according to office Charley Davidson.

At the scene, police found a 59-year-old man with critical injuries. EMS transported him to a local hospital for treatment.

Investigators learned that the suspect identified as 26-year-old Tyler Lewis went to his stepfather’s home. During a disturbance between the two men, Lewis battered the step-father with a baseball bat, stabbed him multiple times and fled on foot.

Police found Lewis in the parking lot of an apartment complex in the 2700 Block of South Topeka. They arrested him on requested charges of aggravated battery and an aggravated weapons violation.

The stepfather remains hospitalized but has been upgraded to fair condition, according to Davidson.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon on Friday announced it will deploy additional U.S. troops and missile defense equipment to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as President Donald Trump has at least for now put off any immediate military strike on Iran in response to the attack on the Saudi oil industry.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper told Pentagon reporters this is a first step to beef up security and he would not rule out additional moves down the road. Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said more details about the deployment will be determined in the coming days, but it would not involve thousands of U.S. troops.

Other officials said the U.S. deployment would likely be in the hundreds and the defensive equipment heading to the Middle East would probably include Patriot missile batteries and possibly enhanced radars.

The announcement reflected Trump’s comments earlier in the day when he told reporters that showing restraint “shows far more strength” than launching military strikes and he wanted to avoid an all-out war with Iran.

Instead, he laid out new sanctions on the Iranian central bank and said the easiest thing to do would be to launch military strikes.

“I think the strong person’s approach and the thing that does show strength would be showing a little bit of restraint,” Trump told reporters during a meeting with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. “Much easier to do it the other way, and Iran knows that if they misbehave, they are on borrowed time.”

Dunford told reporters the extra equipment and troops would give the Saudis a better chance of defending against unconventional aerial attacks.

“No single system is going to be able to defend against a threat like that,” he said, “but a layered system of defensive capabilities would mitigate the risk of swarms of drones or other attacks that may come from Iran.”

The U.S. has not provided any hard evidence that Iran was responsible for the attacks, while insisting the investigation continues, but Esper on Friday said the drones and cruise missiles used in the attack were produced by Iran.

“The attack on Sept. 14 against Saudi Arabian oil facilities represents a dramatic escalation of Iranian aggression,” Esper said, adding that the U.S. has thus far shown “great restraint.”

In deciding against an immediate U.S. strike, Trump for the second time in recent months pulled back from a major military action against Iran that many Pentagon and other advisers fear could trigger a new Middle East war. In June, after Iran shot down an American surveillance drone, Trump initially endorsed a retaliatory military strike then abruptly called it off because he said it would have killed dozens of Iranians.

On Friday, he left the door open a bit for a later military response, saying people thought he’d attack Iran “within two seconds,” but he has “plenty of time.”

Trump spoke just before he gathered his national security team at the White House to consider a broad range of military, economic and diplomatic options in response to what administration officials say was an unprecedented Iranian attack on Saudi oil facilities.

Iran has denied involvement and warned the U.S. that any attack will spark an “all-out war” with immediate retaliation from Tehran.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence have condemned the attack on Saudi oil facilities as “an act of war.”

Esper and Dunford declined to discuss any potential ship movements to the region, although a number of U.S. Navy vessels are nearby.

The additional air and missile defense equipment for Saudi Arabia would be designed to bolster its defenses in the north, since most of its defenses have focused on threats from Houthis in Yemen to the south.

A forensic team from U.S. Central Command is pouring over evidence from cruise missile and drone debris, but the Pentagon said the assessment is not finished. Officials are trying to determine if they can get navigational information from the debris that could provide hard evidence that the strikes came from Iran.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas Board of Regents is requesting a $95.3 million increase in state tax funding for 32 universities and colleges in the system.

$50 million of that proposal advanced this week would go to the six public universities that some regents hope could result in a second year of tuition freezes for resident undergraduate students.

Under the proposed budget, Kansas community and technical colleges would share an additional $13.5 million. Most of that would be for promoting a statewide program that allows high school students earn college credit.

Other items in the budget include $10 million for need-based student financial aid, $10 million for deferred maintenance and $1 million for Washburn University.

The proposed budget goes to the governor’s office, which will make budget recommendations in January.

BUTLER COUNTY — A driver who rammed five vehicles before a crash in Wichita Thursday night remains in jail in Butler County.

Police in Andover reported that a truck with a trailer was running into cars in a parking lot, according to Captain Joe Schroeder.  The trailer was the property of the man’s employer and the driver was not authorized to have it, according to Schroeder.

Police began a pursuit after the driver ran a red light and then continued into Wichita, where he is accused of running another red light and rear-ending a car. The driver then ran another red light, hitting more cars.

The chase ended when the driver crashed into railing. Police arrested the 32-year-old driver was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence, fleeing and eluding, hit-and-run and running several lights.

 

The suspect was expected to make an initial court appearance Friday afternoon. However, the Butler County Attorney’s office won’t file charges in the case until next week, according to Schroeder. Police will release the man’s name after he has been charged.  There were no injuries reported.