News & Issues
First Day: Kindergarten in KC
Every year with the start of school, something huge happens for the kids in our communities: They start school, many of them for the first time. With funding issues, budget cuts, provisional accreditation, and superintendent changes in the news, sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of that big thing right in our midst: the wondrous,…
KC’s plan to ‘bank the unbanked’
In the Kansas City metro, about 12 percent of households are “unbanked,” which means they aren’t using traditional financial services like banks or credit unions. About 300 people gathered Wednesday at the Plaza Library to discuss how to solve this problem. The meeting was a gathering of the Alliance for Economic Inclusion, an initiative of…
Hopes for new life, and new traffic, at KC barge terminal
The view from Kansas City’s old river barge terminal in the West Bottoms offers a panoramic sweep of the downtown skyline, and a glimpse of just about every mode of transportation. Planes fly in and out of Wheeler Downtown Airport just across the Missouri River, and trains and trucks haul freight over the Broadway and…
Hospital Leader Challenges Brownback On Innovation, Medicaid Comments
The head of the Kansas Hospital Association is taking issue with comments made by Gov. Sam Brownback at a recent news conference. Asked about his continuing opposition to Medicaid expansion, Brownback downplayed the importance of the issue, telling reporters that innovation is more important to hospital finances than the billions of additional federal dollars that expansion would…
Missouri Convenience Stores Do U-Turn On Tobacco Tax
After opposing efforts to hike the state’s cigarette tax for more than a decade, Missouri convenience stores are now pushing two tobacco-increase plans, either of which they said would add $800 million to state coffers within a decade of their enactment.