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Turmoil deepens with rejection of another tax bill By Scott Rothschild srothschild@ljworld.com
TOPEKA — The Kansas House on Tuesday rejected an $857 million tax increase, throwing the overtime session into further turmoil. Moments before the vote, House Republican leaders
Wrap-up session grinds on as agreement eludes lawmakers urged their super majority caucus to approve the bill. House Speaker Ray Merrick, R-Stilwell, told the caucus that if the measure fell, “Look to be here a long time. We start at ground zero.”
The Legislature has already been in session 95 days, which is five days longer than it was supposed to meet and 15 days longer than Republican leaders had vowed they would meet.
But a bipartisan group in the House rejected the tax bill, on a 42-71 vote. And no tax or budget conference committee meetings were scheduled for the remainder of the day.
Democrats, outnumbered 92-33 in the House and 32-8 in the Senate, said the Legislature and Gov. Sam Brownback should end the session. Please see SESSION, page 2A Merrick
City takes jab at state
Maximizing learning options
Humid
Low: 69
High: 82
Today’s forecast, page 8A
INSIDE
By Chad Lawhorn
clawhorn@ljworld.com
Running back rejoins team After the 2011 football season, incoming coach Charlie Weis dismissed Darrian Miller. Now Weis has given Miller a second chance, and he will rejoin the Jayhawks in the fall. Page 1B
Mike Yoder/Journal-World Photo
SOUTHWEST JUNIOR HIGH SEVENTH-GRADERS, from left, Elizabeth Mullins, Claire Walther and Regan Sullivan review a video presentation they created on William Quantrill. The girls put the project together on a computer using Movie Maker software. The district is going to expand to 40 the number of techenabled classrooms next year, and Angelique Kobler, who has been promoted to assistant superintendent, will have a lot of responsibility for overseeing implementation.
Educator leading shift toward technology-rich classrooms
INDEX Business Classified Comics Deaths Events listings Food Horoscope Movies Opinion Puzzles Sports Television Vol.155/No.149
2A 1C-8C 7C 2A 8A, 2B 6B-8B 7C 4A 7A 7C 1B-5B 8A, 2B, 7C 32 pages
By Peter Hancock phancock@ljworld.com
The Lawrence school district is gearing up for the next phase of its venture into a new kind of classroom teaching, in which students rely as much on computers and online material as they do on textbooks and teachers to guide instruction. Starting in the fall, the district will add 40 classrooms — two in each school — to the list of those where teachers organize their lesson plans, learning material,
that has been assignments and tests all in an gaining hold in online environment. many districts It’s an environment that gives around the counstudents, with guidance from the try. It’s also a teacher, the option of working system whose independently, in small groups effectiveness in or in a traditional teacher-led improving stuclassroom setting. It also gives dent achievestudents more flexibility to work ment is just at their own pace and to view Kobler starting to be classroom materials and lectures measured by researchers, alany time, night or day. though Lawrence officials say Results still being measured the early results are promising. Often referred to as “blended Please see SCHOOLS, page 2A classrooms,” it’s a movement
‘Spiderman’ played central role in biggest drug bust By Ian Cummings and Shaun Hittle icummings@ljworld.com; sdhittle@ljworld.com
The road from Northern California’s lush, green cannabis fields to Lawrence did not run in a straight line. Millions of dollars in precious — but illicit — shipments of marijuana, hidden in trucks, zigged and zagged east through Utah and Nebraska to Kansas City, and sometimes back west to Topeka, before reaching the pipes and bongs of Lawrence. Before
From the Emerald Triangle to the Sunflower State: the inside story of Lawrence’s cross-country marijuana pipeline: Part 4 the packages of green gold were carried into town, they often had changed hands several times among an ever-shifting chain of merchants. This business was a tangled web, and sitting at the center of it in early 2012 was Peter Park, an Olathe entrepreneur known
in his drug-dealing network as “Spiderman,” according to court documents. For several years, much of the marijuana in Lawrence went through Park’s hands, until he was caught in a sweep of arrests in Douglas and Johnson counties on June 13, 2012, and charged in a 43-per-
son federal indictment. The case, investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the IRS and local law enforcement Peter Park, aka agencies, was the ‘Spiderman’ biggest in Lawrence history and included the seizure of hundreds of pounds of drugs, dozens of Please see BUST, page 6A
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Calling the state’s actions “asinine,” Lawrence city commissioners on Tuesday refused to fall in line with a new state law that allows people to bring switchblades, daggers and other knives into bars and public places. Commissioners on Tuesday unanimously refused to change the city’s code to accommodate a new state law that says residents can carry concealed a variety of knives. “We have CITY taken an oath COMMISSION that says we’re here to protect the health, safety and welfare of the citizens, and now we’re being told by the state to allow weapons that really are meant to do just one thing,” said City Commissioner Bob Schumm. “At some point, somebody has to stand up to this because it is dangerous stuff.” The city’s refusal to change its city code is unlikely to have any practical effect on the ability of people to legally carry concealed knives in Lawrence. Staff attorney Randy Larkin told commissioners that the new state law — when it takes effect July 1 — will supersede the city’s code. In other words, he said, the city would not find it practical to try to enforce the city Please see CITY, page 2A
Correction
Part one of this series, printed on Sunday, May 26, pictured and identified incorrectly a Topeka man and former basketball player as one of the defendants in the criminal case described in this series. The person who pleaded guilty in the case, the brother of Los and Roosevelt Dahda, is Nathan Jose Wallace. The JournalWorld apologizes for the error.