From the Alvin and Rosalie Sara Check studio PBS Kansas Presents Kansas Week.

Former Kansas Governor Jeff Colyer explains why he is running again for his old job.

We'll discuss his chances of success.

Also, the Wichita City Council makes its own rules on fireworks after the state approved year round sales.

But first, Kansans pick up the pieces after tornadoes tear through the state.

We'll examine the challenges of rebuilding.

On this edition of Kansas Week.

Hello and welcome to Kansas Week.

I'm Jaren Cirillo.

We begin today with this week's dangerous and destructive weather.

A powerful EF three tornado tore through the western Kansas town of Grinnell earlier this week.

That storm destroyed or damaged close to 250 homes.

Fortunately, there were no serious injuries.

In south central Kansas, the Reno County town of plover was also hit by a different tornado that same night.

The tiny town taking a big hit.

KAKEs Lily O'Brien shows us what storm survivors there are up against.

It's.

It's been a lot of picking up the pieces.

A tornado hit Lebanon earlier this week, and now the people have pledged not are left with the aftermath.

Good portion of my fence got destroyed because of it.

The shops shop was flattened.

We've we just finally got electricity back.

Joshua Howell's home, which his father says is more than 100 years old, withstood the EF2 tornado before the storm.

Getting it insured was already a challenge.

And now he says it's even tougher.

Trying to get homeowners insurance, especially out here, is kind of difficult, especially with these older houses that you have to bring up to date and get more modernized.

Howell didn't have insurance when disaster struck, but was working towards getting it.

I have I have to get my house repainted.

The roof redone.

I have had to get the fence rebuilt.

The shop had to be tore down before I could even think about getting insurance.

That was the that was the stipulations that were put on to me by the insurance companies.

And he's not the only one without insurance.

In a town with a population less than 100, a good portion of the town does not have homeowner's insurance.

Ashley Hand, the city clerk and mayor's wife, adds the damage extends beyond homes in the town center.

A former school building now multi-purpose community building, is missing its roof.

We got a couple quotes from 55,000 to 85,000.

Maybe a little bit more for, you know, the people that will put it on.

Lebanon does not carry insurance on its city buildings, and that includes a historic bank turned city hall out of pocket because it's so historical and so old and all brick.

The insurance companies do not want to cover this, and they can't, you know, they can't replace this.

And so there's no insurance on these buildings.

While both Howell and Tand are grateful that nobody was killed or injured, they say the damage is a heartbreaking setback.

We are so thankful.

But there's still a little bit left to do here to talk about this.

And some of the week's other big stories are Sedgwick County District Court judge and former state legislator Phil Journey, Friends University political science professor Russell Arvin, Fox News senior political reporter Pilar Pedraza, and Wichita Eagle opinion editor Dionne Lefler.

Thank you all for joining us today.

First off, Diane, I'll start with you.

One thing that comes to mind here first is noting how many of these people don't have insurance, which is tough to hear.

But FEMA do.

Is it possible we will get a disaster declaration?

And even if we do get a disaster declaration with the cuts that are going on, could we are I just worry we may not get federal funding to reimburse this?

Well, in years past, I would have said that this was a slam dunk, but, now we just don't know.

I mean, we saw Arkansas, get hit by the same kind of thing.

That's right.

And, they were not, you know, they they were ruled ineligible.

Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders had, requested Trump declare a disaster for, 13, 14 counties that were hit.

And she was denied a couple of weeks ago, so.

Well, yeah.

And she was she was one of Trump's people.

I mean, yeah, she was his press secretary.

He was his press secretary.

And, you know, one that won the seat because she was a Trump, Trump acolyte.

Go ahead.

It's something I, I was on the ground in Grinnell the morning after all this happened talking to folks.

And this is something that folks in that area, they are well aware of.

What's been happening with FEMA.

There were already the morning after talking about wondering, will there be any federal aid?

They're very worried about that.

Even in a town where most people did have housing, insurance.

Yeah.

And, you know, and going through a tornado myself growing up in Haynesville, you know, I've been through it twice, and it's definitely no fun.

But when we talk about these Kansas communities, they're very resilient, though they will recover in time, I hope so.

I know we went through the 1 in 91 and in 99 and Haynesville.

The thing I think is the real heart of this story is the lack of insurance coverage.

Right.

And, I had one commercial building that had an older electrical panel.

It they wouldn't ride it until I change it out.

And, these people can't afford it.

Insurance companies are under tremendous financial pressure.

They want to make money.

You know, they're not in that to lose money.

And I think we're all we're all seeing.

I know I'm seeing huge increases in my insurance premiums.

And I think that this is a risk that the legislature needs to look at.

The insurance commissioner needs to look at how we can help these companies write more policies in the state than they're doing right now.

I know there's a great, opposition to public, funds being used in something like this.

But if you look at the federal system, we have federal flood insurance for a reason, because financially it does not make sense.

It is not a profit driven system that the professional insurance companies will even consider covering, because if they get hit, they lose so much and the chances of getting hit are so low.

It all sorts of different factors go into that.

So we have the federal government instead providing that insurance and maybe there is an age limit after which houses are eligible for some sort of state or federal insurance.

Let's go ahead to the point that is is complicating this.

I mean, this is entirely beside the damaging cuts that are taking place in Washington, DC, to so many federal agencies.

The agencies themselves were dealing with changing variables.

You talk about how, you know, the chances of being wiped out for a flood are so low.

But we also recognize that with changing climate, those estimates are increasingly inaccurate.

You know, there is more flooding.

The flooding is happening in areas where it was not expected.

The same sort of thing can be said about extreme weather events.

There's more of them.

They're taking place in areas where things were not expected.

All of this is making it really, really hard for insurers.

And you're right, they're in a business.

They're trying to make money, they're trying to deal with a changing reality, and they need a federal backstop to help support them in making these kinds of financial decisions.

And maybe they can't count on that either any longer.

One last point.

We may be five years away from being like California, where the companies are just pulling out of the state.

They won't write a new policy there, because the way that statutory structure is so much against them, they don't think they can make money in California with the higher changes in climate change and all that, and they just pull out and think about this.

If you're going to try to make statutory changes to pull out, they've pulled out of Kansas, they've pulled out of there, etc., simply because of major disasters.

Well, and I mean, think about this though.

I mean, how are you going to buy a house if you can't get a policy, right.

No.

Banks got a right to.

Yeah, yeah.

Our next story from Mother Nature's fireworks to the manmade kind, Wichita is bucking a new state law by keeping strict fireworks rules.

The city council unanimously voting Tuesday to ban year round sales.

Instead, sales will be limited to June 27th through July 4th.

And here's an important detail.

Aerial fireworks.

Those that shoot into the sky before exploding.

Those are now only permitted from July 3rd through July 5th.

Violators will face misdemeanor charges and of course, steep fines.

Judge journey, will this matter?

You know, it seems like the city council, like city council, has the authority to do that under home rule and the Kansas Constitution in the statutes, the legislature chose not to occupy that portion of law and mandated statewide.

And so I don't think there's anything out of line of what they did.

And I know if I was trying to go to sleep on June 20th, I might like that.

Not had those explosions going on.

But with it seems like fireworks rules.

Nobody ever adheres to them.

Doctor Fox I mean, I, I respect that there's important jurisdictional questions that have to be answered here.

And Phil is exactly right that this is safely within the province of the municipal government.

The larger question is human behavior and the ability of law enforcement to actually, you know, enforce any kind of control over what that behavior is.

Everybody who lives in Wichita, especially everybody who has a dog, is fully aware that a lot of people here love fireworks.

They're going to find ways to get fireworks, and they're going to make that week really, really loud for a lot of people.

I mean, part of the reason why they changed the law in the first place, why they changed the ordinance in the first place two years ago, or was it just last year?

It was it was it broadened, right.

They were just recognizing, you know, the fact that you've got the county operating under a different set of rules you have outside the county, yet other rules available in terms of who can legally purchase what and when they can fire it off, you know, it's it's a thankless job.

So the police that until he brings up a good point that we're always we're going to be at the mercy of Butler County or Sumner County or other jurisdictions that have different rules.

And everybody.

Yeah, yeah, maybe it was very much the change in the rules in Wichita was very much a case of following the old military axiom, don't give a command, you know, won't be followed in this case.

Don't set laws you know are going to be broken before you, even before the ink is dry.

Yeah.

You know, we're living in the real.

We're not going to be able to even divorce.

Exactly, exactly.

Diane, go go ahead.

Diane, I don't know.

I mean, my neighborhood from, you know, June 20th to July 15th is is like living in, you know, Beirut.

But I will say this, we've had a lot of talk acting as if this is some sort of limiting of the fireworks rolls, when in fact it was, as we mentioned a little bit ago, an expansion of what we'd had previously.

But it's also kind of a clarification because we did have at the state level, a bill passed that allows firework sales year round.

And I think there are I think Wichita is not going to be the only one.

There are a lot of other cities that are looking at this going, we don't want people shooting off fireworks year round.

So we've got to be very explicit that, yeah, okay, these wholesalers may be able to sell year round, but you're not selling in our city.

Yeah.

And you're not shooting them off unless it's the 4th of July.

Well, why is it just the 4th of July anyway?

I mean, we get, you know, New Year's, we got these Super Bowls.

I mean, but that's what's good for you.

You got the you've got the stadium downtown that, you know, they're shooting off fireworks every single Friday.

And that's a professional great show.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm prettier than than what I can create.

Yeah.

Right.

But yeah, I mean, I don't understand how these people can stay drunk for that long.

Yeah.

I mean, it's just I think you're underestimating the potential.

Oh, yeah.

That our next story.

Some changes are happening for drivers downtown Wichita, all north south streets are becoming two way Main Street, fully open to two way traffic on Thursday.

Market Street will follow ready before Riverfest kicks off on May 30th.

These are the final pieces of a nearly $5 million project aimed at improving safety for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists.

The city says these conversions are part of a plan approved last year, and will ultimately make downtown navigation smoother and more accessible for everyone.

I have some questions about this.

Right before Riverfest, we're going to change the complete configuration of downtown I'm worried about.

It could increase in confusion, but it also could in many ways lower confusion.

Something to keep in mind.

We have a lot of Wrong-Way drivers in this town.

If you sit there and listen to scanners, from police, from the highway patrol, etc.

on a nightly basis, you're hearing two, three, four calls every night of people going the wrong way, going the wrong way on the highway, going the wrong way down one way streets.

And at a time when you've got something like Riverfest, you've got a lot of people coming in from outside who aren't used to navigating downtown.

They're not used to the one way system who are maybe even coming in from outside of the city itself, not used to that system.

The chances of somebody suddenly going down the wrong, down a one way street, the wrong way accidentally, are highly elevated.

Yeah, judge, tell me your thoughts.

I think you're wasting your time.

You know, they're painting outside my offices at the courthouse on Main Street.

Now, they said they wanted to do this because they were going to slow traffic down.

That's true.

It's going to slow traffic down because everybody's going to have to wait for the other guys to make a left turn.

That's what I.

And and then, you know, when all those cars are sitting there idling at the, it takes you twice as long to get through downtown.

And all those cars are sit there idling at the stoplight.

What's that going to do to our summer ozone and all that other stuff, too.

The key to get rid of the pollution was to make sure they don't stop and, you know, get it to flow time the lights.

Well, the I wonder the exact opposite, at least from a traffic engineer standpoint.

The idea was that in the downtown core, die on one way streets make ingress and egress easier for rush hour or large events.

But now we're going to change that completely.

It seems like.

Yeah, I, I'm pretty much on the record as being possibly the biggest opponent of this in this entire city.

I, you know, I think there were sold a bunch of snake oil, frankly, you know, there's this traffic circles that work better than this.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, the traffic circle was right there.

Easy.

You would be as upset about traffic circles as you are that any of these other changes?

I like them.

There's always going to be difficulty in making a transition.

People are going to have to adjust their patterns in the way they drive the timing of things.

But it's not snake oil.

The data is very clear.

You slow things down.

You you decrease the chance of accidents.

You make those accidents less harmful to people who get caught up in them.

You make the place more friendly for different types of transportation, whether that be on your feet or on, a bicycle or on a scooter.

Yes, this is a car centric city.

This is a car centric downtown.

But there's no reason why you can't try to make it a little bit more manageable, a little bit slower, a little bit more respectful of others.

And this is one small step towards do.

But wait a second, if we're spending $5 million to do this at this time when we have such a budget crisis coming up, is this $5 million needed?

Do we need another question?

Yeah.

No, I'm not going to defend the amount they spend.

I'm not going to defend the timing of it.

You know, if I recall correctly.

Okay.

Got it from the.

So it's the same with the reimbursement from the federal guy.

Okay.

Yeah.

But you know, fundamentally the Wichita City Hall seems to have this idea that we don't have enough big city problems.

Yeah.

You know, they don't have you know, we don't have paid parking.

We don't have traffic jams.

So we need to get those to be a real big city.

Or maybe we are, in fact, a big city.

And people insist on acting like we're not.

And they're ignoring problems like people driving the wrong way on all sorts of streets that are right downtown, where there are businesses, where there are people walking around.

Yeah, but I'll be honest, I, I, me personally, if we're if we're a big city and we need some big city problems, let's put in some pedestrian zones and just close streets entirely and make people walk.

That increases foot traffic to stores.

It increases foot traffic at restaurants.

It increases your sense of downtown community.

That's why the whole open street side has been so poor.

It increases nobody coming downtown, you know?

I mean, it increases it increases the commute time for for all the people that work downtown.

I mean, it's just I don't know, it just I I'm from L.A..

I know, I know what traffic jams are.

Yeah.

You know, creating.

I'm in this in a dirty little city like this just seems like.

What do you call this?

Wow.

That's a whole different argument.

Yeah, yeah.

27 years, 27 years I've been going downtown.

And 90 over 90% of the bicycles that I see are two groups.

They're either homeless people and they just ride wherever they want.

Or they're, people who are at the day reporting center because they had their, their driver's license.

They take it.

All right.

So it's like, you know, our next story, we'll move on from that one that the Wichita City Council has also just given the green light to an expanded drone program for police.

This is a hot button issue.

This pilot program aims to get eyes on emergency scenes even faster, but it's also raising some questions about privacy kicks.

Nick Nelson explains.

The Wichita City Council unanimously voted to push forward with a pilot program to enhance the police department's drone operation in emergencies.

Captain Aaron Moses says it's a 12 month pilot program and will include three new drones that will be stationed on top of Fire Station two on Broadway.

Moses says the drone pilots wouldn't have to be on scene with this new expansion, so the drone can get to the scene earlier.

Those drones are connected to our computer aided dispatch system and our real time information center.

That'll be coming online soon.

So these drones will be automatically dispatched to those priority calls for service a shooting, a cutting, a robbery, something like that.

However, some in the community want to make sure the needs of the department are aligned with protecting people's privacy rights.

Faith Martin spoke at the meeting and says she'd like to see regular policy reviews if the expansion were to go forward.

At the end of the day, technology that lessens the need to hire more policing so that we can use technology that's good, but we also want to make sure we have all the guardrails in place so that citizens rights are being protected, Moses says.

The WPD has been using aviation and dealing with emergencies for decades, and adds the department is being transparent about where the drones are through an online portal.

We worked with Skydio to develop this transparency portal, and we put that online January 1st of this year.

So every single one of our drone flights, including these drones, is first responder.

Flights are accessible to the public in near real time.

That's interesting to know.

And something else that comes to mind is I was on the council in 2001, 21 when the council approved the flock, license plate or plate reader system.

So, Doctor Fox, are we are we dealing with those same privacy issues with this drone system as well?

I mean, those issues aren't ever going to go away as this technology becomes more and more pervasive, not to say more and more invasive.

You know, the questions are going to have to be asked, the idea that citizens are going to be able to, you know, see the positions of the drones and, you know, see the areas that are being covered in real time.

That is potentially a strong protection.

But we also have to see how this might affect, police activity, you know, what populations are they going to be targeting with the information that the drones, the drones will be providing them with?

They're already using them quite extensively.

If anybody has participated in any of the demonstrations at downtown, Wichita, then you've seen the police out flying the drones around.

I mean, it's a very easy way for them to find out who's there.

Yeah.

And, you know, from a certain public safety perspective, I can understand them wanting to use this technology.

But with every step towards using a new technology, there's gotta be, concurrent steps to follow up the protections that need to be established.

I that while the technology is new, the effort and the way that they're using it in policing is not I mean, we've all seen police helicopters around the country.

We have them here in Wichita up until a few years ago.

That's a good point.

And we lost them because of budget cuts.

They do exactly the same thing and go out.

You fly over the area, you see who's there.

They had a camera that looked down.

What's going on down there?

I think what's happening is with drones, a lot of us as citizens are having to kind of recalibrate what our definition of a reasonable expectation of privacy is because we used to think, okay, airplanes, you know, there are 30,000ft in the air.

They really can't see me on the ground.

So if there's a wall between me and the road, then I'm okay if that, you know, that's a six foot fence, that's fine.

I'm within privacy.

But if that six foot fence doesn't have a roof over it, you know there is no privacy anymore.

Whether you're talking about police drones or private drones, they are up there.

They're all over the place.

It's really just kind of a change in what we can expect these days, because there's so many drones out there.

Judge during it, it offers a great enhancement to law enforcement capacity and capability.

It offers significant savings.

Also, I can remember officers that were friends of mine that died in the when the helicopter crashed.

They were delivering it somewhere to get it work done well and, I think it's what they do with the footage and what they choose to broadcast.

It's what's important.

And I can certainly see ancillary individuals privacy being invaded unintentionally.

You know, nobody knows they did it until somebody somebody's looking at their video going, There's Aunt Sally now, right.

Getting ready to get in the shower.

You know, something like the last word on this quickly.

Well, the, you know, I think it was an executive, a Sun Microsystems said you already lost your privacy.

You get over.

But the, but the thing, you know, when you look at like Old Town, when they put in the cameras, you know, they were not using the cameras for, you know, catching thugs, they were using the cameras to catch minor traffic violations that they had.

Right.

You know, and so it's, it's all in how they're going to use this thing.

Yep.

Now in our last story last week, we talked about former Governor Jeff Colyer running to reclaim the office that he briefly held several years ago this week.

Collier sat down for an interview with Cakes Peeler Pedroza.

Take a look.

Four years ago we were just talking about this.

You and I were sitting out front having very similar interview.

What has changed as far as your views on the governor's office and you doing the job since then?

So I have a unique record.

This is the first time in Kansas where you could actually have seen the governor's performance.

And then a few years later, actually have the opportunity to do it again.

And Doctor Jeff Colyer says his years Kansas governor was a good year, full of successes for the state.

He takes credit for ending the school funding lawsuit in Kansas and fully funding K-12 education.

He says privatizing Medicaid in Kansas is what allowed that the way we funded it is by not raising taxes, but by making Medicaid more efficient.

By privatizing Medicaid, we were able to have enough money in order to start focusing on it.

President Trump's strength and courage inspired me to get back into the arena from his announcement video.

The bottom line is the governor, Jeff Paul here.

We will cut taxes, just kick off rallies across the state.

Thank you so much for joining us and his interview with us.

Collier leaned into his relationship with the president, saying Kansas needs a proven partner.

Kansas is the heart of America.

And that partnership with the president as he's trying to restore jobs.

You need a governor who is incredibly active, who knows how to bring those jobs to Kansas.

We need those manufacturing jobs here in Wichita, also in our small communities across the state.

We can build those jobs.

Let's take advantage of what the president is trying to do and make Kansas great again.

Pillar.

He's already trying to align himself with President Trump.

Obviously, Laura Kelly has tried to be a middle of the road candidate.

Colyer is not going to be that.

No.

And I think there's two things that kind of play into that.

One, it was his loss to Kobach in the primary in 2018 by 300 votes.

What did Kobach have?

Kobach had the conservative credentials.

He had the support of Donald Trump at the time.

Colyer knows that.

And I think that's playing a big role in why he's running this race the way he is.

And also in the last few years, throughout the pandemic, he worked very closely with the white House and has developed relationships there.

So he's definitely using those.

Doctor Fox, this is your bread and butter.

I want to give you some time to chime in on this here.

My first thought is how long is the memory of the typical Kansas voter?

Brownback left office, with a terrible reputation.

I don't think there's any chance whatsoever that Colyer will try to bring back Governor Brownback to try to promote his brand, because he wouldn't be able to promote it at all.

But you also look at the Democratic side.

Are they going to be able to effectively use Brownback as an albatross to weigh down Colyer?

Maybe it's been too long.

Maybe there's enough history with Governor Kelly.

Maybe Trump has changed the landscape enough that that's kind of gone down into the memory hole.

I would be curious to find out about that.

I'm going to have to wrap it up right there.

Thank you so much.

And thank you to our guests, Phil Journey, Russell Fox, Pilar Pedraza and Dion Lefler for joining us today.

And thanks to cake and CSN for sharing their video with us as well.

I'm Jared Cirillo.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend.