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

Coming up on Kansas week.

The rematch is on.

The race for Kansas Attorney General is already heating up in what's expected to be a repeat of one of the closest contests in state history.

Also, a new push to clean up Kansas voter rolls using federal data.

It sparked a debate about election integrity versus privacy rights.

But first, a deadly failure of equipment and a deadly failure of oversight.

That is the picture emerging from Washington this week as investigators probe the midair collision that killed 67 people on a flight from Wichita.

We'll discuss those stories and more right now on Kansas week.

Hello and welcome to Kansas Week.

I'm Jaren Cirillo.

This week we got the first two answers in the investigation and the deadly midair collision over Washington, D.C. that killed 67 people aboard a flight from Wichita.

The NTSB launching its hearings Wednesday, revealing that the Army helicopter was flying too high and with inaccurate altitude readings.

KAKE's Pilar Pedraza reports.

Newly released video shows the moments before the deadly midair crash in Washington, D.C., in January.

On the left, you see the lights from the American Airlines plane shining as it heads toward the runway at Reagan National Airport.

An Army Black Hawk helicopter is flying right toward it before the two collide over the Potomac River, killing all 67 people on board both aircraft.

How much tolerance for safety should there be when civilian lives are at risk?

The NTSB Wednesday kicked off three days of investigative hearings.

The families of the victims sat in the audience, some wearing pictures of their loved ones around their necks.

The agency released thousands of pages of evidence, including new data from the plane's cockpit voice recorder, that shows the pilots of the plane verbally reacted to the helicopter less than a second before impact.

One pilot saying, oh, expletive!

The black box transcripts showed the helicopter pilots had trouble hearing air traffic control.

The chopper's crew engaged its microphone.

At the same time, air traffic control told them to pass behind the plane.

The NTSB says that instruction was stepped on and pilots never heard the command.

The agency also says helicopter was flying higher than it should have.

And there are questions about whether the pilots knew that there is a possibility that what the crew saw was very different than what the true altitude was.

We did testing in May that shows concerns with the altimeters.

And here to discuss this and some of this week's other news is Sedgwick County Commissioner Ryan Beatty, Wichita Eagle editor Dionne Leffler.

Wichita State University professor Chase Willingham and former Wichita City Councilman Brian Frye.

Thank you all for joining us today.

Commissioner, I'll start with you.

You know, they'll hash out all the details and, you know, we aren't the people to do that.

I guess we can talk about it all day, but I just wonder, will anything change?

Do we think anything is going to change out of this?

Well, we sure hope so.

And it's important to remember 67 people died in this tragedy.

Doctor Maurice Duggins, who is now the chief medical director Via Christi Saint Joe, his daughter Kaia was on this flight when we lost her beautiful, beautiful woman.

So something should be, something should come of this.

We've got to identify where are the challenges where?

Where are the trouble spots?

Where we're inconsistencies.

Was this equipment failure?

Was this an issue of air traffic control in regards to the correspondence?

And something should come of this.

This was one of the worst, air disasters in U.S. history.

So, yeah, I think the public expects it.

I'm glad they're having hearings.

And I do think that we expect that if it's, if this is just outdated technology, then I expected investment needs to be made so that we can make sure that air safety is confident.

The Americans are confident in air safety now.

Professor, I'll move over to you.

What are your thoughts on this?

Well, I agree with the commissioner.

I think that we need to, trust the NTSB, that they're going to be doing a thorough investigation of this.

I think the most important thing that we can be doing right now is remembering the victims.

My family are members of the Wichita figure skating community who were devastated by this tragedy.

So it's really important that we, trust the NTSB, that they're going to conduct a thorough investigation and trust that they along with the military and airport authorities, are going to be taking every step that is necessary to make sure that something like this doesn't happen again.

What's really important is that we don't politicize this.

This type of tragedy right after this air disaster.

What we saw was that legislative leaders in Topeka were doing just that.

They were drawing upon this tragedy and the fact that elected officials used that flight to Washington as a justification and a motivator for their effort to change the way in which U.S. Senate vacancies and other vacancies are filled.

Stripping Governor Kelly of that ability to fill temporary vacancies.

And I really think it was a disappointing politicization of this tragedy.

So I hope that we don't see that out of these hearings.

Diane Lefler, do you agree with the professor?

Well, yeah.

I mean, you know, if you want to talk about politicization of this, I mean, why are we even talking about this?

I mean, we all know that it was caused by diversity, equity and inclusion.

President Trump told us that the first day.

And Senator Roger Marshall told us that a couple of days later.

Okay.

I think Mr. Lefler is being a bit facetious, a bit facetious, but, you know, I mean, that that's politicizing a tragedy.

And, you know, I wrote columns about it because I was incensed by that.

And, you know, I mean, the you know, the frustration in this is, is that, the reason that the flight that the helicopter was even there in the first place was they were practicing for, what they call, continuity of government operations, which is where the, the important people get flown out of Washington in the case of an emergency.

And, it was just, it was it was just appalling to see how this was initially handled by our electeds at the federal level.

Brian Fry, I'll give you the last word.

If I could return to what the commissioner was saying.

Look, I've been fortunate to fly in and out of Reagan several times during my tenure on council, and I've always concerned about the amount of traffic that flies in out of Reagan.

And it is an unsettling feeling when you see that many aircraft that close.

So I hope we go back to the original thought of, first off, remembering the victims.

But focus on solutions.

There's a lot of voices being heard right now, and I hope people pay attention to those voices so that something safer can come out of this.

All right.

Voters in the fast growing suburb of Meigs will decide Tuesday whether to pay a higher sales tax.

A question on the August 5th primary ballot proposes a new 1% city sales tax that would fund infrastructure projects.

Officials say 85% of that revenue would go to street and sidewalk repairs, while the remaining 15% would be used for property tax relief.

The Mays vote comes as residents, also in Wichita's first and fifth districts, will also head to the polls to decide primary races for city council and school board.

Professor, I'll start with you.

You've been an outspoken critic about property taxes and sales taxes on your Facebook page in this community and especially in Wichita.

You were upset that the school bond issue failed.

And what do you think of this Maes issue?

Sales taxes are inherently regressive.

Taxes that place disproportionate burdens on lower income and middle income households.

They are implemented by elected officials largely as a way to try to make a case for reducing property tax burdens.

But we know that sales taxes disproportionately burden the lower income households.

That's why the governor led the charge to try to eliminate the sales tax on groceries.

But now what you are seeing is local communities across the state of Kansas trying to implement, new sales tax initiatives, including here in the city of Wichita.

Property taxes are far more equitable, far more reliable.

Source of revenue for, local governments.

But, local elected officials are leading a charge to try to move away from property taxes and toward sales taxes, largely in an effort to to give large tax breaks to wealthy homeowners and and businesses.

Commissioner Sedgwick County was talking about this just a less than a year ago, about raising a sales tax in order to lower the property tax.

I talk about it frequently, and I would take.

The only exception I would take to professor's comment is that property taxes are the most stable, secure form of taxation that we have, and local governments are dependent upon it.

The challenges, because of the rising of and sharp increases in recent property taxes, it it has put a burden on people.

People are stretched.

And it's not just homeowners or wealthy people that are doing it.

I have anecdote after anecdote of renters.

40% of our homeowners or residents here in Sedgwick County are renters.

They also are seeing increases in rent rates, because of, of property valuation increases, property insurance increases.

Mesa situation is really unique.

They are trying to find a way to offset property taxes.

But, you know, most of the traffic that comes into the city of Mesa throughout the day is because of the school district, and they're trying to maintain roads, maintain that infrastructure there.

Because most of the people that are participating in Mesa's economy don't live there to pay city taxes.

So it's a really unique situation.

We'll see how it goes on Tuesday.

But I know that all local governments, are feeling the pinch of and the stress of burdensome, burdensome property taxes.

And what are their sources of revenue can they use?

Brian Frye's former city councilman.

The city of Wichita did this 20 years ago, or maybe even more than that to pay for Kellogg repairs.

So it's 1985.

And by the way, that tax has never gone away this day.

And that was 1985.

And it was split 5050 for property tax relief and roads, bridges and streets that never specifically said Kellogg.

And that's one of the benefits, because the city has been able to use that money for road maintenance and operational stuff.

Whereas I know they're in a fight right now in Johnson County where they're trying to extend the sales tax for public safety and that's being challenged because they're saying it's for a new project.

And that was supposed to be sunset it.

Whereas Wichita has had this sales tax that's been allowed to use for growth for Kellogg and so forth.

Look, Mesa is growing and yes, it's because of the school district.

And that also creates more challenges for, property tax burden because that's the highest part of my property tax bill is the May School District.

But that's also why it's growing.

So it's a delicate balance.

You need that infrastructure growth, to handle the traffic.

And I see it every day.

Diane Leffler well, the, I find myself agreeing with, Professor Billingham that, that substituting sales tax is, is just shifting the burden.

And it does shifted on to the people who can least afford to pay it.

And stop me if I'm wrong.

But, with the way that the assessments are done, I believe that, that businesses reap a much bigger benefit, from, you know, that a comparable a comparable with comparably valued property, business or residential.

The residential homeowner just pays about half what the business would be paying.

So there really is, there really is an argument to be made that that shifting property tax to the property tax burden, to the sales tax burden is actually harming the people that you're trying to help because.

And the other thing, too, is that a lot of the people are eligible for the home homestead exemption, which can.

So they're not going to pay the sales tax, reduce their property tax.

Yeah, right.

Not their sale.

Right.

But not their sales tax.

So, I think I think Professor Billingham has the right of it here in response.

Me, I would just say using it for core infrastructure purposes versus using it as a county.

What we've talked about is, you know, institutions like the zoo or exploration place and Trust Bank arena, they have a pool factor where 25% of all the dollars being spent there, being spent from people outside of Sedgwick County coming to participate in the economy here.

So it's a proper use of property taxes versus sales taxes.

It's a debate we're going to continue to have.

But one thing is certain is that people do feel stretched.

They feel stretched.

Those on fixed income, those that are small business owners do feel stretched.

And property taxes are top of mind for a lot of people.

Yeah.

Statewide politics now, Democrat Chris Mann has announced Wednesday that he will once again challenge Republican incumbent Chris Kobach for attorney general in 2026.

That move sets up a repeat of the 2022 election.

While Kobach won by only the closest margin of any statewide race that year.

Mann is a former prosecutor.

He has accused Kobach of political ambition, while Kobach's campaign fired back, touting his record on public safety.

Diane Leffler, I guess, you know, he accuses him of political ambition.

I don't think that's any secret to Kobach is a politician.

Yeah.

No, that's that's, that's that's baked into his DNA.

Yeah.

And, you know, I mean, the real question is, is, is, you know, what do you want out of that office?

And Kris Kobach made himself famous for opposing the policies and suing the Biden administration over practically everything under the sun.

Still doing it.

And Biden's gone.

So, you know, the, I think it's going to be a really interesting campaign, because you have you have one guy who's basically a career prosecutor, and you have another guy who's made his his mark by opposing Democratic policies and policies of administrations that no longer exist.

So it's going to be a very interesting race.

So will it be any different?

Will it still be close?

Well, you do think I don't know if it'll be any closer?

I mean, that was what, a million votes.

And it was less than 16,000 votes.

And that's pretty amazing.

But yeah I think it'll be very by the time it's over, I think we'll all be exhausted because these are the only two people running for this race that we probably can expect.

It'll be a year of campaigning and probably some mudslinging and some yeah, my records better than your record, etc.

so it's going to be a very long campaign and I think it will be very close.

Yeah.

Commissioner you know, it was tight.

I think it was 1.5% spread across the state, less than 2% here in Sedgwick County.

We have to understand the issues that will be top of mind for voters at this time a year from now.

So we all know Attorney General Kobach talks a lot about immigration.

He's led the charge, nationally in many of these conversations.

So what will Kansas his temperament be?

What will what will how will they be perceiving what's happening on the national level and at the state level a year from now?

With immigration.

And I think that will be the topic that will be discussed the most is how does Attorney General Kobach handling the immigration, not just the issues here in the statement, what's his temperament and what's his conversation?

And will Chris man tackle him on that?

So we're going to see I think that issue is not going away.

And I don't think Kris Kobach wants it to go away, frankly.

Professor, I know you've got a lot to say about this race.

Certainly.

The job of the state attorney general, first and foremost is to make sure that the laws of the state of Kansas are, are enforced fairly, and equitably these days.

The things that the attorney general of the state of Kansas is touting, are pretty far afield from that.

He is, complaining about supposed Chinese propaganda related to nefarious energy sources like solar power, for instance, and further marginalizing and sometimes demonizing, transgender students who have had success in athletic competition.

So, that isn't necessarily really in line with what I think the job of attorney general is really for.

It looks like we're going to have the same matchup again for the attorney general race this year.

I don't expect that the result is necessarily going to be any different.

But it's still good.

I think that man is in the race, if for no other reason than to remind the attorney general of what state he lives in, who he serves and what the job description of attorney general is.

All right.

When you talked about transgender athletes, Mr. Kovacs, attacks on transgender people go far beyond athletes.

Certainly.

It it it is just, I'm just talking about the most recent things he's been touting, through the official social media pages of The Office.

Yeah, but, I mean, the pressure that he's put on school districts, for example, is, is is is is another thing that's going to need to be discussed during this campaign and very likely will, I'm certain of it.

Kansas top election official is now pushing for a new way to clean up the state's voter rolls.

It's an idea that he says has support from the white House.

Secretary of State Scott Schwab, who is a Republican candidate for governor now, said after a visit to Washington this week that states should get access to Social Security, death records and federal immigration data.

He says the goal is to help remove deceased and non-citizen voters from the lists.

He is praising the current administration's collaboration, something he says was lacking from the previous one.

Privacy advocates are raising alarms, though, about this proposal.

They are citing concerns over the creation of a new centralized national database of personal information.

Professor, what's wrong with trying to make sure dead people announce citizens aren't voting in our elections?

I think it's completely unnecessary and potentially very dangerous.

There's zero evidence, no evidence whatsoever, of significant voter fraud or of non-citizens voting.

The this was a constant campaign, an overzealous campaign, a very costly campaign that was waged by the current attorney general, about voter fraud when he was in the office of secretary of state.

And it yielded very little for the state.

And now I think that Secretary Schwab has been much more levelheaded in general, and he has touted the fact that the state of Kansas has very safe elections.

He is right about that.

The the record of Kansas is is basically impeccable when it comes to election integrity.

But I think that this is probably about, Schwab positioning himself further to the right as he's preparing to run for governor.

But I think that it's wholly unnecessary and poses great risks for privacy and for disenfranchisement for all voters across Kansas.

Yeah.

Diane.

Well, it was I mean, it it would be a surprise to me if they don't have access to the Social Security Master Death file, I'm pretty sure that they they already do.

But the, you know, I, I once attended a, a Pew seminar on this, on this topic and, and the, the interesting thing was that while while registration fraud was pretty common, actual voting fraud was not, because what happens is you get the parties and they go out and they try to register people and they pay people to register people.

Right.

And they did that on quotas and they did that on a per card.

So if the that if the guy is quotas ten per day and he's at eight, he'd fill out a couple of extra ones and throw them in the hopper.

And but nobody knew that those were there.

And they never vote, you know, they never voted them.

So there wasn't really harm being done to the election itself by having the extra names on the rolls.

So it's it's kind of a and then there's the, there's the possibility of, you know, a lot of people have similar names.

And if you're Carlos Hernandez and there's another Carlos Hernandez and they go, oh, well, you know, this guy must be double voting.

You know, it's just crazy.

Brian Frei, do you think do you think Schwab is being nefarious here?

No, I mean, he's already said that he has very strong confidence in the integrity of our elections.

And we're fortunate to have a great, county election commissioner here, Laura Rainwater.

So look at all this conspiracy stuff.

The government knows more about us than we think already.

And so this idea of this national database, they know how much I should pay in taxes, but yet I still have to pay the pay to prepare to tell them.

So I'm not worried about any of that.

I think it's what Schwab is doing is necessary just to be able to say he has confidence in the system.

But you're right, it's probably more of that political posturing.

Yeah, yeah.

Commissioner.

Yeah, I was with Scott Schwab just yesterday.

This topic didn't come up.

But, what we did talk about was the the efficiency of elections, particularly in Sedgwick County.

And he is right.

We do a great job here.

There is not fraud.

There's not widespread fraud here in the state of Kansas.

That is a fact.

And there's data to support that.

You know, I'm going to take a wait and see approach on this thing and I think, it is apparent that we have a secretary of state that's running, to be the governor.

He's got to run in a Republican primary.

So that's going to curtail some of the things that are coming out of a lot of people's mouths right now.

But I think Scott's done a great job in the role, particularly regarding elections.

We do a good job here in Sedgwick County to take a wait and see approach.

I'm generally skeptical of a lot of things coming from Washington DC and involvement, particularly, on the local level.

But, but I think I'm going to just pause and and see what the Secretary of State has to recommend here if I might throw one more showing you here.

The, the voter fraud, aspect of this, Kris Kobach went to the state legislature and he got permission to, well, he got a bill passed, to allow him to prosecute, voting, voting fraud crimes.

He found less than ten.

And, and of the ten, he found, most of those were people who had that were wealthy people who had houses in more than one state and thought that that entitled them to vote in both states.

Right.

And, and we were promised that we would find hordes of, unauthorized immigrants voting.

And he never found one for the first time ever, leaders from the city of Wichita, Sedgwick County, and the public schools all came together this week trying to tackle some of the community's biggest issues.

Nearly $2.3 billion and local government budgets were represented in the room.

The group focused on themes including crime prevention and mental health services.

Leaders agreed that education is a key part of the solution to many of these problems, and that the goal is to work together on improving services, not just funding them.

A specific focus was on the district's Future Ready Centers, which provide students with hands on job training and a sense of a purpose.

Officials say the next step is, another town hall meeting to focus on one issue at a time.

They say this marks a new era of collaboration for Wichita.

You were there at the meeting, Commissioner.

Tell me how you thought it went.

This is the first time that all three of the bodies have met together.

It was intriguing.

I enjoyed the conversation.

This was a byproduct of a town hall that I had with mayor Lily woo and Board of Education President Diane Abbott wanted to bring all the elected bodies together.

And I hear the feedback from that.

And again, that you nailed it.

As you as you describe what we did there is are significant challenges in our community.

And it's very important that all local government elected leaders, that people are aware of the challenges that are going on in our schools and with our children.

There are ways that we can leverage things that we do at Sedgwick County to help assist better in the schools.

Things like home care.

Our health department, City of Wichita has transit and other things that they can do to help leverage resources.

So what this was primarily was a level of awareness.

It's just we need to be aware of what's happening with our children.

These are our future leaders.

These are our future small business owners.

These are our future.

This our future workforce, future elected leaders.

So we need to understand what's happening and find ways to better support and elevate the issues that our school systems are struggling with.

Professor, what do you think could come out of this meeting here?

Well, I watched that meeting.

And I still, after watching it, don't quite understand what its purpose was, other than to lend legitimacy to the idea that our local governments are inefficient and that we ought to be searching for efficiencies and eliminating redundancies.

When you hear phrases like that efficiencies, redundancies, what those things really mean, what you ought to be hearing is budget cutting, laying the groundwork for convincing people that our local governments are bloated and that they need to be, cut, or merged in some way.

And this brings us back, of course, to the property tax discussion that we had earlier.

It's largely about laying the groundwork for trying to find ways to cut property taxes for, wealthy homeowners and for businesses.

While I was watching, all of the elected officials in the room put little dot stickers on the no pants.

There are many other people in that room, including representatives from the SEIU and UT.

Those are the people who represent the workers, who make these local governments work on a day to day basis.

They didn't have a say during these meetings.

But if we're talking about efficiencies and redundancies, which is what I think that meeting was largely about, those people are the representatives of the workers who staff our local governments, who are going to be the ones most affected by any types of attempts to cut local government.

They really need to be at the table from day one.

So I'm going to go back to Commissioner Beatty here.

And let me ask you this.

Let me let you respond to him.

Do you think he he's claiming the goal is to find ways to cut, cut, cut, cut two things.

One, and I appreciate your perspective on this.

They were at the table.

They were at the town hall, and we had over 130 ideas presented.

And that was the concepts that we were working through in this on bank type setting and on the bank meeting.

No, this is about this is about efficiencies, but it's about services.

It's about understanding gaps and opportunities and understanding and valuing the school district on what's happening in our children and bringing them to the table for the first time.

We've had four on bonks with the city of Wichita since I've been in office.

Not one time until now has the school district even been at the table.

So that we are hearing their concerns and identifying gaps.

This is not about growing budgets.

It's not about shrinking budgets.

It's about identifying gaps and serving kids.

And you know, I'll be honest, when when I was campaigning for a city council seat and on the council, I would hear constituents talk about education being their number one, you know, and I would have to say it's hard to say, but that's a school board thing, not a city council thing.

Diane, tell me what you're think I think there's I think there's a danger here when we talk about, you know, when we talk about expanding, you know, they talked about a lot about expanding the, the trade school sort of approach to education.

And I think and there's a hazard to that, because one of the things that tends to happen is these people get to age 50 and their company can hire another young guy or a young woman and, and they, and they do that.

And so we're going to have to deal with that.

Bryan Frye 20s.

Exactly.

I think you worry about training people for specific jobs and not giving them the breadth of an education that allows them to do multiple things as they advance.

And the future ready centers right now are very successful, but I think it's very single minded focus, and you need to have better education all the way through your career.

That's a wrap for this week.

Thank you to all of our guests and cake and CSN as well.

We'll see you next week.

Oh.