From the Alvin and Rosalie Sara Check studio PBS Kansas Presents Kansas Week, a vital medical lifeline for Wichita's homeless, is on the brink of collapse.

Who fills the gap if it goes away?

Also, a troubling rise in youth involved shootings has Wichita searching for answers.

We'll break down the disturbing numbers and the community's desperate plea for peace.

But first, half $1 million to get on the debate stage.

A Kansas Republican Party setting a high bar for its gubernatorial candidates.

That's sparking a fierce fight over money, access and who really gets to be heard by voters.

That's what we're talking about right now on Kansas Week.

Hello and welcome to Kansas Week.

I'm Jared Cirillo.

What's the price for a spot on the Republican debate stage in the race for Kansas governor?

Well, the party says half $1 million, but one candidate calls it a pay to play system designed to keep grassroots voices off the stage.

Senior political reporter Pilar Pedroza has the details of this growing controversy.

It is a total pay to play contract.

It is controlling who is going to be seen by the people of this state.

Stacy Rogers isn't a big name in the Kansas Republican Party, but the owner of a consignment store brand with franchises across the country was one of the first Republicans to join the 2026 governor's race.

Since then, she says she's put some 44,000 miles on her car, traveling around the state and meeting voters, looking people in the eye and asking them what is important to them.

She's upset with this agreement or contract.

The state Republican Party wants her to sign.

In order to be able to participate in any party sponsored gubernatorial debates next year.

Among other things, the agreement says a candidate has to have at least $500,000 cash in hand by January 10th, or $250,000 in cash from a specific number of Kansas donors and a certain number of counties, or $250,000 in cash from a specific number of Kansas donors in a certain number of counties, or with a specific percentage from each congressional district.

What we want to do is get the best candidate, obviously, and the best candidate we know to win.

It requires money, so we set some metrics.

Party Chair Denise Herbert says that $500,000 is half of what Derek Schmidt, the last Republican nominee for governor, had as of January of election year.

If you get to January and you don't have that amount of money, it makes it nearly impossible to win the primary.

And it probably makes it completely impossible to win the general.

Just because you have a certain dollar amount in your bank account does not even mean that you have that support by the people.

It just says you have money, Roger says.

She's not going to sign it.

I just could not sign that contract.

It was it just.

Yeah, it goes against absolutely everything that I'm working on in this campaign.

Instead, Rogers plans to continue her method of grassroots campaigning, reaching voters in person.

But Herbert says it's not feasible to win that way.

There's just not enough time to reach enough voters in person, something she estimates would take about five years.

PR Pedroza kake news on your side.

And we have a full panel today here to talk about this and some of the week's other big stories in State Representative John Carmichael.

State Representative Henry Helgeson, former Wichita City Councilman Brian Frye, and long time journalist Craig Andrus.

Thank you for all of you for joining us today.

I'll start with the two Democrat lawmakers on the on the table today.

Pay for play.

Yes.

Yes or no?

Henry.

Go ahead.

Well, I'm not going to sign anything like that, but, you know, it's against everything I think Kansas wants and can candidates.

Yeah.

There are ways they need to, cut the field down a little bit to make it manageable on stage.

But to have to have a dollar figure says the wrong thing.

I think it says the wrong thing about the party.

And I think they should change that or look for something else but that.

But as we know, Republicans can set their own rules just as the Democrats can.

So with a large slate of candidates, and I don't know even how many candidates we have at this point, I think it was about ten, right.

It's ten candidates on the Republican side.

Correct.

Brian Fry, tell me you're you're the Republican on the table here.

So tell me about what you think about that.

Well, that is a lot of candidates, no doubt about it.

It has to be whittled down.

And we've seen in the presidential elections, you know, the debate stage 10 or 11 candidates, and you end up focusing on the 3 or 4 that are probably the most, well known.

And it takes money to be well known.

I mean, this last governor race was several million dollars.

And, you're going to have to fund that campaign.

It's just too big of a state to be able to get out and not door to door on everyone, and you've got to have the money to be able to do that.

It's not pay to play, though, because they're not saying the money has to go to the party.

It's just saying you have to have the money to say that you're that's in your bank, in your bank, that you're going to be able to fund your campaign and what's necessary.

So, but yeah, you've got to start making it more smaller so you know who you're able to have the time to talk about it.

And we did see something like this happen on the national stage, John Carmichael.

And this was also the Republican presidential contest a few years ago.

But it wasn't based on money.

It was based on polling.

They weren't, you know, candidates that were polling less than 1% weren't allowed to take part.

Well, that still raised a controversy.

And actually, that was a standard also used by the, sponsors of the presidential debates back when we used to have a nonpartisan commission.

You had to have a certain showing of viability through various national polls in order to get on.

But that's not what this is about.

What's it?

We were here three weeks ago with my friend Ty Masterson.

We were talking about what would happen to a good culture warrior like Ty.

If all of the candidates on the Republican ticket were over here, with the exception of Vicky Schmidt.

And if the vote got divided up between all the culture warriors, then Vicky Schmidt may not stands to come out as the plurality nominee and absolutely Ty and Jeff Colyer, etc.. They can't have that.

They've got to maintain the ideological purity of the party.

And so one of the ways to do that is reduce the number of candidates in an attempt to marginalize Vicky Schmidt's candidacy.

There you go.

There's a political opinion.

Craig, let me move over to you.

You've been a journalist for 30 years here in Wichita, at least.

I don't remember ever hearing something like this happening.

You know, this is one of those rare moments where it's it's kind of confusing to look at having covered politics and covered all of you for so long that the average voter, I don't think really cares about money.

Unless, you know, you break it down and say, okay, money gets you to the table, money gets you on the platform to have your voice heard.

Isn't it true that I, and I would argue that most of the people watching this particular program are going to be a little more plugged in and a little more interested and a little more knowledgeable than the average person who might be voting or who might, I would say, stumble into a voting booth.

But I don't think most people care about money.

In fact, I think most people would tell you, at least from the folks that I've talked to over the years, could we please just get the money out of politics?

We don't need money.

And that's not to say this is a horrible idea, which I'm going to bring up the question to you, Brian.

At what point do you say money shouldn't be here?

It shouldn't be a pay to play system.

Or am I going too far calling this pay to play?

And I it's a legitimate question.

I'm not being facetious at all in this.

I'm.

I'm just wondering, where do we draw the line here?

And where do voters say, okay, enough's enough?

I'm not going to vote for any of these people.

If this is the way it's going to be, I'm going to go with a Green party.

But hasn't that been the argument for decades, though?

And it seems like, yeah, we end up back at this equation.

It's money or polling numbers or I mean, I think you have to start setting some benchmarks as to who should be at the table and who's going to have enough.

Look, if she's got enough supporters out there that are willing to vote for her and start talking to the party about, we want her on the stage, then let those voices be heard.

Yeah, that you know, I don't disagree that polling is a way to try to filter it, but you need to remember what Tim Masterson told us just 3 or 4 weeks ago on this show.

He said, I think I'm about the only Republican who couldn't write myself a check for a half million dollars.

Yes.

Jeff Sawyer has a history of writing big checks for himself, for example.

So you don't have to get popular support.

You don't have to raise money.

You just have to be Bill Warren with the silver spoon.

And write yourself a $250,000 check and you're in like flint.

And I think of all the people that I've talked to who have run for office, that have that kind of warchest available to them personally, they don't necessarily have to worry about getting out and finding the money.

The money is already there, and any more money that comes in they can just add to and then true, use that how they see people who have wealthy friends and let's say that way and let's face it, they've made they've been politicians a long time.

They've made relationships over the past few decades and they've got their supporters.

Henry Helgeson, anything to add in 30s?

No, I'm all right.

We'll move on then.

As Wichita grapples with a troubling rise in youth involved shootings.

Community members gathered for a candlelight vigil this past week to pray for peace.

Police Chief Joe Sullivan in Wichita says the community must do more to engage young people.

And he notes that of the 54 homicides in Wichita so far this year, more than half involved either a victim or a suspect under the age of 25.

The concern comes despite some positive news.

Gun thefts from cars are actually down about 8% compared to last year.

Still, vigil organizers and police are pleading with gun owners to secure their firearms, stressing that every stolen weapon can end up in the wrong hands.

Former Councilman Frye, I'll turn to you.

We've both been on the city council and dealt with police issues before.

It again seems like a never ending story, but I mean, that doesn't mean we have to stop the fight.

We have to continue trying to solve this.

And again, as the chief said, it's just not a police issue.

Police is not going to be able to solve it themselves.

It's going to take the community.

It's going to take parents raising their children and not allowing cell phones and computers to, video games to be the babysitter.

It's going to be personal responsibility.

And, and people taking, action and being held accountable.

Right.

Look, the police department is still short.

They were short when we were on the council.

We funded a different way to maybe, address the situation with violence interrupters.

There seemed to be some success with that program.

But it is it's it's going to take the entire community.

It's going to take all of us as responsible adults, continue to help, championing better, more peace.

Yeah.

John Carmichael, let me move over to you.

From a state lawmaker standpoint, anything that's going on in the state legislature regarding guns.

And to be clear right now, what's going on in the state legislature is, more importantly, what has gone on.

We have made it too easy for too many people to carry guns 24 hours a day, anywhere and everywhere.

And when you talk about young people, I mean, now Kansas, 18 years old, with a concealed carry permit, you can carry your gun around with you in your car all you want.

And young people don't necessarily have the maturity to deal with that type of responsibility.

And so fights that at one time were fights and maybe at one time might have been nice things.

Now they end up with a carload of 17 year olds running through the intersection at, at Tyler or wherever on the West side last week with a car load of guns.

When the police officer stops, folks, no matter how suspicious they look or whatever, so long as they don't have wants, warrants or anything like that, they can carry all the guns they want at 3:00 in the morning, carousing around town and all the officer can see us.

Have a nice day, boys.

Are you drawing a direct correlation and lowering the age to two fold correlation?

Number one is we've liberalized our gun laws to the point that anybody and everybody's carrying or has one stashed under their seat.

And secondarily, moving that age from 21 back to 18 is not a smart idea.

And you may say, oh, but these kids were 17 in this particular instance.

That's kind of like saying the beer age is 21.

There's diversion.

And if you don't set off law requiring some level of maturity, more and more kids are going to get hurt.

And I think kids are going to drink.

I think that I think regardless of the drinking age, people are going to own guns regardless of whether or not they are legally able to do that.

Certainly felons find a way to get guns, guns left in cars.

Not a great idea.

If you go out to my car in the parking lot right now, you will not find a gun in the car.

It's that simple.

Having said that, Brian, let me ask you this.

And, Jared, feel free to pass on to both of you have been on the city level, and Wichita has been dealing with this problem for so long now, trying to get guns out of the hands of criminals.

I think Wichita PD.

Now, don't they just assume everybody has a gun and everybody could be violent at this point?

The former police chief, Gordon Ramsey, I think he even mentioned while we were on the council, he even mentioned that he's he you know, we have we we train our officers these days to assume.

Yeah.

I think everyone they encounter has a gun.

Yeah.

In this environment, in this culture, I think you have to assume that you have to protect yourself.

Time though, where anyone carrying a gun was either a criminal or they had a concealed carry permit or a law enforcement officers badge.

Today, none of those qualifications are there, and so officers can't deal with bad and suspicious people on the streets who are carrying guns.

All they can do is say, well, that's a nice pistol.

Have a nice evening.

And those people go out and commit crimes.

At least we could put people in jail who were carrying.

And yes, it's important to defend the Second Amendment.

And I had a concealed carry permit and I used to carry guns and so on.

I've concluded really?

That's I did not know that about you.

I had no idea.

We worked together at the state House, and.

Yeah, I had a gun on my left ankle.

Okay.

Let me let Henry Helguson in here.

There are three facets that should be dealt with, and you have to deal with all of them if you're going to make a difference.

And too often we're not one.

The place where we don't have enough police officers now, and everybody understands it from community policing straight through.

We have decided that it's better to cut the budgets and have less police officers.

That's a problem that we need to deal with per second.

But the police officers budget in, at least in the city of Wichita, has risen 20 or $30 million.

There are less police officers on the beat and working with the communities and working with the neighborhoods than there are now.

And still short and still short.

And we can either make a decision that that's important enough to correct violence or not.

And right now we have made that as a policy decision because we haven't done anything for it.

Second, John brought up reasonable laws with regards to guns, and I think almost all people will feel that way.

And the third is parents that don't intervene with youth or that youth don't have the, programs or we need a it's not rocket science.

It's been done in hundreds of cities around the community, around the country, after school programs, intervention programs, counseling, all those programs should be done.

And if those three things are attached, we can make a difference.

And gun violence in the community.

Yeah.

All right.

Moving on.

Our next story, a medical lifeline for Wichita's homeless population, is now in danger of being eliminated.

The ICT Street team is a group of volunteer doctors and nurses who provide free primary care on the streets.

They visit homeless encampments and shelters to treat dozens of patients every night.

But now they're facing a perfect storm a 66% increase in patients this year, combined with a 30% cut in state funding and a 150% spike in the cost of medications.

Organizers warn that without their services, patients living under bridges will lose their only source of care, and the city's emergency rooms will surely see a spike in visits for illnesses that the team says they could have prevented, putting even more strain on the health care system as winter approaches.

Brian Frye, I'll start with you again.

I think you and I were on the council.

I think we had a hand in the vote in 2021 that approved the ICT street team, or ICT one.

So city one.

Yeah, integrated care team.

And this is a slightly different program.

This is all volunteers and community activists that are helping supported ICT was responding to mental health cases.

But again the need is out there.

We've seen an increase in homelessness every year.

And yes, there's second light now that is providing, emergency care 24 over seven, which is certainly helping.

But it doesn't seem to be going away.

It's it's a challenge not only in this city, but across the country.

Thankfully, we have nonprofit groups and volunteers that are willing to step in and provide needed care and services, and that's really where it should be.

Getting more church groups, more volunteer groups, more, volunteers to help aid and provide resources.

And here in the Wichita area, the city opened that new homeless shelter a few months ago, maybe a year or so ago.

And I keep hearing that it's not full.

So why is it not full?

But we still have a huge problem on the streets downtown especially.

But it's not only downtown expanding into the outskirts.

Why do we have open beds in this brand new homeless shelter?

Well, and people aren't taking advantage of them.

You all, you always have a situation where many of the homeless do not want to go into a shelter in a controlled environment.

Sometimes it's been because of pets, because they have pets and they don't want to go in.

Whatever the reasons, legislature hasn't been given an update yet, and I'm hoping that will we will in the next month or two before the session.

Getting back to act.

Correct.

Is that.

Yes.

Street to street team?

I see no.

Is it funded directly with, getting into more account?

Is it funded directly?

By the city?

No, no, there's two different programs here.

ICT Street team is more volunteer led.

ICT one was a combination of law enforcement, mental health and fire department to respond to mental health cases, emergency responders for that.

Check them and down the people that are, seen on the street asleep or broke it or, passed out or whatever.

So it's funded directly with the city that was that program or that program.

The program that we're talking about today is state funded is, as far as I know, because the the it comes with this is why they're disbanding basically got caught in across the board budget cuts that the Republicans put in their budget.

You'll recall we had used to have the governor's budget and then the legislature will hold on or to add it to it.

The way it's turned out now is my Republican colleagues propose a bare bones budget with significant reductions, and now we're starting to see the impact.

Another impact we really ought to be worrying about in Sedgwick County is the letter that we received from the county commissioners about a week and a half ago that says that the adult corrections services, the money from the state, is being cut by about $2.5 million per year.

And the funds are being in part, at least reallocated to Johnson County.

And that's going to be an absolute disaster for us.

It's bad enough to have community or the Work release center, 250 bed prison in downtown Wichita, and now you want to take away the probation officers.

When people don't go to prison, they go out on probation with inadequate supervision.

That's a recipe for disaster, Craig.

Go ahead.

And here, let me throw out a scenario here why this is needed.

If you've ever, let's say somebody was helping an old lady across the street, literally helping her across the street near downtown Wichita.

And you get hit by a car and you end up spending 11.5 hours.

It's just a hypothetical 11.5 hours in the emergency waiting room.

Look at the population in there.

And I can tell you a large portion of this is going to be homeless people that I've heard I've heard this.

So, you know, it's true.

They're using the E.R.

as their primary health care.

So at what point do you step up either as a Democrat or Republican or just grassroots effort to say, hey, let's fund these things.

Let's go ahead and offer some health services or some mental health services to help people out or to help out with the fact that Wichita is now a homeless destination for homeless people.

Like it or not, you could.

I'm sure you could argue with me, but this is a bit of a homeless destination because Wichita does a lot for the homeless community.

The homeless community knows that.

They know that in Kansas City, they know that in Tulsa, they're not in Oklahoma City.

Wichita has just done a good job.

Is there are more to be done?

Yeah, I believe that there is.

I don't know if spending more money is the answer that most people want to hear, but I pose that question to anybody here.

Should we be spending more money on this and find a way to spend more?

Yeah, we're hearing of these problems.

But I mean, meanwhile, like Representative Carmichael said, the state has cut its budget.

The city of Wichita lowered its mill levy with the current council, but they put more money in for funding of the homeless shelter.

Yeah.

So.

Understood.

Understood.

Even though and and John and I will disagree a little bit of times because I tend to be a little bit I, I'm known as Henry.

Henry pinches the penny.

Go ahead.

But if there are programs that are worthwhile like this, there will be enough advocates there.

If we get the message that this is a priority and it goes back just as we talked about the kids, and violence, there is a need for the funding and there should be there will be money there at the state level.

There'll be money there at the county, in the city, if there's enough people squawking about it and enough legislators, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

That squeaky wheel gets legislators.

Politicians comes when you fund one thing.

What is what cuts?

Yeah, yeah.

A good friend of mine was quick on the homeless problem.

He said, you know, we need more money for this.

I said, but what are you going to cut?

Right?

Do you want it?

Do you want to cut the income tax cuts and increase income tax?

No, we don't want to do that.

I'll lead into your another story on that is that we will cut some of the incentives that are given to businesses that don't develop into jobs.

All right.

That is a good segue into our next story.

The Wichita City Council is giving spirit AeroSystems a major tax break, despite the company failing to create the hundreds of jobs that it promised the council voted unanimously to extend a property tax abatement until 2030, even though spirit did not meet its 2018 goal of creating 320 new jobs.

City and company officials are blaming the pandemic and 737 Max groundings for the shortfall, and spirit now pledges to hire 600 new employees.

The vote comes as Spirit's signature product, the Boeing 737 fuselage faces intense pressure this week.

Rival Airbus's A320 officially overtook the 737 as the most delivered jetliner in history, ending Boeing's decades long reign.

All of this as Boeing moves to reacquire spirit by the end of the year in a bid to stabilize its supply chain and shore up production of that very same.

737 Brian Frye You know, since you've been on the, show, what do you get on the city council before?

So, you know, it's interesting, though, that I did not know this when I started my term on the city council a few years ago.

None of the aircraft plants actually pay a property tax to the city of Wichita.

Right or wrong, that is correct.

We both voted for it.

So that's correct.

And this is actually funneled through the across the street, the Air capital flight line.

And there was requirement of capital expenditure as well as jobs.

Certainly no one predicted the the max struggles and or Covid.

Right.

And they hit the number early and then it dropped off.

And then it's been back up and it's fluctuated.

They did make the capital investment.

And so this is the second five year abatement of that property.

It's great that they're going to see this.

The 600, added, we hope, we hope.

And again we've got the Boeing sale hopefully here.

So I mean yes, I want to hold incentives accountable and make sure they follow through on their promises.

And that's why the city has that, look back, to make sure that it is being held accountable and track it.

And there is an allowance for economic downturn.

And that's why it's done this way.

Henry Helguson, you know, the argument is that these companies employ so many people, they contribute to the economy, but when they don't meet their goals and promises, we continue to give them tax abatements and tax money.

So, you know, it used to be we'd have some independent analysis on whether or not the jobs are going to come in.

Yeah.

And we'd have that at the state and we'd have it, with Boeing, where spirit.

Right now, legislators quite often give money away because they just want to give money away to people that have given, campaign contributions.

Yeah.

If you look at the City of Wichita race 20s, if you look at the city of Wichita race, the money that's coming in, so much of it is from interest groups or from companies that have something in front of the city council where they're going to get some tax breaks.

Now, that's a concern that we should look at.

That's a wrap for this week.

Thank you.

Thank you so much to everyone for joining us today.

And thanks to K and KSN for helping out as well.

I'm Jaron Cirillo.

We'll see you next week.