News

A former southwest Kansan’s play is Broadway-bound.

As The Hutch News reports, 31-year-old Shane Howard grew up on the dry high plains of western Kansas, where he tapped a reservoir of inspiration for his play, “In Pursuit of Peace,” for the upcoming Broadway Bound Theater Festival in New York City.

Howard told The Hutch News the play has a western Kansas theme.

“This is a love story between a father and son, and how they deal with their relationship,” he said.

Lamar, Colorado will be getting a new truck stop soon.

As The Prowers Journal reports, the franchise Pilot Flying J will begin construction on a Pilot Travel Center, which will be located on land just north of Avenida Colonia and to the east of Highway 50, some time next month. 

The Lamar City Council approved the needed annexation of the TL Tucker property and there was no opposition to the project at a June 12 public hearing held during the council’s regular meeting.

The teacher crisis in Oklahoma doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon, reports The Oklahoman.

In a recent editorial in the San Antonio Express-News, two prominent Texas economists suggested ways to revitalize the rural economy in Texas.

Many people in Texas yearn for small-town life, write Thomas Tunstall and Gil Gonzalez, but their rural work options are limited. An investment in rural infrastructure, including broadband, would help this problem.

The State of Texas is putting the brakes on the idea of debtors jail, reports The San Antonio Express News. For decades, the Lone Star State has been tossing people in jail when they were unable to pay fines.

Last year, over half a million Texans served time for unpaid parking tickets and the court fines. But beginning in September, judges will begin considering the economic status of defendants before sending them to jail.

Texas Panhandle school districts are pleading with the state for more funding.

The trial of Shona Banda, a well-known advocate of medicinal marijuana, has been postponed.

As The Garden City Telegram reports, the trial was postponed from its original starting date of June 26 to Aug. 14 after Chief District Judge Wendel Wurst granted a request for continuance by Banda’s defense team.

The Eastern Panhandle Farmers' Market will begin this Wednesday, in Wheeler.

As The Pampa News reports, the market will begin at three p.m. on the east side of the Wheeler courthouse. The Farmer’s Market will welcome vendors from Wheeler, Gray, Collingsworth, and Hemphill counties, and will run until about six p.m. Another market will be held on Saturday July 1, from 9 a.m. til noon, and farmer’s markets will continue through the summer every Wednesday and Saturday until October.

Texas has been booming since 2010, and new census bureau numbers show that Hispanics account for a major part of that growth.

As Amarillo gears up to welcome minor league baseball to the yet-to-be built stadium downtown, HPPR thought it might be good to help High Plains folks brush up on their minor league knowledge.

Oklahoma will soon make its statewide reading test more difficult, and the change could result in more students being forced to repeat the third grade.

As Oklahoma Watch reports, the important, high-stakes test is already difficult for some. Last year, 12 percent of Oklahoma third graders received a grade of “unsatisfactory.”

The announcement that Amarillo’s downtown area will soon receive a minor league baseball team is just the latest boon to an already healthy economy in the center of the city.

As The Amarillo Globe-News reports, Amarillo’s downtown area already has 16 commercial development projects in the works. The projects are worth a combined $150 million dollars to the local economy.

In his 26 years at Meade Unified School District 226, a 400-student district southwest of Dodge City, Superintendent Kenneth Harshberger has watched the educational landscape change. 
Teachers are harder to recruit — even for elementary jobs, which were traditionally easier to fill. 
“The first time I tried to hire an elementary teacher 25, 26 years ago, we had over 100 applicants,” he recalled. “Now I can’t get five applicants.” 

Kansas U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts is not enthusiastic about the Senate’s version of the Obamacare replacement bill.

Nevertheless, he supports it.

Political strategists from both parties are expecting the 2018 governor’s race in Colorado to shatter state campaign spending records.

Fueling this belief, as The Denver Post reports, is the entry of one – possibly two – wealthy candidates who could take advantage of Colorado’s campaign rules to overwhelm the opposition with money from their own pockets.

Since Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed the so-called “sanctuary cities” bill into law, several Texas communities have signed onto a lawsuit in hopes of stopping the law before it goes into effect.

The suit was originally brought by Maverick County and the West Texas City of El Cenizo. But now, El Paso County and the cities of San Antonio, Austin and Dallas have also signed on to the suit.

In a new report, the top scientists in Texas have concluded that the hydraulic drilling process known as fracking pollutes the air, erodes soil and contaminates water.

As the San Antonio Express-News reports, the report also confirmed other studies that have found that wastewater disposal from fracking can lead to seismic activity.

The world is changing rapidly, and it’s hard not to wonder what the future will look like for the High Plains cowboy.

Locating cowhands to help with branding and vaccinations has been a tough proposition in many communities for years now, and some ranching operations now employ helicopters and drone technology to increase profits.

The boys of summer are back – well soon to be back - in Amarillo.

As the Amarillo Globe News reports, Elmore Sports Group announced Wednesday its plans to move its minor league baseball franchise, the San Antonio Missions, from San Antonio to Amarillo and to build a $45.5 million downtown stadium for the 2019 season.

‘I need more Mexicans.’

Several southwest Kansans are featured in a June 20 Bloomberg Businessweek article with that headline – a message the article reports Kansas farmers are sending to President Donald Trump.

According to Blooomberg, arrests of suspected undocumented workers have jumped 38 percent since Trump signed a pair of executive orders targeting immigration in January. This has some in the state worried about the impact on the rural economy.

Jim Barnett is throwing his stethoscope into the ring.

Again.

The 63-year-old doctor and former state senator is running for the Republican nomination for governor.

Again.

Barnett, who represented an Emporia-centered district in the Kansas Senate for a decade, won the 2006 GOP primary over a relatively weak field but lost in a landslide to incumbent Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius in the general election.

Four years later he came up short in a race against Tim Huelskamp for the Republican nomination in the 1st Congressional District.

Editor’s note: Kansas privatized its foster care system in 1997 after a lawsuit revealed widespread problems. Twenty years later, the number of Kansas children in foster care has shot up — topping 7,100 in April — and lawmakers approved the creation of a task force to examine the system. The Kansas News Service investigated problems in the foster care system and possible solutions. This is the fifth story in a series.

By Meg Wingerter

Yesterday HPPR reported on a recent University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll that showed Gov. Greg Abbott outperforming Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Joe Straus among Texas voters. Today, we’re going to see how Texans are feeling about some of the state’s other lawmakers.

At the end of this month, Oklahoma’s state Capitol building will celebrate its one-hundredth birthday.

As The Oklahoman reports, the state has several events planned for June 30, to mark the occasion.

The Oklahoma Capitol building, located on over 100 acres in northwest Oklahoma City, holds 650 rooms and 11 acres of floor space.