By Steve Bell

Kansas City, MO –

Kansas City, Mo. – The Kansas City Council will decide next week whether to set an August ballot on the persistent blight of waste tires. A council committee has been told thousands are ditched along streets, parkways and vacant lots every year.

By Maria Carter

Kansas City, MO – Kansas City Kansas voters approved a three-eighths-cent sales tax at the polls.

The Missouri Senate has given first-round approval to a bill designed to shrink the size and cost of state government.

Missouri senators have given preliminary approval to legislation designed to shrink the state's prison population by about 2,000 people over two years.

Some members of the Missouri House say it should be harder to change the state Constitution.

St. Louis, Mo. – The state Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on a suit challenging the constitutionality of the way Missouri funds its charter schools.

The lawsuit filed by the Kansas City School District and two residents argues that the whole system of charter schools violates the state constitutional ban on unfunded mandates. The state directly pays the charters the state funding that would have otherwise gone to the local district.

Jefferson City, Mo. – About 400 people gathered outside the Missouri State Capitol Tuesday for a tea party rally, featuring the son of former president Ronald Reagan.

Talk show host Michael Reagan told the crowd on the State Capitol's South Lawn that liberals and progressives are "like termites."

"If we don't temp them on a regular basis, they're going to keep eating away."

But Reagan also said that conservatives need to emulate liberals in their long-term outlook.

Jefferson City, Mo. – The Missouri Senate has given first-round approval to a bill designed to shrink the size and cost of state government.

Among the recommended actions in the bill is the combining of the Missouri Highway Patrol and the Water Patrol into one law enforcement entity. Its sponsored by Senate President Pro-tem Charlie Shields.

"Also, (it) will move the alcohol and tobacco folks into the Department of Revenue, and frankly will eliminate positions there," says shields.

By Steve Bell

Kansas City, MO –

By Steve Bell

Kansas City, MO –

By Maria Carter

Kansas City, MO – Anti-smoking groups are trying to pressure Kansas legislators into raising the state's cigarette tax by $1 a pack.

The legal matter between the University of Kansas and a Lawrence T-shirt distributor is now closed.

Missouri senators have endorsed a bill designed to save money by shrinking some state pensions.

It may be up to the Missouri Senate to save a bill aimed at overhauling the state's drunken driving laws.

Kansas City, Mo. – Stampedes, fights and a general melee in the County Club Plaza District Saturday night have Kansas City Police plotting strategy against next weekend and beyond.

Police now estimate as many as a thousand teenagers, and some even younger, went rampant through the Plaza. It took multiple canisters of pepper spray and arrests to disperse the 'flash mob' thrown together by use of Twitter and Facebook communiques.