THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2009
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2009
NEWS 3A
TRANSPORTATION
K-10 Connector to raise ticket costs
Popular route fights to survive budget cuts
BY KAYLA REGAN
kregan@kansan.com
Whenever she needs an inexpensive ride home, Rachel Gibson takes the K-10 Connector.
"It's really just a nice way to get home," Gibson, Overland Park freshman, said. "Gas is really expensive and the bus is just a $5 round trip or $15 for 10 rides."
This rate will likely change soon, said Chuck Ferguson, deputy transportation director of Johnson County Transit. He said bus passes account for 12 percent of total revenue for the department. They aim to increase this figure to 16 percent, Ferguson said, possibly by increasing the fare to $25 for 10 rides later this spring.
"Unfortunately, even though it has high ridership, that's the route that has the most service," Ferguson said. "It's not just the K-10 connector rate that will change, all of them will, but that one in particular will probably be changing in the near future."
Ferguson said the rate increase was not meant to create profit. Johnson County Transit, with a tight budget this year, hopes the increased revenue will help meet expenses. Ferguson said bus passes account for 12 percent of the department's total revenue.
An average of 482 people took the K-10 connector each day this January, its highest ridership since the service began in 2007. The K-10 connector consists of 14 busses that travel from Lawrence to Johnson County and back. The busses run
in 30-minute intervals from 7 a.m.
until 7 p.m, with continuing limited
time until 11:35 p.m.
The K-10 Connector was created as an experiment to assess the demand for the service. Because of this, K-10 Connector rates are as cheap as the department can make them, Ferguson said. With more assistance, Ferguson said the department would have been better equipped to avoid raising the cost of bus passes.
"Right now, more so than ever before, were watching every dollar that goes out the door." Ferguson said.
The department asked the University, the City of Lawrence, Douglas County, Johnson County Community College and the state of Kansas to help with financing K-10 Connector. So far, Ferguson said only the state responded with a one-time-only $500,000 grant.
Jessica Mortinger, intern for KU Parking and Transit, said the University considered the route an important service, especially given the route's popularity routes with students. Mortinger said the University's budget was too tight to assist Johnson County Transit.
"We realize that KU is the main destination for the ridership of the K-10 Connector coming to Lawrence," Mortinger said. "But the reality is our service is already at capacity."
Allie Mahoney, Overland Park junior, works in Johnson County and said she had taken the route to work for the past year. Mahoney said she wouldn't mind paying a few extra dollars if it meant an easier commute.
"I'm stuck with it," Mahoney said.
"It's too convenient."
—Edited by Justin Leverett
Wife withdrew thousands before divorce
Associated Press
CRIME
Marcus Schrenker and his wife Michelle Schrenker pose for anad foran Indianapolis Lexus dealer. Schrenker, whose ill-fated flight from ruin was halted when investigators interrupted his suicide attempt at a Florida campground Tuesday night, faces the prospect of bankruptcy, divorce and other problems.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
INDIANAPOLIS — The estranged wife of an indicted Indiana money manager withdrew tens of thousands of dollars from bank accounts that also included investor money in the week before she filed for divorce, a judge ruled Thursday in freezing her assets in hopes that clients can recoup their losses.
Businessman Marcus Schrenker, 38, has been jailed in Florida since his arrest Jan. 13 at a Tallahassee-area campground, two days after authorities say he parachuted from his airplane and left it pilotless over Alabama in a bid to fake his death to escape mounting business and personal problems. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of deliberately crashing the aircraft, which ended up in Florida, and making a false distress call.
State attorneys pursuing separate charges related to his business dealings in Indiana pressed for his assets and those of his wife, Michelle Schrenker, to become part of a court-controlled receivership. They said Michelle Schrenker's assets are crucial because she is listed as chief financial officer in one of her husband's companies and has been living in the couple's suburban Indianapolis home assessed at $1.4 million.
Mary Schmid said she would appeal Judge J. Richard Campbell's ruling.
"The judge has not followed the law and the facts as he is written them in the order are also incorrect," Schmid told The Associated Press.
Her attorney disputes the ruling that she withdrew the money, saying her husband took it out himself and used some to fly to Key West, Fla., with his girlfriend
Records show $66,500 withdrawn in Michelle Schrenker's
name from an investor account between Dec. 23 and Dec. 30, the day she filed for divorce. The next day, Indiana police served a search warrant on the Schrenkers' home and Marcus Schrenker's office, seizing computers, tubs full of financial documents and evidence of recent document shredding.
The records show another $14,622 came out of the same account to pay credit card and other bills in the same period.
"The fact that she was overpaid for limited duties, the fact that she permitted Marcus Schrenker to put their assets in her name, the fact that she personally withdrew funds from the corporations' accounts" all suggest she violated Indiana securities law, Campbell wrote in freezing the couple's personal assets and those of Marcus Schrenker's three businesses.
County Superior Court in suburban Indianapolis, noted that Michelle Schrenker received $10,000 a month for her role as CFO.
A tearful Michelle Schrenker, emerging from a court hearing on her divorce petition shortly after Campbell's ruling, said she was being treated unfairly.
A former girlfriend of Schrenker's Kelly Baker, testified before Campbell on Jan. 30 that over two months ending in early December, the businessman and stunt pilot gave her nearly $20,000 in gifts.
"I have done nothing wrong," she told WTHR-TV. "The only thing my husband did was give me a glorified title in that company."
Campbell, a judge in Hamilton
An administrative law judge last month permanently revoked Schrenker's Indiana insurance
license after investors testified Schrenker had forged signatures on investment documents, charged exorbitant fees and removed money from their accounts without authorization, costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars. Schrenker also lost a $533,000 judgment to an insurance company in December.
Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita, who oversees securities regulation in the state, said people continue to come forward claiming Schrenker bilked them out of investment money.
The ruling, he said, will allow his office and the court-appointed receiver "to continue identifying and preserving any assets that have been built up through illgotten gain."
GOVERNMENT
Justice has surgery for pancreatic cancer
BY MARK SHERMAN
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had surgery Thursday for pancreatic cancer, raising the possibility that one of the ideologically divided court's leading liberals — and its only woman — might have to curtail her work or even step down before she had planned.
Ginsburg, 75, has been a justice since 1993. She has been increasingly vocal in recent years about the court's more conservative stances, especially after the appointments made by President George W. Bush.
Pancreatic cancer is often deadly, although the court said doctors apparently found Ginsburg's growth at an early stage.
In 1999, she had colon cancer surgery, underwent radiation and chemotherapy, and never missed a day on the bench. Statistics suggest this could be a tougher fight.
Ginsburg underwent the surgery at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. She will remain in the hospital for seven to 10 days, said her surgeon, Dr. Murray Brennan, according to the court. The justices hold their next private conference on Feb. 20 and return to the bench from their winter break on Feb. 23.
If Ginsburg or another justice leaves the court, it falls to Obama to pick a successor. Anyone he might choose to replace her probably would be as liberal as she, if not more so, keeping in place the 5-4 conservative tilt of the court.
President Barack Obama expressed hope for her speedy recovery, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday, and offered his thoughts and prayers.
Ginsburg is only the second female justice in the nation's history. The other was Sandra Day O'Connor, who retired in 2006, and Ginsburg has lamented being the only woman on the court.
The court offered few details about the operation or her anticipated course of treatment.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the most deadly cancers. Nearly 38,000 cases a year are diagnosed and overall less than 5 percent of patients survive five years.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg reads from a book version of the U.S. Constitution in Princeton, N.J. Binsburg has been hospitalized for a surgery for pancreatic cancer.
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The William Allen White Four dation is honoring Tom Curley, president and chief executive officer of The Associated Press, with the foundation's national citation. Curley will receive the award in a public ceremony at 1:30 p.m. today in Woodruff Auditorium.
Curley was also previously the president and publisher of USA Today and senior vice president of Gannett Co.,Inc., which publishes 100 daily newspapers in the United States.
Tom Eblen, foundation chairman, said Curley was chosen by board members of the foundation, who think he's doing significant work in journalism.
"We look for someone with
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— Michelle Sprehe
CRIME
Car bomb leaves medical board member injured
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Federal agents investigating a car bombing that critically injured a state medical board official focused Thursday on atire the victim reportedly was trying to move from his driveway just before the blast.
Dr. Trent P. Pierce, S4, remained incritical condition at a hospital Thursday, a day after the bombble up in West Memphis as he prepared to leave for work. The chairman of the Arkansas State Medical Board is left
eye in the blast, suffered burns and was pelted with shrapnel.
Pierce "is conscious and responding;" board member Joseph Beck told colleagues Thursday at their previously scheduled meeting in Little Rock. "I know our thoughts and prayers are with Dr. Pierce and his family."
Dr. Scott Ferguson, a family friend, said Pierce's family told him a tire had been left in the way of Pierce's hybrid Lexus sport-utility vehicle Wednesday. Ferguson said Pierce apparently leaned down to move the tire out of the way just before the explosion.
Pierce can't talk to detectives because doctors have placed an oxygen tube in his throat, Ferguson said.
Associated Press
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