Kansas budget cuts are proving to be not only costly but potentially deadly.
In order to balance the budget, the governor planned to delay 25 construction projects totaling about $185 million. One of those projects was to fix a stretch of U.S. 69 before Pittsburg, Kansas.
Currently, a 17-mile stretch of highway is one lane in each direction.
Melissa Cash grew up in Pittsburg and now lives in Lenexa. She said, “Everyone from that area knows somebody who's been hurt or killed on that stretch of highway.”
On Feb. 28, another crash took two more lives.
“He hit my dad head-on and flipped my dad's truck a couple of times and both of them were pronounced dead on the scene,” Cash explained.
The crash killed 17-year-old Curtis Brumbaugh and Cash’s father, 56-year old David Kessler.
Cash said her dad went back and forth from her home to Pittsburg. “He was just always there, if you had a leaky faucet, you just call dad, if you couldn't figure out how to hang this picture but it wouldn't stay on the wall, you could call dad.”
There are four lanes of traffic with a median from Kansas City down to Fort Scott. The governor announced in 2014 construction of the stretch completing the four-lane highway from Kansas City to Pittsburg State University would begin in 2017. However, budget cuts have put the construction on hold.
Cash remarked, “I recall when Mr. Brownback ran for office, it was something that was on his platform. I remember my parents saying, ‘He's gonna get us four lanes all the way to Kansas City.’ That was something that he ran on.”
Now, there's concern the highway won't be fixed.
Sen. Jacob LaTurner (R-Pittsburg) said, “Well, this was part of the 10-year T-Works plan that was passed in 2010 by the legislature. The guarantee was made at that time and multiple times by the administration since then.”
LaTurner did vote 'Yes' to approve the proposed 2016 budget.
And Cash worries others will lose loved ones as well. “It's a very dangerous stretch of road and is well-traveled. So in my mind it's a matter of when and not if.”
A representative from the governor's office responded saying, "The U.S. 69 projects were delayed, not canceled, and their completion is still a priority for the governor."
According to the crash report, Brumbaugh was driving back from seeing “Newsies” in Kansas City with his girlfriend.
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Shannon Halligan can be reached at shannon.halligan@kshb.com.
