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Index

Advice/Crossword ..... 7BClassified .................. 9BComics ..................... 8BDaily Record ............ 11ADeaths/Funerals ..... 11AOpinion ..................... 4APolice news ............... 6ASports ....................... 1BStocks ...................... 2ATV ............................. 7BToday ........................ 2A

Cat honoredThe Associated Press

and Big 12 coaches have named K-State quarter-back Collin Klein the conference’s offensive player of the year.

Sports, Page 1B

Seasonal music

Here they come a-caroling. The weekend will bring holiday vocal concerts.

Friday in Out & About

Courts, crimeIn a Topeka trial

involving a fatality wreck, witnesses say the vehicle involved was traveling at excessive speeds.

Today, Page 2A

American Profile

A Pennsylvania family turns their farm into a holi-day wonderland with a lighted Christmas Village.

Weekly magazine

Inside today

Coming up

dailydeals.cjonline.com

$8 Voucher forCakes & More

Only $4!

Huelskamp calls his

demotion ‘vindictive’

By Tim Carpenter tHe CAPitAl-journAl

U.S. Rep. Tim Huelskamp delivered a forceful rebuttal Wednesday to the dis-closure of the House Republican leader-

ship stripping the Kansas congressman of assignments on in-fluential agriculture and budget commit-tees.

Huelskamp, who in November won re-election to a second term in the largely rural 1st District, said a group of about 30 House Republican leaders convened in

private and agreed to make an example of four conservatives who declined to vote more consistently with the House Speaker John Boehner and his allies.

"My constituents' worst fears about Washington insiders were realized," Huelskamp said in a telephone confer-

Please see HUELSKAMP, Page 12A

Crown Vics yield to SUVsBy Tim Hrenchir

tHe CAPitAl-journAl

Topeka police are on the road to replacing sedans with sport utility vehicles as their patrol car of choice.

The switch is fueled by Ford’s discontinuing the production last year of its Crown Victoria Police Interceptor.

Topeka’s governing body on Tuesday evening approved a lease-purchase agreement to acquire police vehicles that will be paid for over three years at a cost of nearly $889,000.

Police Chief Ron Miller said the department will leave some vacant

jobs unfilled to achieve about $300,000 a year in salary savings to free up the money, which will be used to acquire about 30 Ford Util-ity Interceptors with a Ford Explor-er-type body style.

That is a break from the city’s past practice of purchasing Crown Victorias. Topeka Capital-Journal archives show the Crown Vic has been the Topeka police patrol car of choice since the early 1980s.

Miller said the department bought used Crown Victorias ear-lier this year in its most recent ac-quisition of cars for its aging fleet of about 275 vehicles.

With Ford no longer producing the Crown Victoria, Miller said To-peka officers have test driven po-lice-model Dodge Chargers, Chev-rolet Impalas, Chevrolet Tahoes, Ford sedans that have a Taurus body style and Ford utility vehicles

that have an Explorer body style.“We have done the due dili-

gence to get the best vehicle we can for the expenditure of public funds,” he said.

Miller noted that the city of Shawnee in Johnson County also uses Ford Utility Interceptors.

He said the Topeka department is going with Ford largely because

Please see POLICE, Page 14A

Topeka police driven to alter type of patrol car

Aerialist fulfilling her dream

By Bill BlankenshiptHe CAPitAl-journAl

It was love at first sight for one of the performers in Cirque du Soleil’s “Dralion,” which opened its five-day, seven-show run Wednesday night at the Kansas Expocentre.

“I saw Cirque du Soleil when I was 12 years old,” Mandi Orozco, a 23-year-old aerialist, said during a break in rehearsals Wednesday af-ternoon in Landon Arena.

Orozco, who grew up in Orlando,

Fla., said to celebrate her birthday, her mother took her to see “La Nou-ba,” the resident Cirque du Soleil production at the Walt Disney World Resort.

“I fell in love with it,” Orozco said. “I walked out of there saying, ‘This is what I want to do with my life,’ and 11 years later, here I am.”

Of course as a tween, Orozco said she really didn’t have a clue about how to fulfill her dream until she learned of the Ecole Nationale de Cirque (National Circus School) in Montreal.

She got accepted into the three-year diploma program where she

Please see AERIALIST, Page 14A

BIll BlAnKenSHIP/THe CAPITAl-jOuRnAl

Mandi Orozco, a 23-year-old Orlando, Fla., native, was 12 when she first saw a Cirque du Soleil show and decided that was what she wanted to do.

Cirque performer long aspired to be in a top circus

By Celia Llopis-JepsentHe CAPitAl-journAl

A new online job application system at The University of Kansas is frustrat-ing administrators and job applicants.

In October, the university began us-ing Oracle’s Enterprise Talent Acquisi-tion Manager. But the system, which the school says it licensed for a little less than $130,000, has presented difficul-ties that could take months to resolve.

In a newsletter Wednesday, Jeffrey Vitter, provost and executive vice chan-cellor, said about 10 percent of people trying to apply for staff and faculty jobs through the new system weren’t able to complete their applications. The hu-man resources department has taken steps to mitigate the problems in the short-term, he wrote, and the situation should be resolved by the end of the current academic year.

“It is clear that the Oracle talent ac-quisition management module (TAM) is not how we want to present KU to prospective faculty and staff,” Vitter wrote.

He said the switch to the new system had complicated the work of the hu-man resources staff.

“The failings of TAM have limited

Please see KU, Page 12A

Flaws hinder Ku job website New system prevents about 10% from finishing application

Rep. Tim Huelskamploses seat on House ag committee

By Tim CarpentertHe CAPitAl-journAl

Rep. Sharon Schwartz worked intently for a bill weakening the capacity of a coun-ty’s residents to stop corporate hog facili-ties from taking root.

Her successful campaign during the 2012 legislative session to eliminate a man-datory countywide public vote on pro-posed corporate hog operations ran deep-er than reverence for thick pork chops or admiration for this omnivore’s social intel-ligence.

"She raises hogs. She takes it very per-sonally. I don’t think she’s apologetic for any of that," said Paul Johnson, a Perry farmer and lobbyist with the Kansas Rural Center.

The Republican House member from Washington in north-central Kansas was incredulous the public approval hurdle es-

Pork barrel politics:Hog law changed

legislator/farmer sought parity with dairies

THAD AllTOn/THe CAPITAl-jOuRnAl

Rep. Sharon Schwartz, a hog farmer and Republican from Washington County, played a prominent role during the 2012 session in the adoption of a law relaxing restrictions on development of corporate hog farms in Kansas.

POliCY MATTERS

ONLINERepublican, Democratic officials comment on Schwartz’s hog farming advocacy.

CJOnline.com

POLICY MATTERS

On Friday: GOP legislator retroac-tively bills his campaign for 10 years of office costs.

Sixth in a series of 15 articles.CJOnline.com/policymatters

tablished in state law for corporate hog en-trepreneurs was higher than the threshold for corporate dairy farms.

“Why do we limit and think Kansas can

do business?” said Schwartz, who dreams of bolstering hog production in Kansas to fuel exports into Asia.

The footprint of modern industrial-strength swine operations in Kansas looks nothing like agrarian life displayed in a Thomas Hart Benton mural. The new gold standard is Ladder Creek farm near Tri-bune in Greeley County. It is owned by Merriam-based Seaboard Foods, which opened in October with 60 hog barns housing more than 1,000 animals each. The company has permits to double the size and host as many as 144,000 hogs at the new complex.

Donn Teske, president of the Kansas Farmers Union, said the role played by Schwartz in dropping requirement of a public vote on all corporate hog develop-

Please see HOG, Page 10A