In a bombshell piece of reporting, Bryan Lowry of the Kansas City Star continues to follow up on secrecy within the Kansas State House and discovers that whistleblowers inside State of Kansas Mental Health Hospitals received a memo warning them against speaking out.
Employees at the troubled and understaffed Larned State Hospital received a memo instructing them that they needed permission from the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, the agency that oversees the psychiatric facility, before speaking to Kansas legislators. The restriction likely violates a state law that protects whistleblowers, according to the union that represents state workers.
The memo comes at a time when Kansas health facilities have gone through incredibly difficult years, managing a crisis of understaffing and overcrowding.
