OMAHA - John Kerry, former U.S. secretary of state and former presidential candidate, will speak Feb. 26 at the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Hagel Forum in Global Leadership.
This will be the second Hagel Forum, which debuted last year. The 2019 forum featured Chuck Hagel, a UNO graduate, and former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president. Hagel is a former U.S. defense secretary and a former senator from Nebraska.
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LINCOLN - Nebraska lawmakers gave first-round approval Monday to a bill that would build a framework — but provide no money — to help survivors of sex trafficking turn their lives around.
As introduced, Legislative Bill 518 would have put $450,000 a year into programs providing such support as housing, economic stability, education, counseling, legal aid, transportation and victim advocacy.
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LINCOLN — Reformed criminal offenders are being denied “a fresh start” because of a dramatic drop in meetings by a state board that grants pardons, a legislative committee was told late last week.
The State Board of Pardons — which consists of the governor, attorney general and secretary of state — held only 13 hearings over the past three fiscal years, compared with 345 hearings during the three years previous to that. The board, which used to meet six to eight times a year for multiple hearings, met only twice during 2019.
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LINCOLN - A lot of moving parts now in the Legislature's ever-changing 2020 tax story.
A new property tax relief and state school aid reform package is headed to the floor from the Revenue Committee.
A 35% property tax reduction initiative petition drive is ongoing out there across the state and it would mandate more than $1 billion in instant relief lifted from revenue used to fund state government programs and services.
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OMAHA - Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert made it official.
She wants a five-year 200 million dollar, vote-of-the-people bond issue to fix the city's broken streets on the May primary ballot.
Her plan would find property taxes on an average Omaha home jumping 61 dollars a year. Her proposal now goes to the city council which must give its approval. A public hearing on the plan is set for February 4th.
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MONTGOMERY, Ala.—One afternoon in October, the warden at the prison where Sandy Ray’s son was serving time called to say he was hospitalized in critical condition, she recalled. He had fought with correctional officers who accused him of rushing at them with handmade weapons, according to the Alabama Department of Corrections.
When Ms. Ray arrived, her 35-year-old son, Steven Davis, lay in bed unconscious, his face swollen and disfigured, photos she took show. “He was unrecognizable,” Ms. Ray said in an interview after a demonstration for prison reform where she spoke publicly. “He looked like a monster.”
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In some towns, it is getting harder to pick up your blood-pressure pills with that gallon of milk and rotisserie chicken.
Hundreds of regional grocery stores in cities from Minneapolis to Seattle are closing or selling pharmacy counters, which have been struggling as consumers make fewer trips to fill prescriptions and big drugstore chains tighten their grip on the U.S. market.
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WASHINGTON—State attorneys general will meet with U.S. Justice Department attorneys next week to share information on their respective probes of Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit, a step that could eventually lead to both groups joining forces, according to people familiar with the matter.
The meeting is seen as the start of a periodic dialogue that could expand into more formal cooperation as the probes continue, the people said.
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LINCOLN - Gov. Pete Ricketts said while he is monitoring the presidential impeachment trial, he believes most Nebraskans are more concerned about property tax relief, recovering from the historic floods and reopening trade opportunities with China.
"It's all partisan politics. It has nothing to do with whether or not the president should be impeached. It is just a political exercise," Ricketts said.
The U.S. Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump was just one of the topics discussed in a recent interview with Ricketts, a fellow Republican, as he heads into his sixth year as governor.
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LINCOLN - Sen. Steve Erdman of Bayard dropped a surprise package in the Legislature's lap on Thursday, proposing a constitutional amendment that would replace the state's property, sales and income tax system with a single-rate consumption tax.
The new tax would be applied to the purchase of new goods and services and would become effective in 2022 if the Legislature agrees to place the proposal on this November's general election ballot and if voters approve the dramatic change.
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LINCOLN - The Nebraska Board of Pardons has held only seven hearings in more than 2½ years, and has granted only 21 pardons, despite the board receiving close to 500 petitions.
No hearing has taken place since July, which means no pardons granted or denied in six months.
Compare that to 2013 and 2014, when seven hearings were held each year and more than 200 pardons granted.
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KEARNEY — Things were going to be different this time.
With $42 million in new, shiny facilities that someone else owned and a dependable revenue source in proceeds from the state lottery, the Nebraska State Fair was supposed to be on firm financial footing.
And for several years, that was true.
In 2010, the year the fair was first held in Grand Island, it attracted 310,000 visitors, a number that had grown to 380,000 by 2017.
For each of the first eight years the fair was held at Fonner Park, it reported a six-figure profit.
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LINCOLN - Juvenile legal representation. Once again, a bill that would require that juveniles have legal representation at their first court appearance failed to advance.
Legislative Bill 231, introduced by State Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks of Lincoln, has been defeated in the past. The bill also included a $1 increase in state court fees to pay for the lawyers’ work.
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OMAHA - Much of the Midwest will head into spring with wetter-than-usual soil and several rivers and streams running higher than normal. But a repeat of last year’s flooding is not a guarantee, according to a newly released report.
Odds favor a normal to wetter-than-normal February through April across much of the Upper Missouri River basin, which is north of Nebraska, according to the latest 2020 Winter Outlook.
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OMAHA - TD Ameritrade’s first earnings report in the era of 0% commissions shows why the brokerage is now poised to merge with competitor Charles Schwab: The Omaha firm’s trading revenue and net earnings are both down sharply.
During the quarter that ended Dec. 31, TD Ameritrade’s trading revenue dropped 43% from a year earlier, from $537 million to $305 million. That helped depress earnings to 70 cents per share in Tuesday’s report, down from $1.07 the previous year.
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LINCOLN — A legislative plan that backers called “revolutionary” and “thinking outside the box on steroids” would eliminate all current state and local taxes in Nebraska.
In their stead, Legislative Resolution 300CA would require that a consumption tax be imposed on all new goods and all services purchased in the state.
State Sen. Steve Erdman of Bayard introduced the proposed constitutional amendment on Thursday, during the last hour of the last day of bill introduction for this year. He was joined by nine co-sponsors, including six similarly conservative Republicans and three Democrats.
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LINCOLN - Flood preparation task force. In the wake of the disastrous 2019 floods, State Sen. Bruce Bostelman of Brainard introduced a bill Thursday that could create a statewide task force aimed at making Nebraska better prepared for future flood threats.
Legislative Bill 1201 calls for the group to look at a number of topics, including looking for opportunities to mitigate the impact of floods, identifying gaps in recovery programs, finding ways to move people out of high-risk areas and studying current flood plain management programs.
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LINCOLN - The state would set aside up to 1% of its annual tax revenue, about $50 million a year, for economic development projects in excess of $1 billion under Legislative Bill 1084, the Transformational Projects Act.
The bill, introduced by State Sen. Mark Kolterman of Seward, would be the vehicle to obtain $300 million in state funding, over six years, for the proposed NExT Project at the University of Nebraska Medical Center campus in Omaha.
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SARPY COUNTY - Driving west on Interstate 80 from Omaha, you will find only a single interchange between the one at Nebraska Highway 370 and the Platte River — a distance of almost 11 miles.
That’s not enough to handle the growing population in southern and western Sarpy County, local officials say. So they’re planning for two new interchanges to accommodate the new homeowners and retail traffic that they hope will come with the growth.
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LINCOLN - The longest-serving current member of the University of Nebraska Board of Regents announced Monday he would not seek a fourth term.
Howard Hawks, who in 2002 won his first election to the District 2 seat representing a portion of Douglas County and nearly all of Sarpy County, said 2020 will mark his final year as a regent.
"Nearly 20 years ago, I ran for regent because I believe Nebraska's economic future is directly linked to a strong university system," Hawks said in a statement.
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