Omaha World-Herald. December 16, 2016
Too many barriers to business licenses in Nebraska.
Nebraska leaders will soon turn attention to how the state can encourage private- sector job opportunities by reducing the requirements for some business licenses.
Action on the issue makes sense: 24 percent of Nebraska workers are in jobs that require a state-issued license, just below the national average.
Licensing serves the public interest in some instances and clearly should be maintained. Such requirements protect consumers and workers when public health and safety are involved.
But there’s notable agreement across ideological lines that, across the country, state licensing requirements overall have expanded to the point of frequently being a barrier to job opportunities.
The Obama White House is giving its support to reform efforts. In Nebraska, Gov. Pete Ricketts and the conservative Platte Institute are urging action during the 2017 state legislative session.
A report last year by the White House Council of Economic Advisers noted the wide disparities in licensing uniformity among the 50 states.
World-Herald reporting this week provided an illustration. Ilona Holland obtained a license in Maryland to be a massage therapist after she completed the state-required hours of training. But when she relocated to Omaha, she found that Nebraska required her to take 400 hours of additional training. Instead, she opened her massage therapy business in Council Bluffs, where her current training met state requirements.
The White House report said certain populations are hit especially hard by such obstacles: military families. Minority workers. Anyone with a high school diploma only. Immigrants whose training or education was acquired abroad. Men and women paroled from prison.
The economists pointed to an additional concern: Licensing tends to raise the price of goods and services by 3 percent to 16 percent. “The benefits of licensing therefore need to be balanced against these costs,” the report said.
During the upcoming legislative session, Nebraska lawmakers will have important decisions to make on this issue. In some cases, licensing should be maintained. In others, less stringent alternatives such as registration (providing basic information to the state) might make more sense. When licensing is kept in place, state regulators should minimize the burdens by focusing the requirements on public health and safety concerns.
Sensible adjustments in Nebraska’s business licensing can benefit the state. Lawmakers need to produce progress on this concern in 2017.
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The Grand Island Independent. December 16, 2016
Body-worn cameras should be G.I. priority.
With the announcement by the Hastings Police Department that its 29 patrol officers will all be using body-worn cameras by the end of the year, it’s clear that the Grand Island Police Department is falling behind again.
When a thorough public safety study by the International City/County Management Association revealed that the department was greatly understaffed a few years ago, the city allocated the money to increase its staff and rethink the way it operates. The results have been great since the move to strategic policing, fully implemented in 2015, with a significant reduction in crime across the community.
But the Police Department does not use body cameras and Police Chief Robert Falldorf said in a presentation to the Rotary Club recently that it has no immediate plans to buy some.
The Grand Island Police Department is much larger than the Hastings Police Department, of course, but the Kearney Police Department has been using about 55 body cameras for more than a year and the Buffalo County Sheriff’s Department is in the process of beginning to use them as well.
Even though there’s great concern about how the city of Grand Island is going to balance its budget next year, it is time that the city begin setting aside money and looking for funding sources such as grants to help make use of body cameras a reality.
With concerns about holding police accountable for their actions across the country, the use of body cameras goes a long way toward showing that police are acting responsibly when carrying out a very dangerous job.
Grand Island police have had in-car cameras since at least the 1990s, but body cameras would show what happens when the officers are away from their cars.
Body cameras are very small and unobtrusive. Officers wear them on their chests.
The biggest expense is in storing the video.
There will be bugs to be worked out as there always is with a new technology, but the Police Department would be able to seek advice from area departments that have already begun using them as they determine how to get the most benefit from a camera system.
As Falldorf told the Rotary members, they will probably be mandated for all police officers someday.
Grand Island shouldn’t be waiting for that day.
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Lincoln Journal Star. December 16, 2016
Plan to end homelessness ready to roll.
Sometimes the announcement that a grant has been awarded signals the start of work. That’s not the case with new funding for the effort in Lincoln to get chronically homeless people off the streets and into housing. The organizations involved already had done an impressive amount of groundwork.
The announcement that Matt Talbot had been awarded a $200,000 federal grant was followed within days that another $1.9 million federal grant had been awarded to a group of agencies led by Region V Systems, a quasi-governmental agency involving 16 Southeast Nebraska counties.
The announcements are a high point in an ongoing process. The Most Vulnerable Review Team, with representatives from a dozen organizations, has been meeting every week for more than a year.
They have a list of people - it numbered 38 last week - of people who met the definition of chronically homeless; they have a disability and have been continuously homeless or homeless for four times for a total of 12 months over three years.
“We know everyone, we’ve assessed everyone and we have a plan for everyone,” John Turner of Region V told the Journal Star’s Peter Salter.
The local organizations are using the Housing First approach - housing first, services later - that has proven successful in other locations.
Last year Utah declared that it had reduced chronic homelessness by 91 percent. The effort was championed by Lloyd Pendleton, who told National Public Radio that he was someone who used to say, “You lazy bums, get a job, pull yourself up by the bootstraps.”
Proponents contend that putting a permanent roof over the heads of the chronically homeless actually saves money. The Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates that the annual cost to government for a homeless person is $30,000 to $50,000 for things like jail and emergency medical services. It’s cheaper to put them in housing.
“People aren’t going to get better if they’re living on the streets,” said Topher Hansen of CenterPointe in Lincoln.
Now that the organizations have vouchers to put people in apartments, one of the next hurdles in the effort is to work with landlords. Region V is hoping to meet concerns by offering to pay for damages.
And some landlords are willing to try. Landlord Jack Irons was watched some formerly homeless people master their addictions and reunite with their families. “I think everybody comes across hard times one way or another. I believe in their program and I believe in helping people that need help,” Irons said.
No one imagines that ending chronic homelessness in Lincoln will be easy, but the effort in Lincoln appears to be on the verge of making substantial progress.
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Kearney Hub. December 17, 2016.
Some in the newspaper business have commented that they’re observing that people, organizations, businesses and even local governments are sharing less of their news with their local newspapers. More often than these publishers would like to admit, these would-be news sources are sharing their info on Facebook, but are not availing themselves of the much wider reach that’s possible by having their news appear in their local newspaper.
This drift away from sharing news with the local newspaper is not confined to Facebook. We’re seeing it with sports, as coaches are working less with their local newspapers and satisfying themselves that placing game info and stats on Max Preps or other similar services is good enough.
We in the news business understand that it’s easy and simple to post to social media and to sports services, but we believe people are missing the boat by leaving their local newspapers out of the news share equation. That’s because news that appears in newspapers and on newspaper websites reaches big audiences - far larger than the groups of friends who receive social media posts or might find raw stats on sports sites.
We hear again and again from people whose stories are told in the newspaper that they are astounded by the reactions from people who remark, “Hey, I saw your story in the Hub,” or mail cards and notes with clippings of the story. There are reasons newspaper articles get so much attention. A living, breathing reporter works hard to tell the story in an interesting fashion, and pays attention to the details to ensure they are complete and accurate.
Also, newspapers have a broad reach. Draw a line 65 miles out from Kearney and you get an idea of the breadth of the Hub’s circulation area. Then consider that for every subscription, an average of 2.3 people reads the newspaper. That’s 20,000 people, and it doesn’t count the 10,000 or so people who read the Hub online each day. In an average month, the Hub records more than 1.3 million online page views.
Combine the print and online reach of the Hub, and it’s no wonder that people whose stories are featured in this newspaper hear from so many friends and acquaintances.
We invite our readers and future readers to share their news with the Kearney Hub’s editorial staff. The list of editors and reporters on this page makes it easy to contact the professionals who can help put information in front of thousands of eyes. Let’s get acquainted today and work together to spread the news in Hub Territory.
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