2007
Week 16
April 21, 2007

Hi

A few statements are incomprehensible to me. I can see the face talking, hear the words, but I cannot fit the thought in my mind. One of these is local option on a statewide smoking ban. Everyone agrees that smoking in a public place is a major health threat, especially to the young and the nonsmokers. If and when we go to a ban, how does one even think about a local vote on a health issue?

The words I hear are ”It's a free country -- everyone should be able to do as they please.” Not anyplace I know. The list is long. “The state cannot mandate how a business will operate.” In health? Let's have a local vote on the temp in a meat cooler. Or the temp of water in the dish washers of restaurants. Or staff washing hands in the restroom. All are health. All a mandate. All a nuisance. All cost money. Local vote? Incomprehensible.

The state budget is comprehensible. If you have questions, please email.

Nine of us have been locked in our cramped cubby hole for three months, with staff members and agency heads filing through -- with questions, objections, challenges, affirmations and quiet reflections rotating through with them. We are done.

It is a remarkable process. Our committee, and through debate/adoption the total legislature, write the budget for all state offices and agencies. The governor can lower a specific figure but cannot raise it. We can override. We order the budget.

So where are we in this new budget?

We are at a 4.5% annual increase overall. The broad variety of items include up to 50% increases and 50% decreases. The budget includes an allowance for bills on the floor, over which we have no control, so the body can go past us.

More helpful, we have three budgets. First is what it takes to run the state. Everything that is state: the governor and other offices, the legislature, the Supreme Court and officials of the statewide court system, the university and nine colleges, and 43 agencies. That cost goes up about 3.5% per year.

The second budget is state aid to local government: counties, towns and cities, and K-12 school districts. It is a tax shift. Local property taxes would be 50% higher without this subsidy. Local aid will go up about 8%.

The third and smallest budget is construction, which varies by each year's choice and is usually one time projects. Repair of the capitol building is a project we agree on, unanimously, and is ongoing for over ten years. Workers are doing well. We have water damage on the hardwood ceiling in our chamber, for example, which will be repaired as soon as they stop the leaks.

The fun one this year is the purchase of the insurance building across north from the Capitol. The one with the naked family members, who are now a bit more modest after some creative chiseling. The company is moving its headquarters and has offered the building and nearly one and half block of parking for one third of replacement value. The boring but essential project is to renovate the state historical society headquarters, at the far end of our mall to the north, to bring it up to fire code.

I am proud of the proposed budget. It is tightly drawn to produce the best results we can plan. As I have agonized before, we have blocked out some prevention items that would pay off big time in the future. We still have not gotten ahead of the curve, to use all options that would reduce future taxes. Lack of prevention a few years ago is costing us so much now we cannot do all of the wise investments. Extremely frustrating.

Finally, REALLY BIG NEWS, as a radio personality used to say. The Omaha World-Herald tomorrow (Sunday) will announce an educational initiative which will change our future in Metro Omaha more than anything we have seen, including wonderful new buildings and landscapes. Please note it is the same (large project) contributors who have agreed to put in the Kalamazoo college plan for two counties. Every child graduating from high school will have the opportunity to go to college or trade school. This is huge! Imagine the change in attitudes of kids who would otherwise drop out (3/4 of our Black youth), of parents who have worked at two or three jobs with only a glimmer of hope that their child would be able to break the cycle of poverty, of businesses who will have a choice of trained personnel, of the motivation for kids who are regularly absent or tardy at school .... of .... of ....

The big story last week? That 60% of minority students in Omaha live in poverty. The worst record in the nation. Also last week, the grandson of Gandhi told us, “Poverty is the worst form of violence.” He is right.

Imagine the potential change in living, in education, in hope, in violence within the next twenty years!      Hallelujah.

Lowen