The Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee heard testimony Jan. 30 on a bill intended to provide greater public scrutiny of certain quasi-governmental entities.<\/p>\n
Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers, sponsor of LB778, said the bill was inspired by the operation of Omaha\u2019s Metropolitan Entertainment and Convention Authority (MECA). He said the entity, which was formed jointly with the city and spends public funds, should be open to greater public scrutiny.<\/p>\n
Under the bill, an entity jointly formed or constituted between a political subdivision and another entity would be required to:
\n\u2022 comply with the Open Meetings Act;
\n\u2022 disclose conflicts of interest; and
\n\u2022 make available for public examination documents and business records disclosed at a public meeting of the governing board.<\/p>\n
The bill would not apply to trade secrets and other proprietary or commercial information, that, if released, would give advantage to business competitors and serve no public purpose.<\/p>\n
Marty Bilek, testifying on behalf of the Omaha mayor\u2019s office, supported the bill. He said the city long has had concerns with MECA regarding transparency. Although not technically a government body, he said, MECA should abide by the same transparency rules.<\/p>\n
Jack Gould of Common Cause Nebraska also testified in support, saying the bill at least would clarify MECA\u2019s status as an entity. Gould said his organization received an opinion from the Nebraska attorney general\u2019s office saying MECA\u2019s status was unclear.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey weren\u2019t sure whether it was public; they weren\u2019t sure whether it was private,\u201d he said. \u201cAt the bare minimum \u2026 it\u2019s necessary for us to at least know what MECA is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Roger Dixon, president and CEO of MECA, testified in opposition to the bill. Acknowledging that the entity could do better in terms of transparency, he said the bill raises concerns about unintended consequences.<\/p>\n
Dixon said venues and cities competing for entertainment acts and sponsorships could use the bill to attempt to obtain proprietary information from MECA and use it to their competitive advantage.<\/p>\n
MECA is a 501(c)(3) that has not taken funds from the city in five years, Dixon said, adding that the entity is eager to work with the city of Omaha to increase transparency while protecting proprietary information.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just need the time to work through this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Frank Daley, executive director of the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission, provided neutral testimony, saying the broad nature of the bill made it difficult to estimate how much public education the Commission would be required to engage in.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this time we\u2019re unable to determine how many entities it would apply to,\u201d Daley said.<\/p>\n
The committee took no immediate action on the bill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee heard testimony Jan. 30 on a bill intended to provide greater public scrutiny<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[97],"class_list":["post-14393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-military-and-veterans-affairs","tag-sen-ernie-chambers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14393"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14396,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14393\/revisions\/14396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}