A bill that would require legislative approval for the relocation of state services or agencies costing more than $15 million failed to advance from general file March 31.<\/p>\n
Under LB935, introduced by Grand Island Sen. Mike Gloor, the Legislature would have the authority to approve or deny a major relocation from one community to another. Gloor said he was seeking to fix what he sees as a flawed process that was used in the decision to relocate the Grand Island Veterans\u2019 Home to Kearney.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere needs to be a greater degree of transparency and openness when we move state services around the state,\u201d he said. \u201c[The current process] leaves a hole in the economy of one community while bolstering the economy of another.\u201d<\/p>\n
A request for relocation would be submitted to the Legislature\u2019s Executive Board and must include:
\n\u2022 a description of the proposed relocation;
\n\u2022 justification for the relocation;
\n\u2022 a review of the long-term costs;
\n\u2022 measurable goals for improving the quality of the service;
\n\u2022 an assessment of the feasibility of alternatives within the state agency to moving the service;
\n\u2022 any known or foreseeable legal, environmental or other issues related to the proposed move; and
\n\u2022 a description of economic development efforts to use any facility abandoned by the move.<\/p>\n
The approval process would not apply to the University of Nebraska, the Nebraska state colleges, the courts, the Legislature or any officer or state agency established by the state constitution.<\/p>\n
Fullerton Sen. Annette Dubas supported the bill, saying the current process creates an adversarial approach to moving state services.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur communities regularly compete against each other when recruiting new businesses. If they don\u2019t attract them, they didn\u2019t lose because they never had it,\u201d she said. \u201cIn [the move of the Grand Island Veterans\u2019 Home], a community lost. [The current process] undermines the ability of people to come together and work cooperatively within a region.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee amendment, adopted 30-3, removed a provision in the original bill that would have applied retroactively to any move initiated after Jan. 1, 2013.<\/p>\n
Hoskins Sen. Dave Bloomfield filed a motion to bracket the bill until April 17, 2014. He said there is too much emotion in the current debate to make an objective decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we want to discuss this, let\u2019s come back and do it next year when the emotion is removed,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is a system in place that works. We don\u2019t want to do anything to jeopardize a new home for our veterans.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bracket motion failed on an 18-12 vote.<\/p>\n
LB935 failed to advance on a 13-17 vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A bill that would require legislative approval for the relocation of state services or agencies costing more than $15 million<\/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":[75],"class_list":["post-15423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-military-and-veterans-affairs","tag-sen-mike-gloor"],"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\/15423","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=15423"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15428,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15423\/revisions\/15428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}