{"id":25508,"date":"2019-03-18T10:06:36","date_gmt":"2019-03-18T16:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=25508"},"modified":"2019-03-18T10:26:44","modified_gmt":"2019-03-18T16:26:44","slug":"state-employee-volunteerism-bill-advanced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=25508","title":{"rendered":"State employee volunteerism bill advanced"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lawmakers gave first-round approval March 18 to a bill that would authorize adjustments to state employee work schedules for participation in youth mentoring programs.<\/p>\n

\"Sen.
Sen. Tom Brewer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Under LB511, introduced by Gordon Sen. Tom Brewer, a manager could adjust a state employee\u2019s work schedule by up to one hour per week in order to allow participation in an approved program. Paid leave for this purpose would not be authorized.<\/p>\n

\u201cLB511 does not allow for paid time for volunteers,\u201d Brewer said. \u201cThere should be no impact on productivity or the state budget.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bill also would require the state director of personnel to develop a process and criteria to approve programs based on nationally recognized standards for quality youth mentoring.<\/p>\n

As introduced, LB511 would have required the state Department of Administrative Services to maintain a data base of approved programs.<\/p>\n

A Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee amendment, adopted 40-0, removed that provision. Instead, the director could rely on existing, publicly available lists of such programs.<\/p>\n

Gretna Sen. Andrew La Grone supported the bill and the amendment, saying the proposal would benefit the state, employees and Nebraska youth.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gives kids who often don\u2019t hear that their dreams are valid\u2014that they can have an opportunity for a brighter future\u2014it helps give them that opportunity,\u201d La Grone said.<\/p>\n

The committee amendment also incorporated provisions of LB381, originally introduced by Blair Sen. Ben Hansen, which would change the travel reimbursement method for state employees.<\/p>\n

Under the amendment, reimbursement for meals and incidentals would be made based on the federal General Services Administration per diem. Reimbursement for lodging and travel still would be itemized.<\/p>\n

A policy adopted by DAS could not set a reimbursement rate in excess of 100 percent or less than 75 percent of the federal rate.<\/p>\n

Following adoption of the committee amendment, senators advanced LB511 to select file on a 40-0 vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lawmakers gave first-round approval March 18 to a bill that would authorize adjustments to state employee work schedules for participation in approved youth mentoring programs.<\/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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[174],"class_list":["post-25508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-military-and-veterans-affairs","tag-sen-tom-brewer"],"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\/25508","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=25508"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25517,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25508\/revisions\/25517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}