{"id":27416,"date":"2020-02-12T11:23:17","date_gmt":"2020-02-12T17:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=27416"},"modified":"2020-02-12T11:23:17","modified_gmt":"2020-02-12T17:23:17","slug":"increase-in-burial-benefits-clears-first-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=27416","title":{"rendered":"Increase in burial benefits clears first round"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Legislature advanced a bill from general file Feb. 12 that would increase burial benefits upon the death of an employee due to a work-related injury or illness.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_20153\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-20153\" style=\"width: 200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"20153\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?attachment_id=20153\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/SenMcDonnell_inline.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"297,445\" data-comments-opened=\"0\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;9.5&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;NIKON D800&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;1479304079&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;116&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;100&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0.008&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"senmcdonnell_inline\" data-image-description=\"&lt;p&gt;Sen. Mike McDonnell&lt;\/p&gt;\n\" data-image-caption=\"&lt;p&gt;Sen. Mike McDonnell&lt;\/p&gt;\n\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/SenMcDonnell_inline.jpg\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-20153\" src=\"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/SenMcDonnell_inline-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"Sen. Mike McDonnell\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/SenMcDonnell_inline-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/SenMcDonnell_inline.jpg 297w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-20153\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sen. Mike McDonnell<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Currently, the burial benefit is not to exceed $10,000. LB448, as introduced by Omaha Sen. Mike McDonnell, would raise the benefit amount to 14 times the state average weekly wage.<\/p>\n<p>The new benefit limit would be $11,970 based on the 2019 average weekly wage of $855.<\/p>\n<p>The benefit has not increased since 2012, McDonnell said, yet the cost of funerals continues to rise.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe primary goal of LB448 is to update our laws to align the costs of living with the detrimental cost of dying,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>A Business and Labor Committee amendment, adopted 30-0, decreased the benefit to 12 times the state average weekly wage. The new proposed limit under the amendment would be $10, 260.<\/p>\n<p>The bill advanced to select file on a 34-0 vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Legislature advanced a bill from general file Feb. 12 that would increase burial benefits upon the death of an employee due to a work-related injury or illness.<\/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":[7],"tags":[194],"class_list":["post-27416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-and-labor","tag-sen-mike-mcdonnell"],"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\/27416","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=27416"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27417,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27416\/revisions\/27417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}