{"id":27504,"date":"2020-02-14T11:04:51","date_gmt":"2020-02-14T17:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=27504"},"modified":"2020-02-14T15:54:33","modified_gmt":"2020-02-14T21:54:33","slug":"african-american-commission-proposed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=27504","title":{"rendered":"African American commission proposed"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee heard testimony Feb. 13 on a bill that would create the state Commission on African American Affairs.<\/p>\n

\"Sen.
Sen. Justin Wayne<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LB918, introduced by Omaha Sen. Justin Wayne, would require members of the commission\u2019s 14-person board be of African ancestry. The commission would promote state and federal legislation beneficial to African Americans in Nebraska, work with similar commissions from other states and coordinate housing, education, welfare, medical and dental care, employment and other programs affecting African Americans in the state.<\/p>\n

The bill also would require that the commission coordinate with the state Commission on Indian Affairs and the state Latino American Commission to produce a disparity study in government contracting report on or before Dec. 1, 2022.<\/p>\n

Wayne said the Nebraska Equal Opportunity Commission was created as the \u201cde facto African American Commission,\u201d but the mission of that organization has significantly changed since its inception. The new commission would enable the Legislature to \u201cget unbiased information on what\u2019s going on in our community,\u201d Wayne said.<\/p>\n

William King, owner of a radio station in Omaha, testified in support of the bill. He said the African American community needs data to assist small-business development and create jobs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need a body in order to do that,\u201d King said.<\/p>\n

Yusuf Kafele, testifying on behalf of Black Men United of Omaha, spoke in support of LB918. He said creation of a commission would help African Americans feel more engaged with government.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis commission \u2026 gives us as African, black people in the community the rehearsal to power,\u201d Kafele said. \u201cWe need something to galvanize us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lazaro Spindola, executive director of the Nebraska Latino American Commission, also testified in support. He said African Americans in Nebraska have lower educational achievement, higher unemployment and higher poverty levels than whites. A commission would help address these issues, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese types of disparities have existed since the beginning of our state,\u201d Spindola said. \u201cWhat African Americans do not have is a state agency that will educate our state representatives on these issues, study the underlying causes, propose programs and policies to solve them, analyze whether the solutions are effective and report to the Legislature on the results.\u201d<\/p>\n

No one testified in opposition to the bill and the committee took no immediate action on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee heard testimony Feb. 13 on a bill that would create the state Commission on African American Affairs.<\/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":[191],"class_list":["post-27504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-military-and-veterans-affairs","tag-sen-justin-wayne"],"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\/27504","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=27504"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27526,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27504\/revisions\/27526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}