{"id":27593,"date":"2020-02-20T17:24:23","date_gmt":"2020-02-20T23:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=27593"},"modified":"2020-02-20T17:24:23","modified_gmt":"2020-02-20T23:24:23","slug":"municipal-energy-bill-amended-advanced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=27593","title":{"rendered":"Municipal energy bill amended, advanced"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lawmakers advanced a bill from general file Feb. 20 that updates governance of the Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_20142\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-20142\" style=\"width: 200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"20142\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?attachment_id=20142\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/SenHughes_inline.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"297,445\" data-comments-opened=\"0\" data-image-title=\"senhughes_inline\" data-image-description=\"&lt;p&gt;Sen. Dan Hughes&lt;\/p&gt;\n\" data-image-caption=\"&lt;p&gt;Sen. Dan Hughes&lt;\/p&gt;\n\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/SenHughes_inline.jpg\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-20142\" src=\"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/SenHughes_inline-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"Sen. Dan Hughes\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/SenHughes_inline-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/SenHughes_inline.jpg 297w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-20142\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sen. Dan Hughes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>LB858, introduced by Venango Sen. Dan Hughes, would reorganize, simplify and streamline MEAN\u2019s governing document, the Municipal Financing Act. Hughes said MEAN was created in 1981 to generate, transmit and distribute wholesale electric power and energy.<\/p>\n<p>MEAN currently serves 69 communities in four states, he said, and is facing new opportunities and challenges.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s governing law has not been updated for almost 40 years and this bill contains updates, improvements and housekeeping changes to help modernize MEAN\u2019s governance model,\u201d Hughes said.<\/p>\n<p>Among other provisions, the bill would specify how a municipality may terminate participation in an agency, make a variety of changes to board of director qualifications and specify that construction, maintenance or remodeling of an agency\u2019s headquarters is not a \u201cpower project.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A Natural Resources Committee amendment, adopted 33-0, added provisions of three additional bills:<br \/>\n\u2022 LB367, also introduced by Hughes, which would extend the sunset date of the Nebraska Litter Reduction and Recycling Fund to Sept. 30, 2025, and eliminate fund transfer language;<br \/>\n\u2022 LB855, introduced by Columbus Sen. Mike Moser, which would remove the legislative confirmation process for the appointment of board members to the Niobrara Council; and<br \/>\n\u2022 LB856, also introduced by Moser, which would extend the sunset date for the Petroleum Release Remedial Action Cash Fund from June 30, 2020, to June 30, 2024.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEach of these bills was overwhelmingly supported and unanimously approved by the committee,\u201d Hughes said.<\/p>\n<p>Following adoption of the committee amendment, senators advanced LB858 to select file on a 41-0 vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lawmakers advanced a bill from general file Feb. 20 that updates governance of the Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska.<\/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_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[147],"class_list":["post-27593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natural-resources","tag-sen-dan-hughes"],"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\/27593","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=27593"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27595,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27593\/revisions\/27595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}