{"id":27950,"date":"2020-03-25T13:14:37","date_gmt":"2020-03-25T19:14:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=27950"},"modified":"2020-03-25T13:14:37","modified_gmt":"2020-03-25T19:14:37","slug":"legislature-approves-emergency-coronavirus-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=27950","title":{"rendered":"Legislature approves emergency coronavirus funding"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lawmakers passed a bill March 25 that provides emergency funding to combat the coronavirus pandemic in Nebraska.<\/p>\n

\"Sen.
Sen. John Stinner<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LB1198, sponsored by Gering Sen. John Stinner, appropriates a total of $83.6 million to bolster the state\u2019s response to the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.<\/p>\n

Funds will be transferred from the state\u2019s Cash Reserve Fund to the Governor\u2019s Emergency Cash Fund. Dollars then will be directed to a newly created program to be known as the Governor\u2019s Emergency Program \u2013 COVID-19, housed within the state\u2019s Military Department.<\/p>\n

Among priorities to be funded by the bill, as outlined in Gov. Pete Ricketts\u2019s request to the Legislature, are:
\n\u2022 $38.2 million for personal protective gear and other supplies and support for local health departments;
\n\u2022 $13 million to maintain staffing at veterans\u2019 homes and state Department of Health and Human Services care facilities;
\n\u2022 $4 million for additional staffing and overtime costs for the DHHS Division of Public Health;
\n\u2022 $2.5 million to the University of Nebraska Medical Center for lab equipment, software programming and personnel;
\n\u2022 $515,000 to UNMC to facilitate COVID-19 testing; and
\n\u2022 $344,000 to establish a statewide communication system to share information related to response efforts.<\/p>\n

The bill also provides $25 million in unobligated funds to be held in reserve for unforeseen needs that may arise due to the pandemic.<\/p>\n

LB1198 passed on a vote of 45-0. It was signed by the governor and took effect immediately.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lawmakers passed a bill March 25 that provides emergency funding to combat the coronavirus pandemic in Nebraska.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27949,"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":[5],"tags":[149],"class_list":["post-27950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-appropriations","tag-sen-john-stinner"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Chamber3-25-20a.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27950","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=27950"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27952,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27950\/revisions\/27952"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}