The Business and Labor Committee heard testimony Jan. 31 on a bill that would allow certain companies to apply for job training grants to hire college students for paid internships.<\/p>\n
Under LB386, introduced by Elk Creek Sen. Lavon Heidemann at the request of the governor, a company eligible to apply for benefits as a tier three project of the Nebraska Advantage Act could apply to the state Department of Economic Development for job training grants to assist in hiring interns for newly created positions.<\/p>\n
Heidemann said the bill would encourage Nebraska college students to remain in the state upon graduation by connecting them with targeted industries such as manufacturing, information technology and development companies.<\/p>\n
\u201cInternships allow students to develop valuable professional experience,\u201d he said. \u201cWe must take advantage of the talent we have in the state.\u201d<\/p>\n
Department of Economic Development director Richard Baier testified in support of the bill, saying it fits well with Nebraska\u2019s statewide economic development plan. The state needs to address a lack of highly skilled workers, he said, adding that the bill would generate an estimated 500-700 new internships per year.<\/p>\n
Caleb Pollard, executive director of Valley County Economic Development, also supported the bill, saying it could help businesses find quality workers to replace retiring baby boomers in the coming years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have businesses that are willing to expand and hire,\u201d he said, \u201cbut they cannot find talented workers. This [bill] can help both rural and urban communities address their employment issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under the bill, an intern would be required to work at least 200 hours in a 12-week period but not more than 1,000 hours in a 50-week period and would be paid at least the federal minimum wage. An intern also would have to be enrolled full time in a two- or four-year Nebraska college, or a four-year college or university in another state if he or she has Nebraska residency.<\/p>\n
A job training grant would be limited to the lesser of 40 percent of the cost of the internship or $3,500. Training grants in distressed areas would be limited to the lesser of 60 percent of the cost of the internship or $5,000.<\/p>\n
An eligible company would be limited to two grants per intern and five job training grants in any 12-month period. The department could allocate no more than $1.5 million in fiscal years 2011-12 and 2012-13 from the Job Training Cash Fund to the internship program.<\/p>\n
No opposition testimony was given and the committee took no immediate action on the bill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Business and Labor Committee heard testimony Jan. 31 on a bill that would allow certain companies to apply for<\/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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[125],"class_list":["post-3060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-and-labor","tag-sen-lavon-heidemann"],"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\/3060","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=3060"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10574,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3060\/revisions\/10574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}