The Grand Island Independent. Sept. 28, 2014.
Rating shows G.I. vets home giving good care
All four Nebraska veterans homes received perfect scores for the second year in a row in a survey by the Health Care System Surveys of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
This is an outstanding accomplishment by the staffs at the veterans homes in Grand Island, Scottsbluff, Bellevue and Norfolk. They can rightly be proud of the excellent care they give veterans.
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However, for people in Grand Island and Central Nebraska this raises a number of red flags. Remember the state has chosen to build a new Central Nebraska Veterans Home in Kearney, moving it away from its home of 127 years in Grand Island.
This decision was made through a flawed process concocted by Gov. Dave Heineman and John Hilgert, director of the Division of Veterans Homes.
Here are some questions that Heineman, Hilgert and other state officials have never been able to answer:
- If Grand Island is providing such an excellent workforce that the veterans home has received a perfect rating the last two years, why did Grand Island rank so low in community workforce in the site selection process the state conducted?
The state has never been able to answer that question. The VA survey again shows the state’s rankings were random, subjective and without merit.
- Why was Grand Island ranked low in community support in the site selection? Surely the VA wouldn’t have given a perfect score if the veterans home didn’t have good support from Grand Island residents.
Dozens, maybe even hundreds, of volunteers and community groups support the Grand Island Veterans Home through donations and programs. This week 82 Korean War veterans will take a Hero Flight to Washington, D.C., funded by community donations from residents, businesses and civic groups.
Gov. Heineman, Mr. Hilgert, doesn’t that show community support?
Other rankings from that site selection process still rankle Grand Islanders. The beautiful, park-like setting of the home in Grand Island has provided a peaceful, serene place for the veterans. It also is close to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, shopping areas and a fire station. The Kearney site is much more isolated and doesn’t compare to the Grand Island setting.
Heineman said this week that the state is still waiting on word on whether it will receive the federal funding to build the new home. His announcement about the perfect score in the VA review shows once again that the veterans home is doing just fine in Grand Island and the veterans are receiving excellent care.
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McCook Daily Gazette. Sept. 26, 2014.
State ranks high when it comes to highways
Nebraska and its neighbors are often disparaged as “flyover states” when the national political season heats up, but most of us do our traveling on the ground.
With that in mind, it’s nice to hear we’re doing a good job of making that a pleasant experience.
In light of the controversy associated with the implementation of Obamacare - and Nebraska’s unwillingness to participate in the associated Medicaid expansion - it’s good to see a government program that makes efficient, effective use of the public’s hard-earned tax dollars.
For the second year in a row, Nebraska has ranked second in the nation in highway performance and cost-effectiveness in the Annual Highway Report by Reason Foundation.
Nebraska’s best rankings are rural Interstate pavement condition (first), administrative disbursements per mile (fifth) and total disbursements per mile (fifth).
We didn’t do as well in rural arterial pavement condition (30th) and deficient bridges (28th)
Of the state’s 15,500 bridges owned by the state, counties and cities, about 19 percent were rated structurally deficient in 2013.
That makes it the seventh highest number of rural bridges designated as structurally deficient, but Mark Traynowicz, Nebraska state bridge engineer, says that needs to be put into perspective, since the report doesn’t compare bridges of the same length.
“They count a 20-foot bridge in Nebraska the same as the Golden Gate Bridge or any length of bridge, and that is what makes Nebraska look bad,” Traynowicz told the Lincoln Journal Star.
That aside, we’ve always cited the system that builds and repairs our public roads as one of the best.
Traditionally, state and federal gasoline taxes, sales tax on motor vehicle sales and motor vehicle licensing fees have been able to keep up our roads.
More efficient vehicles and slowing economies cut into that funding stream, however, and in 2013, the state began using some sales tax funding to keep up roads.
Nebraska’s sheer size makes maintaining its highways a challenge - it’s the 28th state when it comes to state controlled highway miles.
Its sparse population means less wear-and-tear on those miles from local traffic, but those in charge of maintenance would probably contend that our harsh winters can more than make up for any advantage.
If only the other governmental agencies could find ways to be just as efficient and effective as the department of roads.
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Lincoln Journal Star. Sept. 28, 2014.
Profiling a complicated issue
In August, ACLU Nebraska released a report that concluded that law enforcement officers across the state are racially profiling the people they pull over, search and arrest.
Two weeks ago, a coalition of 20 groups, including ACLU Nebraska, Nebraska Appleseed and the Lincoln chapter of the NAACP, called on the Nebraska Crime Commission to investigate four agencies, including the Lincoln Police Department for “apparent” racial profiling.
The Crime Commission, however, has no power to investigate other agencies, nor does it employ investigators. So it rightfully turned down that request.
But the ACLU report and subsequent reaction has, in one sense, opened up a look into possible profiling - at least in Lincoln.
Lincoln’s Public Safety Director Tom Casady has addressed the profiling charges this week in his “The Director’s Desk” blog and makes some illuminating points, starting with a closer look at demographics.
While 3.5 percent of Lincoln’s population identified as black on the 2010 census, when that number is combined with those who identify as black in combination with another race, the percentage increases to 5.3 percent. Blacks make up 9.6 percent of drivers police stopped in Lincoln.
Using the 3.5 percent figure, blacks are stopped almost three times more than their local population. At 5.3 percent, the stoppage rate drops to less than twice - a notable difference, according to Casady.
Using Lincoln Police Department data, Casady also presents strong evidence that income plays a role in traffic stops and that arrests, which happen to blacks at a higher rate than whites, are, in large part, a function of outstanding warrants that are checked for during each stop.
The primary argument against the profiling charges, made by Casady and other law enforcement officials, is a simple one - more traffic stops are made in high crime areas where police are deployed, and those areas are largely lower income and have a higher percentage of minority residents.
“You can question the deployment strategy, but if some of the disparity in stops is emerging from this cause, rather than from police bias, that portion is not racial profiling,” Casady writes.
To alter that pattern, Casady says, police must be persuaded to deploy differently: “We could have a healthy discussion about that, but I think people living and working in Lincoln neighborhoods that are most impacted by crime and disorder generally want more police presence and activity, not less.”
Casady acknowledges that racial bias probably accounts for a “small increment” of the traffic stops and says that will not be tolerated, nor should it be.
Eliminating that bias should be a top priority for police. Traffic stop data should continue to be analyzed. Racial profiling should have no place in law enforcement in Lincoln or anywhere else in the state.
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Scottsbluff Star-Herald. Sept. 24, 2014.
Which Nebraska?: Broadband access is uneven across geographic and economic lines
Nebraska’s doing OK as far as access to the information superhighway, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, right around the national average. Our households have their fair share of computers and smartphones, and Nebraska kids have access to computers at home.
But as with any measure of how Nebraska’s doing, it’s instructive to ask which Nebraska is being examined. Often we’re given a Mama-Bear’s-porridge average, which doesn’t take into account vast differences between the state’s five-county metroplex and the rural expanses that comprise the rest of the state.
In its first state-by-state comparisons on Internet and computer use, the Census survey found that Nebraska ranked 29th among the states, with 78.1 percent of households having Internet access, right around the 78.6 percent national average. Internet-wired households ranged from 86.2 percent in Utah to a low of 64.5 percent in Mississippi.
More than nine in 10 Nebraska children - 92.6 percent - live in homes with computers, compared to 92.2 percent nationally, and 98 percent of Nebraska households are in communities where broadband access is available. But 81 percent of households in Nebraska’s metro areas had Internet in the home, compared to only 73 percent of those in smaller cities, towns and rural areas. And 1.5 percent of Nebraska households still access the Internet through a dial-up connection.
While the survey found that more than 92 percent of Nebraska households with household income above $75,000 had Internet access, the percentage fell to less than 45 percent for households with income below $20,000. That matters because Internet access has become an essential aspect of modern living. Applying for a job, accessing a government service or checking your kid’s grades increasingly depends on access to the Internet. Concern about broadband access is often expressed in terms of children and education. Students need computer and technical skills if they’re going to compete in future job markets, and the lack of access at home is a major disadvantage. Public agencies have been considering how to extend technology “lifelines” to the poor.
“Internet access has become a fundamental need for communities, community growth and business growth,” said Rod Armstrong of the AIM Institute, an Omaha-based nonprofit that works to develop information technology talent in the state.
Faster broadband service is generally available within three miles of any Nebraska town. But the cost of infrastructure sometimes prevents providers from extending it deep into farm and ranch country (as drivers on the back roads can tell you), although the 73 percent utilization rate in rural Nebraska is above the 69.6 percent rate for rural households nationally. Agricultural producers rely on computers not only for market information and record-keeping but for high-tech practices that help them reduce production costs, such as global positioning systems that help determine where to apply water and fertilizer most effectively or to move livestock to prevent overgrazing.
At the recent Husker Harvest Days event in Grand Island, The University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Institute for Agriculture and Natural Resources sponsored a display showing how aerial drones controlled by computers and remote controls offer producers new ways to manage their operations, including the ability to assess crops or livestock from above, to examine crops during the entire growing season and to quickly create treatment maps for a field. Getting the most out of such developing technology will require fast access to Internet databases and global satellites.
Access to Internet speeds may be connected to better economic growth, according to a report by the Boston-based Analysis Group. A report in the Washington Post said the research firm’s study found a link between cities that have access to broadband at 1 gigabyte per second - roughly 100 times the national average of 10 megabits per second - and higher per-capita economic productivity. In its study involving 55 cities, 14 metropolitan areas with gigabit connections reported 1.1 percent higher per-capita GDP than their slower counterparts. That might not sound like much, but it amounts to $1.4 billion in extra growth, the study says.
Regardless of size, local economies benefit from broadband access. For example, a business without it has trouble processing credit-card transactions. To investors it’s become as important as access to reliable airport service, railroads, interstate highways, trucking companies, training opportunities and an educated workforce in evaluating the assets of competing communities.
That makes efforts such as the partnership involving Regional West Medical Center and Internet providers to improve broadband access important to the Panhandle’s economic future. As Nebraska speeds along the information superhighway, we should make sure that rural communities don’t get left behind.
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