Omaha World-Herald. April 27, 2017
Keystone supporters, opponents need to find a way to civilly disagree
Nebraska protests played at least a part in President Barack Obama rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline as the project became a flashpoint in a national fight over fossil fuels and climate change.
Local resistance to the still-popular project is gearing back up again now that President Donald Trump has reversed the Obama administration and given his blessing to the Keystone XL.
By accident of geography and bureaucracy, this means those old fights are headed back to Nebraska and its catch-all regulator, the state Public Service Commission.
The issue spurs heated opposition, and Nebraskans who want to express their concerns are welcomed to do so. But that opposition needs to stay within responsible bounds. The focus should be on expression of ideas, not disruption or violence.
The Nebraska way of handling controversial issues is through strong debate, not through fomenting mayhem. Mike Flood, a former speaker of the Nebraska Legislature, rightly underscored that point in a recent Midlands Voices.
Nobody here would benefit from the chaos, lawlessness and pollution that outside forces wrought on North Dakota during the Dakota Access Pipeline debate and subsequent protests. About 40 of the 670 people arrested were from North Dakota, authorities there told The World-Herald’s Paul Hammel this month.
People on all sides should listen to the sound counsel from local protest organizers and supporters and resist the urge to let passions get the better of them. Instead, engage in the process.
Nebraskans have a process in place to hear from landowners, stakeholders and interested Nebraskans during this debate over a proposed 275-mile pipeline route before the state’s PSC.
The PSC is weighing another application from pipeline operator TransCanada to carry tar sands oil to market. The route could be approved. It could be rejected. Or it could be moved.
Supporters of the proposed pipeline route to carry oil from Canada through Steele City, Nebraska, and down to Louisiana still say the pipeline safely boosts our national energy security and jobs by trading with a friendly neighbor.
Opponents worry about the pipeline route’s threat to Nebraskans’ private property rights and the risk that spills could pose to water tables.
Impassioned disagreement on the pipeline issue is legitimate. So is strong debate.
What’s important now is that Midlanders show the world another way to disagree, a responsible way - our way.
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The Grand Island Independent . April 27, 2017
Nebraska vets to benefit from pilot project
Because of an innovative approach to getting federal construction projects completed, Nebraska veterans will have a new veterans outpatient clinic to provide medical care, possibly next year.
The Chip In for Vets Act, sponsored in the U.S. House last year by former Rep. Brad Ashford and in the U.S. Senate by Sen. Deb Fischer, makes it possible for communities to take the lead and manage the construction of Department of Veterans Affairs projects, contributing to the financing already provided by the federal government in order to ensure that the projects are completed on time.
Fischer has said the legislation makes it possible for local communities to “contribute their expertise and resources to help provide veterans with the quality health care they have earned.”
This new approach is being tried out with a pilot project to construct five projects and the Nebraska project is the first in the country to move forward.
VA officials have said the Veterans Affairs Ambulatory Center will offer primary, specialty and ambulatory care and operate radiological and surgical facilities. It will be built on the campus of the current VA hospital in Omaha and will operate in conjunction with that facility, which will then be used mostly for administrative operations.
After a 2007 study found the current Omaha hospital had problems with its electrical, heating and cooling systems the VA unveiled plans in 2011 for a $560 million facility. Congress approved $56 million to get the planning started and the new structure tentatively was scheduled to open in 2018. But funding shortages put the project on hold.
Now the project has been reworked for a more feasible total cost of $86 million and a nonprofit corporation has signed an agreement with the federal government to raise the $30 million needed to complete it.
Design work on the Omaha project will continue through this year, but site work and construction are expected to begin in early 2018.
The local corporation, the Veterans Ambulatory Center Development Corp., which will oversee design, construction and fundraising, was created by Heritage Services, a private company that was instrumental in creating major Omaha projects such as TD Ameritrade Park and the Holland Performing Arts Center.
Out of the ashes of an incompletely funded government project that looked like it was doomed will rise an up-to-date medical facility to help meet the needs of Nebraska veterans. This is a big success story for local veterans and for our federal government, which has been so unable to get anything accomplished in recent years due to gridlock in Washington, D.C.
Congress needs to look for more instances where it can apply this approach to get needed projects completed.
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Lincoln Journal Star. April 28, 2017
Kansas burns, Lincoln suffers
Every spring, it seems, clouds of smoke descend on Lincoln from fields set aflame in Kansas.
Each day, the eye-stinging haze rolls in, Nebraskans complain about the smoke, cancel outdoor activities and stay inside, most often when they would be outdoors enjoying perfect spring weather.
Each year, Nebraska state officials refuse to seek federal intervention to control the potentially hazardous smoke, opting to continue informal discussions with Kansas - a strategy that, as the last month has demonstrated, has proven to be ineffective and inadequate in controlling the air pollution.
The fires are intentionally set in the Flint Hills region of Kansas, burning off fields to control invasive species like red cedar, manage prairie ecosystems and eliminate dead grass and brush that could fuel wildfires.
They’re set in the spring based on 40-year-old research that indicated the fires clear the way for more nutritious grass that will optimize weight gain in cattle.
That research is now antiquated. More recent work indicates benefits from burning at other times of the year. But the Kansas fields continue to burn in the spring - and, when weather does not cooperate, in a tightly compressed window of time.
That leads to widespread burnings and, last month, caused three air-quality warnings in Lincoln. Smoke levels in Lincoln were in the unhealthy range for 24 hours during at least four days. One day in spring 2014, Lincoln had the worst air quality in the country from the smoke pollution. Kansas has warned Nebraska when the smoke is coming in the past three years - thanks so much.
Lincoln city officials have recently appealed to Kansas for relief from the smoke. Facebook discussions have buzzed with proposals to find a way to sue the Sunflower State over the smoke to bring the fires to an end.
But the Ricketts administration is declining to take any formal action to force Kansas to change the burning plan it has used for the past five years. Rather, the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality says it will continue discussions with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment on improving the plan and is putting together specific recommendations.
The DEQ would not spell out those recommendations but reported that previous discussions included encouraging some burning in the fall.
Those recommendations should be stiffer than mere encouragement. The Kansas plan should require fall burning in some areas and limit the number of acres that can be burned at any one time, which appears to be the only way to reliably reduce the potentially dangerous smoke in Lincoln.
If those burning restrictions cannot be guaranteed by requirement and the smoke returns next spring, Nebraska should take action under the Clean Air Act and other mechanisms to keep the air clean while Kansas burns.
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McCook Daily Gazette. April 27, 2017
Ricketts’ decision on proclamation comes off as petty
To be fair, Gov. Pete Ricketts probably would have faced criticism regardless of his decision on a routine proclamation honoring the Nebraska State Education Association’s 150th anniversary.
Had he issued the proclamation, he would have been called a hypocrite, honoring an organization that’s been on the opposite side of issues such as school vouchers, charter schools and, most recently, third-grade reading requirements, some positions he has held since before he entered politics.
Instead, he refused a routine proclamation request from the NSEA, even after follow-up phone calls and an in-person visit with his staff.
“The Ricketts administration has re-evaluated how we issue proclamations relating to education,” the governor’s office said in a statement Wednesday. “All future proclamations will be issued with a focus on teacher innovation and/or student achievement. Governor Ricketts deeply values the work Nebraska teachers do each day and we will look for ways to honor the work of teachers who achieve improved student outcomes.”
Following that same logic, the governor’s office should judge proclamations for civil engineering groups on how well our sewer systems are holding up and the number of potholes in our roads, architects for how close building construction projects come to meeting budget, or how well farmers are adapting to changing market conditions - all proclamations recently issued.
For its part, NSEA President Nancy Fulton called the action “mean-spirited and indefensible” and said it “showed disrespect for NSEA’s 28,000 members and the hundreds of thousands of former members who spent their careers teaching children in Nebraska.”
“As a 34-year public school teacher, I am offended by your clear and complete lack of respect and appreciation for the thousands of public school employees and their advocacy organization - the NSEA,” Fulton continued.
“Your refusal also clarifies your lack of respect for and understanding of public education as one of the foundational institutions of American freedom: our public schools. Finally, your decision to ignore this historic milestone of advocacy for children and public education contributes to the adage that ’Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.’”
Do an off-the-record poll with those 28,000 NSEA members, and you’ll find widely varying opinions on most of the official positions held by their organization. They’re taxpayers, too, and you’ll find many who would appreciate vouchers to send their children to private schools, or who would be first in line to criticize the public school system.
A governor’s proclamation honoring any such professional organization carries about as much weight as the paper it is printed on.
Refusal to do so is a different matter.
Ricketts’ action comes off as petty and foolish
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