Krusin' the Capitol
By Nebraska State Senator Lowen Kruse
2003
Week 15
April 16, 2003
Hi, a bit early on Easter week --
First, you are undoubtedly restless until you see a picture of our new grand
daughter Lauren. You want to exclaim with the politically correct statement:
"That IS a baby!"
Lauren can be viewed for about sixty days on the hospital's web site:
www.bmhvt.org/neonet/
Birth date: April 11
Password: shirt+bean
In the one picture is our daughter Jorika (Jo), who is a counselor and
advocate for employment of deaf adults in a three-state area. Barry manages
a blue grass band which has been performing for over 20 years and is well
known in the area.
Second, I need to correct my English in one paragraph last week. Makes a
writer mighty humble. A faulty antecedent could cause one to assume our son
Doug was the one who was too drunk to stand. Not. Doug and Lisa and another
couple were in the car that was hit by a drunk driver. All four of them were
quite sober. The offender had borrowed a friend's nice sport car, was
attempting to drive around Omaha on the Interstate loop at 100 m.p.h. He
could not possibly have made it, so it was not an "accident." Doug and the
other three were the first to get in the way.
I would like to have in law that if you loan your car to a known drunk driver
the vehicle could be confiscated. Looking doubtful. Very hard to do that
and protect lenders, etc.
This week we have voted our appropriation bills out of committee. They will
be presented in one week. It takes that long to get all the details correct.
We will need $360 million of additional revenue to close the gap after our
cuts of about the same amount. That can be done if we recognize the hurt
already created. As it looks now, we will extend the temporary sales and
income tax increases, but we will not restore the full income tax cut of six
years ago, and we will broaden the sales tax base.
Who is seriously hurt?
K-12 schools. Some districts will have to increase class sizes, drop
offerings. Quality of education will clearly suffer.
Universities and colleges. They will cover some of the loss by increased
tuition, but we may lose our museum research, for example, which is the heart
of Morrill Hall. Artifacts that are gone will not be back, and millions in
research grants will be lost as well. We will lose students, who are very
quick to detect changes in quality.
Counties will have increased medical costs, paying emergency room bills at
100% instead of physicians bills at 40%. I have explained that possibility
before, but it is really going to happen. The Women's Commission is gone and
the Indian and Mexican-American are on their way out.
However, most agencies say they can meet their legal requirements.
Simple fact: With over half the budget protected from serious cutting,
either because those cuts add to property tax (which we resist most strongly)
or the cuts would be on agencies like prisons (which we cannot cut) -- cuts
can cover only half of the gap.
The threat to Nebraska which is far bigger than all these dollars: drought
and grasshoppers. Those two dreads are still in the crystal ball and they
will really hurt us.
I find it interesting that the last time the state was in a real financial
crisis, in the 1870s, it was the same two reasons that dominated the drag on
the economy. Our high tech has not protected us, has it?
Lowen
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