Suttle increases fees, freezes wages Concerned over the city budget, Mayor Jim Suttle announced June 24 that Omaha parking fees will increase July 1 by $2. The mayor also announced a false fire alarm fee — $200 for a second and third false alarm, $500 for more — and eliminating the city’s financial support of Omaha’s convention and visitor’s bureau. The Omaha World-Herald said that the 15 percent cut will save the city $500,000. Suttle also said he and his staff will accept a wage freeze, and asked city council members to join him. “We are heading in the direction of bankruptcy, and that is unacceptable,” Suttle said. That wage-freeze would save $5,300.
Douglas county tax rate unchanged The Douglas County Board unanimously approved a $159.8 million 2009-2010 budget June 30. The property tax rate in Douglas County will go unchanged in the next fiscal year, but the county will cut spending by $1.2 million. County taxpayers will continue to pay 24.5 cents per $100 of assessed property valuation.
Follwing the money trail in the fight against cap and trade
by Rob McLean
Proposed federal cap-and-trade laws, which Democrats say would reduce significantly carbon dioxide emissions, are not without foes. As reported in last week’s The Reader, Omaha Public Power District executives said the new laws will make energy production too costly.
Others are rallying against cap-and-trade legislation. Americans for Prosperity, dedicated to “cutting taxes and government spending” and “removing entrepreneurship and opportunity barriers” stopped in Omaha June 24 on its nationwide Hot Air Tour to fight against cap-and-trade. But a look into the groups leadership reveal profit motives behind their mission to stall the country’s first comprehensive climate change bill.
Samp warrants detail allegations Douglas County made public on June 19 the details of search warrants issued for Matthew Samp. According to the documents, Omaha police interviewed Brad Fuglei November 9, 2001. Fuglei accused Samp of having sexual contact with him 10-20 times a week starting when Fuglei was 14. Then 19-year-old Fuglei approached police out of concern that other children were involved with Samp after seeing pictures on Samp’s computer.
After getting “no-knock search warrants,” Omaha police searched four properties to acquire evidence that Samp had sexually assaulted a minor. They searched his home, a storage facility, an airplane hangar and bank safety deposit box. They did not find evidence of any sex crime.
It was a hot summer 40 years ago when Vivian Strong, a 14-year-old African-American girl, was shot and killed in North Omaha. At a neighborhood party in Logan Fontenelle Housing Projects, Strong was shot in the back of the head by a white police officer, for — according to witness reports at the time — no apparent reason. It was the height of the civil rights movement; racial tension hung over the city. Decades of institutionalized racism and de facto segregation had roiled North Omaha, like many urban black communities in America at the time, into a cauldron of anger and resentments, in part because Civil Rights victories failed to change political, social and economic conditions. The “Near North Side” erupted into violent riots, which raged for three days, engulfing nine blocks in flame around 24th Street.
Uncertainty in the wake of Nebraska’s affirmative action ban by Rob McLean
Nebraska's affirmative action ban, known as the Connerly Amendment to the state constitution, had a victim June 2 — small businesses. The Omaha City Council voted to eliminate a program that would have helped small businesses contract with the city.
High court rules against safety auditor supporters
A group of citizens cannot force the City of Omaha to fill the vacant position of public safety auditor, according to a decision from the Nebraska Supreme Court. And while Mayor Jim Suttle pledged to fill the post during his campaign, his spokesperson told the Omaha World-Herald Suttle would leave the spot vacant due to budget constraints. In 2005 the office cost the city $252,000.
With help from the ACLU, Charles Parks Jr. and Edward Rollerson of the Coalition Against Injustice filed suit against the city. They argued the city needed to fufill its budgetary obligations. The high court upheld a ruling from Douglas County District Judge Sandra Dougherty which said the funds were discretionary and therefore the city council could leave the position vacant.
The city council created the position in 2000 to act as a watchdog over the police department and receive citizen complaints. Former Mayor Mike Fahey fired the previous public safety auditor, Tristan Bonn, in 2006. Bonn released a report without Fahey's approval that criticized police for disproportionately targeting minorities in traffic stops.
Suttle and new council sworn in Jim Suttle was officially sworn in as Omaha’s 50th mayor June 8th. Following the ceremony, the mayor spoke to a packed council chambers on the challenges heading into office.
“We are facing a financial crisis beyond anything we could ever imagine. It truly is a perfect storm,” he said.
The three incumbent city councilmen and the four newcomers also took the oath of office. Check out next week’s issue for a look at the four freshman.
The week prior to Suttle’s swearing in was marred by scandal surrounding his co-chief of staff appointment, Matthew Samp. The day after he announced Samp would have no part in his administration, Suttle released his top three priority initiatives as mayor: shoring up this year’s $5.5 million budget shortfall, preparing for the 2010 budget and fixing the police and fire pension systems.
Mark Welsch has been on the front lines to snuff out smoking from public places in Nebraska for more than 20 years. On June 1, Welsch, president of the Group to Alleviate Smoking Pollution, basked in the groups biggest victory to date as Nebraska’s statewide smoking ban took effect.
It prohibits smoking in most public places, including bars and restaurants. The only exemptions are cigar bars, tobacco shops, some hotel rooms and places where smoking-related research is conducted.
Three days after the ban went into effect, Welsch already had a few complaints to investigate, but said he was confident most people would comply with the law. State health officials said they have received on average one complaint per day since the ban went into effect.
Lethal injection bill sticks It’s been two years since Nebraska had a method to carry out its death penalty, and 25 years since lethal injection was first considered in the Legislature. On May 28, Gov. Dave Heineman signed a bill into law making lethal injection the states new method of execution. The Legislature passed the bill on a 34-12 vote hours earlier.
Omaha and Lincoln senators represented most of those voting against the bill. Omaha Sens. Cook, Council, Howard, Lathrop, Mello and Nordquist voted nay, while Omaha Sens. Ashford, Friend, McCoy, Nelson, Pirsch, and White voted in favor.
Legislative Bill 36 was introduced after the state Supreme Court ruled Nebraska’s electric chair unconstitutional because it represented cruel and unusual punishment. Lethal injection bills were consistently blocked by former Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers. During his tenure Chambers repeatedly introduced bills to abolish the death penalty.
Lethal injection is by far the most common method of execution in the United States; 35 states offer it as one or the only option. Nine states have the electric chair, 5 have the gas chamber, 2 have hanging and Idaho and Oklahoma offer firing squads.
Omaha city planners asked residents to take a walk through the downtown of the future May 27 when they presented the Downtown Omaha Master Plan 30-Year Vision. Some 200 people attended the presentation at the downtown Embassy Suites Hotel.
Highlights included a light rail system featuring lines on Farnam and Harney Streets that extend to I-480, new bike routes and green space, extending the pedestrian bridge to the Qwest Center, and lots of new storefronts, condos and apartments. The plan envisons redeveloping the area directly south of the I-480 overpass to include condos and an events park. Plans for the park, called “Aksarben Yard,” include a ferris wheel, ice rink and retail space.
The plan divides downtown into 10 districts: the North and South Riverfront, Events District, Old Market, Near South District, Arts and Trades District, North Downtown, Downtown Core, Joslyn District and the Park East/Leavenworth District. Each is to have a distinct feel; for instance in North Downtown, planners called for an arts district with galleries along North 16th St.
Samp sidelined in sex scandal accusations - 04 Jun 2009
Mayor-elect Jim Suttle refused to answer questions during a June 1 press conference on allegations that Matthew Samp, tapped to be Suttle’s co-chief of staff, had a sexual relationship with a minor.
In his brief statements, the mayor-elect said Samp would not be in the Suttle administration.
“I have asked Matt Samp to separate himself from my Administration. He will not be my community chief of staff; he will not serve in my administration,” Suttle said. That’s at odds with Samp’s statement released a day later, saying he declined the appointment.
The Omaha World-Herald reported Sunday that Brad Fuglei accused Samp of having a sexual relationship with him when the former mayoral aide was 23 and Fuglei was 14.
Fuglei, 19-years-old when he made the 2001 allegation, killed himself a week after filing charges, which precluded prosecution since Samp could not face his accuser.
Omaha Senators split on death penalty After 10 hours of debate, state lawmakers advanced a bill that would make lethal injection Nebraska’s method of execution. Senators from Omaha districts were split on the vote: Voted in favor of lethal injection: Ashford, Friend, McCoy, Nelson, Pirsch, White Voted against lethal injection: Cook, Council, Howard Present, not voting: Lathrop, Mello, Nordquist
Nebraska has been without a method to carry out its death penalty since 2006 when the State Supreme Court ruled the electric chair unconstitutional. Nebraska was the last state to use the electric chair as its only means to carry out executions.
Pension tension Finding sympathetic ears in the Legislature will be a tough first assignment for mayor-elect Jim Suttle as the city considers ways to generate $15 million for the depleting police and fire pension funds. Two of the three funding recommendations from Mayor Mike Fahey’s pension task force would require the Legislature to approve a tax/fee increase for Omaha.
The first proposal is a half-cent sales tax increase that would generate $45 million. According to Fahey, $15 million would be directly applied to the pension deficit and the remaining $30 million would be split between a property tax decrease and helping pay off the Qwest Center debt and other budgetary needs. The tax increase would also require the approval of Omaha voters.
The second is a $10-a-month city garbage fee that would raise $15 million.
“The city needs to exhaust every option before bringing that to legislature,” Nordquist told The Reader. “It hits working families in the pocket books.”
Because of The Reader’s involvement with El Perico, the bilingual community newsweekly of Omaha, undocumented immigration is a subject we have researched strenuously.
A review of FAIR’s “Immigration 101” shows an extremely select use of facts and studies to support its positions. The lack of anything close to fair or balanced calls into question the organization’s true purpose or intent and gives credence to SPLC’s claims. While FAIR’s primer cites a 20-year-old Urban Institute study as its model, it fails to acknowledge that undocumented immigrants pay local and state taxes, including property and sales taxes that support education and some emergency medical services.
Since 1996, federal law has disallowed almost all means-tested government programs from benefitting illegal immigrants -- including Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps and housing assistance. According to the Social Security Administration, an estimated two-thirds of illegal immigrants file annual taxes using a Individual Tax Identification Number -- contributing as much as $50 billion every year to Social Security and Medicare for benefits they may never receive and paying federal and state income taxes.
The report also claims population density concerns in the U.S., a country that ranked 177th out of 238 with a 20% lower population density than the world average, according to 2006 United Nations data.
For the nearest local example, review the report commissioned by the Fremont mayor reporting that the costs of illegal immigration were too small to justify local immigration ordinances.
--John Heaston
Hike for Housing - 28 May 2009
Small, local non-profit raises money for tents a world away
by Rob McLean
Tornados and mountain lions won’t stop one Midwestern organization from giving the world’s refugees shelter. Housing is a problem for the millions who call tent cities in Ethiopia, Sudan and other countries home.
But a single tent costs the United Nations Refugee Agency $100.
The Hike to Help Refugees organization started its seventh annual hike on May 22, and some will walk until May 30. Participants each raised $80 per day for the UN Refugee Agency’s tent funds.
Omaha Mayor Mike Fahey again proclaimed a Hike to Help Refugee day―this time on May 23. Council Bluffs Mayor Tom Hanafan one-upped his Nebraskan counterpart and for the first time declared May 23 through May 30 Hike to Help Refugee week. He said the metro area is a natural beginning for the event.
Riding on a swell of Democratic support, Jim Suttle beat Republican Hal Daub by 2 percent of the vote to become Omaha’s next mayor.
Voter turnout for the May 12 election was around 31 percent, compared to 72.6 percent during last year’s presidential election.
The former HDR engineer will have little time to enjoy the win — he enters office facing mounting city debt, a broken pension system and the need to fulfill a promise to bring some 1,000 new jobs to Omaha as part of his plan to reduce crime.
With Suttle’s win, the blue dot in Nebraska’s red sea seems to be expanding. Voter registration data shows Democrats are creeping west of 72nd St., the traditional dividing line between conservatives in the west and liberals in the east. There are 36 Democratic dominated precincts east of 72nd St.
Since 2001, Omaha Democrats have more than doubled their voter registration lead over Republicans from 8,200 to 19,300.
Omaha’s elections are officially non-partisan and traditional partisan calculus doesn’t always hold sway. For instance in District 3, which includes Democratic dominated midtown, Republican Jim Vokal won the last two city council races, and during the general election a few Old Market precincts sided with Daub.
South Omaha was seen by some as a key battleground in the mayoral race. Suttle took District 4 in South Omaha with 60 percent of the vote. In 1997 Daub won the area to defeat Democratic challenger Brenda Council. This year Daub may have shot himself in the foot when he pounced on Suttle for a relatively benign criticism of immigration enforcement policies. Perhaps looking for a wedge issue in a race that lacked many hard policy differences, Daub made it clear, through a flurry of late game ads and press conferences, his administration would target illegal immigrants. The tone and misinformation in the ads prompted The Reader’s last-minute endorsement for Suttle.
A shade of blue was also cast over the city council elections — four of the seven council members will be Democrats when the guard changes June 8.
Our mayoral cover story ran last week, and like everything we journalistically attempt here, we aim to be non-partisan and to present the facts. While many alternative newsweeklies and major metropolitan dailies make standard political endorsements, in our 15-year history we had only made one, until Tuesday of this week.
We have always set a challenging standard for endorsements, based on an almost impossibly high dual criteria. The choice has to be important and it has to be clear.
In this year’s mayoral race, that choice wasn’t clear to me, nor did its importance become manifest, until the Daub campaign attacked immigrants as a proxy to denigrate his opposition, Jim Suttle. Specifically, the ad stating that illegal immigrants strain city resources and contribute to crime, both unfounded claims.
With our sister publication, El Perico, we have been covering illegal immigration and its impacts for five years. Based on every fact we can uncover, it’s at best an open question what impact illegal immigration has in the United States, much less in Nebraska.
However, the assumptions parlayed by the Daub campaign in that advertisement crossed a line for truth in campaign advertising and I felt compelled to address it. The full text of the endorsement sent out to our email lists on Tuesday morning is available at www.thereader.com.
We don’t want lies or disinformation, particularly when it targets are most vulnerable. Language similar to what the Daub campaign used is instrumental in promoting misunderstandings, intolerance and even outright hate speech that endangers those it targets. As a community, it shouldn’t be tolerated.
We should all stand with the leadership of both political parties, from Senator John McCain and President George Bush to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Barack Obama, in promoting humane, comprehensive immigration reform.
For anyone of the 17,273 who have signed up for our email list not expecting political endorsements, please know that we had to use our only means when presented with a pressing issue past our deadline. It might not be another 12 years before we do this again, but it will be used extremely sparingly.
As a follow-up, it didn’t take two hours for Daub campaigner Tower Kountze to be on my phone. He tried to explain how it’s not illegal immigrants they were talking about, but their children, the ones born in the United States and educated in our schools who were the problem. I offered to reconsider my position on the spot if the Daub campaign could prove its claims about illegal immigration straining city resources and increasing crime. He said he would send it out right away. As of presstime (6 p.m. Tuesday), those facts did not come. That offer still stands. — John Heaston
