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Nebraska Life Birthday Fun
Nebraska Public Power District runs the coal-powered Gerald Gentleman Power Plant at Sutherland. Nebraska is the only state that relies 100 percent on public power.
Joshua Hardin
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ELECTRIC EGALITARIANISM
A VERY SPECIAL
73 farm glimmers on U.S. Highway West 275
YEARS in Norfolk. Residents
OF PUBLIC POWER recently celebrated the completion of the state’s largest solar farm – and now participating community members who purchased shares are reaping the benefits of low-cost, clean energy. More than 26,000 solar panels and intentionally planted pollinator species dot 70 city-owned acres of wellfield on the west side of town. The city of Norfolk, which owns half the solar farm shares, expects to save $170,000 on its electric bill annually.
The Nebraska Public Power District (NPPD) SunWise Community Solar project – which also has locations in Scottsbluff, Venango, Ainsworth and Kearney, among others in development – is the result of years of effort and community input, said Brittney Koenig, retail account manager for NPPD, who worked on the Norfolk solar project.
Nebraska has abundant renewable energy resources, and the state’s three largest electric utilities have established carbon-free generation goals.
“It made sense to rely on energy in our backyards,” said Josh Moenning, Norfolk’s mayor.
Nebraska is a state that runs exclusively on public power – a singular distinction since 1949. The Norfolk project illustrates how public power works.
Norfolk city officials began discussing the possibility of a solar farm in 2015. Technology and a maturing industry have made renewable energy costs more feasible. Next, the city reached out to NPPD and held a series of public forums to test support for the idea. Support was overwhelming. Finally, NPPD helped the city find a private developer and entered a
Men work on the outlet tower structure at Kingsley Dam, which releases water from Lake McConaughy and produces hydropower. Petersburg’s wind farm created jobs for residents.
Alan J. Bartels March/April • 1999
July/August • 2001
January/February • 2004
Students in the utility line program at Northeast Community College get hands-on training in Norfolk.
purchase agreement with the developer to provide Norfolk residents a fixed cost of energy for decades.
Unlike a top-down corporate approach, public power gives consumers the power of democratic participation. All books and records are open to public inspection. Nebraskans elect their district boards or city councils, which run the power utilities and cooperatives. Consumers may attend power board meetings and provide comments; they have a say.
Not only is Nebraska’s community-owned energy reliable – it has one of the shortest outage durations anywhere – but it’s affordable, too. Nebraskans pay one of the lowest rates for electricity in the U.S. That’s a good thing because the state’s major industries – agriculture, food processing and chemical manufacturing – require a lot of energy. As a result, per capita, Nebraska is one of the top 10 energy consumers in the nation.
Public utilities don’t pay taxes but make payments to the state that fund social services, like public schools. And since there are no stockholders, there’s no profit motive. Utilities reinvest revenue in infrastructure.
Nebraska has 121 municipals, 30 public power districts and 10 electric cooperatives. NPPD is the state’s largest electric utility. Other utilities include Omaha Public Power District, Lincoln Electric System, Tri-State Generation & Transmission and Nebraska Municipal Power Pool, among others.
Today Nebraskans in urban and rural areas enjoy equal access to electricity, but a previous disparity helped fuel the development of public power in Nebraska.
In the earliest days, municipal electric companies began providing power in the 1880s. By the 1920s, some rural cooperatives had formed, but most people in agricultural areas were still living in the dark. Private electric holding companies with Wall Street bank-backing began taking over municipal systems. Developing low-paying rural projects disinterested them. There wasn’t enough profit. Still, the holding companies pushed against new public utility developments – even the little guys.
Nebraska Public Power District
Stacy Wemhoff/Loup Power District At top, the Columbus Powerhouse is one of Nebraska’s oldest and largest hydoelectric plants. Loup Power District empoyees replace a turbine bearing at Monroe Powerhouse.
Nebraskans pushed back. They passed an initiative in 1930 that allowed for revenue bond financing for municipal utilities, which aided capital raising efforts. Three years later, Nebraska’s Enabling Act allowed 15 percent of voters to petition to form a public power or irrigation district with its local board of directors. In 1933, the Nebraska Legislature also created the Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District, also known as the “Tri-County Project,” which endeavored to bring water and electricity to South-Central Nebraska.
Federal legislation also helped propel the state toward its public-powered future. Nebraska Senator George Norris, a NewDeal Republican, sponsored the Tennessee Valley Authority Act (1933), allowing public hydroelectric power ownership. (Norris was also a fierce advocate of the Tri-County Project and often labeled a socialist for his support. He believed no corporate interest should profit off essential services like electricity or water.) The Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 broke up corporate electricity monopolies, and the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 provided loans to rural utility projects.
As a result of legislation and labor, by the mid-1940s, Nebraska had 16 public power districts and 35 rural electrification districts. Three districts’ hydro plants could meet 85 percent of Nebraskans’ power needs. By 1949, every resident received their electricity from a community-owned institution.
“Everyone has a voice in decisions,” NPPD’s Koenig said. “We are Nebraskans serving Nebraskans. When you live and work in the community you serve, you consider everyone.”
November/December • 2007
September/October • 2008
January/February • 2010
EXPLORE & STAY AWHILE
MENTORING IS MAGICAL
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first-grade teacher Andrea Wilson uses her planning time at Hershey Elementary for a different purpose than lesson preparation. She’s preparing her two TeamMates Mentoring Program mentees for life.
For Wilson, TeamMates is a family affair. Her three children and husband have also participated in the program, which matches mentors with students to support them and help them reach their full potential. What began as a Nebraska program in 1991 has since expanded to Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota and Wyoming and touched the lives of more than 43,000 students.
The first mentors to make an outsized impact were outsized people. Twenty-two University of Nebraska-Lincoln Husker Football players heeded Coach Tom Osborne’s call to team up with Lincoln middle school students to show them they cared and had their backs. Among those kids, 21 graduated high school, and one pursued a Motocross career.
Osborne and his wife, Nancy, formalized the statewide TeamMates Mentoring Program in 1998.
Mentors don’t have to be star athletes. They don’t have to have degrees in childhood psychology or education. They just have to show up – and keep showing up. Spending time with someone might look like helping with homework, playing a game, or just offering a listening ear. “A mentor,” Osborne said, “can provide a vision of what’s possible.”
There are no requirements for a child to be eligible for a mentor. The idea is that every child can benefit from another supportive adult in his or her life. The program matches each mentor-mentee pairing based on the results of a strengths assessment test.
The ripple effects of a mentor-mentee relationship can benefit generations. Osborne felt the impact on his life. As a child, Tom Osborne’s grandfather moved from Illinois to Western Nebraska with
The TeamMates Mentoring Program matches school-aged children with adults who can meet once a week to cheer kids on to become the best versions of themselves.
TeamMates
AJ Dahm Tom Osborne and his wife, Nancy, started TeamMates in 1991. In his family, Osborne witnessed firsthand the positive impact that mentorship can have on generations. March/April • 2012
May/June • 2013
July/August • 2014
TeamMates his mother, father and three siblings to homestead in the 1870s. It was a difficult life. The farming was bad, and his father drank too much.
But Osborne’s grandfather was a gifted speaker, and a traveling preacher noticed. The preacher encouraged Osborne’s grandfather to use his gift and pursue his education. Because of this, Osborne’s grandfather went to high school, then college at a time when this was rare. Osborne’s grandfather also met his wife and Osborne’s grandmother, a fellow college graduate. After the couple had children, they also expected their kids to graduate from university, which they did during the Great Depression.
Osborne said his grandfather was his most significant role model. Osborne’s grandfather’s mentor ultimately influenced not only generations of Osborne’s family, but that relationship also impacted how Osborne coached more than 2,000 young men.
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TeamMates takes this Osborne strategy to heart: the best way to better society to improve culture is one person at a time.
Hershey teacher Andrea Wilson’s middle child, Addilyn, is going into her senior year of high school. Addilyn has had a mentor since fifth grade.
Addilyn credits her mentor Karen Troyer with helping her learn how to speak more confidently and encouraging her to believe “I had something to say, even though I’m from a small town in Nebraska.”
Addilyn has used her voice to promote TeamMates in her role as Miss Omaha’s Outstanding Teen. As a youth ambassador, she’s raised $7,000 for TeamMates scholarships through organizing Daddy-Daughter dances in her community.
“Having someone believe in you pushes you to be the best version of yourself,” Addilyn said.
In towns throughout Nebraska, there are still more hopeful mentees than mentors, so there are waitlists. Could connection be one of the cures in a nation fractured by a youth mental health crisis? Yes, says Wilson. It changes a child's life to know that someone cares and will always be there for them.
TeamMates Mentors don’t need special qualifications. They only have to commit to showing a child that they care and they’ll be there. NebraskaLife.com
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In partnership with our supplier, Nebraska Public Power District, we deliver energy to you. Harris & Ewing/Library of Congress Many Nebraskans worked to make the legislature unicameral, but none championed the idea more than U.S. Senator George Norris. The legislative chamber bears his name.
NEBRASKA’S UNIQUE ONE-HOUSE LEGISLATURE
85 YEARS OF UNICAMERAL
WITH JUST
weeks before election day in 1934, U.S. Senator George Norris embarked on a Nebraska road trip that wore out two sets of tires and changed the state’s politics forever. Nebraskans had just suffered through the hottest summer on record. Economic depression and drought made the future uncertain. Support for an amendment to make Nebraska a single-house state legislature – or unicameral – also felt tenuous. But Norris had been fighting too hard for too long to give up.
Along with his son-in-law, John Robertson, Norris traveled as many as 200 miles a day throughout the state, giving dozens of speeches in a few weeks. Norris argued that a unicameral state legislature made government more transparent and accountable. It diminished the influence of lobbyists and partisan interests. And as Nebraskans struggled with the impact of depression and drought, there was also a pragmatic appeal to the economic benefit.
“Why should we then have two bodies instead of one and burden our taxpayers with the necessarily increased expense to attain the object that can be fully attained by one house instead of two? “
On the eve of the election, the McCook Daily Gazette reported that their hometown senator Norris “told approximately a thousand southwestern Nebraska voters that he would rather death close his eyes before a check is made of today’s ballots if the vote brings defeat to his proposal to install a Unicameral Legislature in Nebraska.”
Norris didn’t invent the unicameral, and he wasn’t the first to support it.
Nebraska State Historical Society
Unicameral Information Office
Thomas Paine’s 1776 essay Common Sense advocated for a republic governed by a unicameral legislature. The Articles of Confederation, written in 1777, adopted a one-house legislature, but it didn’t go into effect until 1781 after all 13 states agreed. At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, delegates restructured the government into a two-house, or bicameral, system.
At the state level, proposals for onehouse legislatures became popular in the 1910s, driven by the ideals of the Progressive Movement, including in Nebraska. Stromsburg native John N. Norton, a Democrat who later worked with Norris to promote the unicameral, was one of the state’s earliest one-house supporters when he served in the Nebraska House of Representatives from 1911 to 1919. His attempts to make the legislature unicameral were unsuccessful, but he remained con-
AJ Dahm The first Nebraska Unicameral Legislature opened session on Jan. 5, 1937. Nonpartisan senators serve Nebraska together.
vinced of the superiority of a one-house legislature. John Senning, the chair of political science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, also championed it.
Most Nebraska papers were distinctly less impressed. The Beatrice Sun proclaimed in a headline, “Unicameral Plan is Strange All Around.” Even more emphatically, The Nebraska Beacon wrote, “The whole idea is communistic.” Only The Lincoln Journal and The Lincoln Star and a few others expressed support for the so-called “Norris amendment.”
Much to Norris’ relief, Nebraskans voted in favor of making Nebraska a onehouse legislature. And on Jan. 5, 1937, the state’s first unicameral legislative session opened with 43 senators, each representing a district. Senning drew the first district map. Norton wrote the house rules and left a federal position to serve one two-year term in the new Unicameral before returning to work in D.C. Later, the district – and the senator count – grew to today’s 49. Each senator represents one district that’s home to 39,000 people.
Despite efforts by other states to adopt a one-house legislature, Nebraska remains the only unicameral state legislature in the United States. Its senators run on nonpartisan ballots – a feature not inherent to a unicameral but a condition that Norris insisted on when the parties were drafting the amendment.
Still, lawmakers generally announce their affiliation and receive party endorsements for seats. They also tend to align themselves with national party positions. Though much is made of how fractious our current political moment is, even Norris was considered a maverick in his day for breaking with his fellow Republicans on specific issues.
This fall, voters from even-numbered districts head to the polls to vote for their state senator.
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