On Wednesday September 19th, Governor Dave Heineman joined the Rotary Club for lunch and to discuss current issues, one of them being unemployment in Nebraska and to answer some questions from Rotary members. The current unemployment rate is the 2nd lowest in the country at 4%.
Gov. Heineman began with thanking the fire departments and communities for working together during the streak of wild-fires that blackened grasslands and trees in the north-western panhandle and north-central Nebraska. “Every one of those fire departments, the communities, Nebraskans all across our state furnished food, water, Gatorade, all sorts of supplies to help out,” Gov. Heineman said during his first few minutes at the podium and continued, “I just say a special thank you to those who were involved in those efforts.”
While Gov. Heineman was at the stand he gave an update on the unemployment rate, why Nebraska is such a great place to live and what his main focus is for Nebraska to keep moving forward.
According to Gov. Heineman the first focus is getting every child a great education, the second focus is jobs. “We want to create enough jobs to keep every person in Nebraska,” Gov. Heineman continued “Now we can say for the first time in our history two of the last three years our population growth in our state exceeded the national average.” Gov. Heineman attributes the population growth to Nebraska retaining more young people, creating more jobs so families can move to Nebraska.
Young Nebraskan citizens leaving the state was one of the first issues Gov. Heineman addressed when he entered office. Gov. Heineman says, “We want to continue to move on that front.”
Gov. Heineman began to discuss what separates Nebraska from other states, “We believe in a financial concept Federal Governments never heard of, we don’t spend money we don’t have,” Gov. Heineman explained “We balance our state budget by controlling spending, not by raising taxes. We passed the largest tax relief package in the history of the state, we modernized our economic incentive program that a lot of people are using these days in business called the Nebraska Advantage.”
Gov. Heineman explained that in the past six years a little over 300 separate companies chose Nebraska as the state to move to or expand because of the Nebraska Advantage. According to Gov. Heineman those companies will invest nearly 8 billion dollars in the Nebraskan economy while creating more than 20,000 new jobs.
Listen to Governor Dave Heinemans Interview With North Platte Post Below!