FRANKLIN, Neb. (AP) — A south-central Nebraska man accused of injuring his 2-month-old daughter has been sent to prison.

Court records say 21-year-old Dalton Howard, of Upland, was sentenced Tuesday in Franklin to eight to 10 years in prison and given credit for 182 days already served. He’d pleaded guilty to attempted intentional child abuse. Prosecutors had lowered the charge in exchange for his plea.

Howard was arrested in February 2016 after the girl was taken by her mother to a Minden hospital, where the baby was found to have bruising and a brain bleed. The little girl eventually was taken to an Omaha hospital for treatment.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Residents near a high school in eastern Nebraska have been complaining about students who loiter outside their homes.

Several residents near Northeast High School in Lincoln asked the Lincoln Board of Education for help with the issue at a meeting Tuesday.

Students smoke and leave trash, according to resident Marty Ramirez. Students sit in their driveways, drink alcohol and have urinated on their property, other neighbors said. Some students have become increasingly confrontational and some residents are afraid to go outside, the homeowners said.

“It’s escalated to a crisis situation,” Ramirez said.

School officials said they’ve worked to address the issues. Some of the young people who gather in the neighborhood have been kicked out of school or no longer attend, but go there to see friends, officials said.

“I think at every school we have a group of students that probably smoke and would like to have the opportunity to be out of class once in a while,” said Principal Kurt Glathar. “It’s not a group of students who decided to go out and make the neighborhood miserable.”

The situation began to improve a few years ago once police and city officials moved a bus stop in the neighborhood closer to the school.

“Since then it’s worked quite well,” Glathar said. “We’ve been able to monitor the bus stop.”

While the move did help for a while, students have since moved back to loitering in the neighborhood near the home of a student, Ramirez said.

Lincoln Police Officer Nate Hill, the school resource officer, said many of the students who gather outside homes don’t cause problems and do as he asks, though there are exceptions. Hill said he’s issued tickets for littering and alcohol possession.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska officials will target potential sex traffickers this year with more proactive law enforcement and an ad campaign at rest stops and other places where trafficking takes place.

Attorney General Doug Peterson announced the initiative Thursday with dozens of state officials and advocates. The Demand an End awareness campaign seeks to clamp down on child sex trafficking by focusing on johns who purchase sex.

The Human Trafficking Initiative reports that 11 percent of the people sold for sex in Nebraska are advertised as under the age of 21.

Lawmakers and Gov. Pete Ricketts have increased penalties in recent years for sex traffickers and johns who prey on underage victims. Peterson says he wants to make clear that traffickers “are going to pay a really high price” if they get caught.

SIDNEY, Neb. (AP) — Bass Pro Shops’ chief executive said he will match donations by former Cabela’s executives and owners to a severance fund for some Cabela’s workers who are losing their jobs after Bass Pro bought the rival outdoor retailer.

Bass Pro Shops has said some employees in Sidney, Nebraska, where Cabela’s was headquartered, will likely lose their jobs as a result of the $5 billion deal that closed in September. Bass has said it will keep its headquarters in Springfield, Missouri.

Cabela’s has been headquartered for decades in Sidney and employed as many as 2,000 people in the town of about 6,700 people that’s some 365 miles (585 kilometers) west of Omaha. The largest city in the Panhandle region where Sydney is located is Scottsbluff, a community of about 15,000 people that’s about 80 miles (130 kilometers) to the northwest.

Bass Pro said it has already committed an additional $10 million on top of its normal severance program to help the Sidney employees. Bass Pro CEO Johnny Morris has asked former Cabela’s executives who got large “golden parachutes” or profits from their Cabela’s stock sale to contribute to the severance fund.

“While I know the former owners and executives are under no obligation to lend this additional support, I hope they consider doing so,” Morris said in a statement.

One of the former Cabela’s executives joining Bass Pro is chief financial officer Ralph Castner. He told the newspaper he would discuss the issue with Morris. The other executives and family members couldn’t be reached.

Bass Pro hasn’t said exactly how many Cabela’s workers will lose their jobs. The company will keep open all Nebraska retail stores, call centers and the distribution center in Sidney, according to a document sent to employees. It also will retain 125 Cabela’s information technology employees and some accounting and finance staffers.

Bass Pro also has said it will donate empty Cabela’s buildings to Sidney to help recruit new businesses to the city.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Gov. Pete Ricketts unveiled a new tax package Wednesday that would boost credits for Nebraska residents who own homes and farmland, lower the state’s top income tax rates and expand job-training programs.

The Republican governor outlined a proposal in his State of the State address that would focus more property tax benefits on in-state residents by excluding out-of-state landowners who don’t file income tax returns but still receive property tax credits.

The new initiative follows complaints from farm and ranching groups that their property tax bills have soared.

“We must help our farmers and ranchers with crushing property tax bills,” Ricketts said in his annual address. “We must help all Nebraskans keep more of their hard-earned money and attract more people to come to our state.”

The plan presented to lawmakers, the Property Tax Cuts and Opportunity Act, would use money from the state’s current property tax credit program. The current credit is applied directly to property tax bills, resulting in millions of dollars in benefits each year to landowners who don’t live in the state.

Ricketts’ proposal would shift the money into a refundable income tax credit, ensuring that only property owners who file a Nebraska income tax return can qualify. The new credit would only apply to residents who own homes or agricultural land. Renters and commercial property owners would see no direct benefit from the credit.

The property tax plan would also cap residential tax credits at $230, regardless of a property’s value. The maximum would rise after years when revenue exceeds projections. Ricketts said the limit was designed to benefit “the average Nebraska homeowner,” rather than owners of more expensive houses. Agricultural landowners would see a roughly 14 percent boost in the tax credit they receive, while residential property owners would get a 6 percent increase.

The second piece of the plan would use existing tax credits to lower Nebraska’s top personal and corporate income tax rates to 6.69 percent by Jan. 1, 2020. The current top personal rate is 6.84 percent and the top corporate rate is 7.81 percent.

“Cutting and reforming taxes is key to growing Nebraska,” Ricketts said. “Over the years, together, we have done the hard work needed to hold the line on taxes, but Nebraskans need and expect more.”

Sen. Jim Smith of Papillion, who introduced the proposal on the governor’s behalf, said the plan is designed to make the state more attractive to businesses while also responding to farm and rancher concerns. Smith said the new bill seeks to address concerns from last year’s tax package, which stalled in part because farm groups argued that it didn’t do enough for them.

“It makes better use of the dollars that were allocated for the property tax credit relief fund, because it’ll go toward resident taxpayers,” Smith said. “It makes those dollars stretch farther.”

The third piece of the plan calls for an additional $10 million for job-training programs over two years. Ricketts said the funding was important to help the state economy.

The plan is likely to face resistance. Sen. Adam Morfeld of Lincoln disputed the governor’s argument that lower taxes would help attract more residents to the state.

“We need LGBT protections, lower tuition, higher paying jobs and forward thinking policies and investments,” said Morfeld, whose district includes a large number of University of Nebraska-Lincoln students.