WAYNE - Governor Pete Ricketts was in Wayne today for a town hall meeting.
He gave some prepared remarks for around 25 minutes, and then took questions from an audience of around 50 people.
Ricketts is looking to reform unemployment in Nebraska by re-branding it “re-employment”. Under his new system, anyone who filed for unemployment would be put in touch with an employment counselor and have their resume put into a database that is available to business owners in the state.
We had the opportunity to interview the Governor separately, here are the questions we asked and answers we got.
Question: Do you have any comment on the Omaha-Winnebago hospital situation?
Governor Ricketts: I think what it does is it presents an oppurtunity for the hospital to look at the procedures and be able to make reform. Certainly it's one of the things we're doing in state government, is looking how we can do a better job. We've got departments like the department of corrections where we've had to go through that similar 'we know we have to make changes' and bring in the right leadership to be able to do so and start effecting that change. That's probably what has to happen for the hospital as well.
Question: Any update on the poultry industry in Nebraska after the avian flu outbreak?
Ricketts: We were pleased to be able to lift the emergency decleration because we got the situation under control, but I don't have any specifics I can tell you right now with regards to the USDA and their help to the poultry industry.
Question: Is there any plan of allowing out-of-state people to put their resume's on the database to bring the best possible candidates to Nebraska?
Ricketts: Right now the resumes are available to in-state companies, but absolutely one of the plans we have is to start expanding that so we can put the resumes we have available out further. Also, for other innovative ways we can draw people in for the jobs that we have available. We've got more work to do on that, we are going to make investments in technology to broaden that arena and bring people into the state.
Question: Can you give an example of somewhere where you have cut costs in the state government, but raised production or efficiency?
Ricketts: Right now if you look at what we're doing with regard to prison sentance calculation, that's an example of leveraging technology. We can then use that to reduce the amount of mistakes we are making and ultimately that makes it a lot less costly. When we have to go back out and try to contact people that we've let out of prison too early, that all costs a lot of money to do that. That's one example of how we are applying technology to do a better job. Certainly when we are talking about permiting, turning that around quickly which allows comapnies to be able to make faster decisions and reduce their costs. So all of these things play together. If we can do a better job, we can start bringing our cost down.
↧