For the week of June 6, 2020, an additional 4,697 Nebraskans filed for unemployment. This new data takes the total of unemployment claims up to 138,091 in Nebraska since COVID-19 restrictions were put in place. While there was a major surge in mid-March to early-April as the economy began to slow down, that trend has started...
An Arizona bill just signed into law promises to reduce the dangers of “regulatory capture” in occupational licensing boards. Political scientists and public policy institutes concerned with transparency in governance often talk about the notion of regulatory capture. A quick Google search to define this term yields results that are different in tone, but point...
During the last weekend in May, I had the opportunity to participate in an academic conference focused on occupational regulations. The conference, co-hosted by the Knee Center for the Study of Occupational Regulation at St. Francis University and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville School of Business, was a tremendous opportunity for scholars to show numerous streams...
The public interest law firm the Institute for Justice (IJ) has filed two lawsuits in Lancaster County court related to policies recently debated in the Nebraska Legislature. While the Platte Institute is not party to either lawsuit, they clearly intersect with our work, since both challenge the constitutionality of state and local economic policies we’ve...
If you follow the Platte Institute you know we publish papers on public policy issues in Nebraska. But what you probably didn’t know is that sometimes this data is used in academic research and trade publications. In 2018, Nicole Fox and I published a report that reviewed the proposed reforms to occupational licenses enacted in Nebraska. While...
Click here to download Dr. Ed Timmons’ slides. Click here to download Dr. Matt Mitchell’s slides. The program may also be viewed and shared on Facebook and YouTube.
The Nebraska Legislature is currently scheduled for a summertime return to its 2020 session, which was suspended due to the COVID-19 emergency. Nebraska Legislature Speaker Jim Scheer says the plan is for senators to return for the final 17 days of legislative business between July 20 and August 13. Prior to the crisis, lawmakers had completed hearings...
Click here to download slides from the program in PDF format. The program may also be viewed and shared on Facebook and YouTube.
All over the country, governors used executive orders to reduce health care licensing restrictions in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Regulatory changes included waiving fees, granting recognition of out-of-state medical personnel licenses, allowing immediate licensure for students who had not quite completed their clinical program, and waiving certain testing requirements for nursing assistants. This temporary...
Our Goal: Protect the health, safety, and economic opportunity of all Nebraskans. Our Approach: As Nebraska’s Directed Health Measures are eased, working Nebraskans will need new and safe opportunities in a changed economy. For Nebraska to experience a full economic recovery, it will require a fertile environment for new businesses to start and existing firms...
Laura Ebke joins Meagan Forbes from the Institute for Justice and Heather Curry of the Goldwater Institute to discuss job licensing reforms in response to the COVID-19 crisis.
Platte Institute Senior Fellow for Job Licensing Reform Laura Ebke joined a recent webcast along with R Street Institute’s Shoshana Weissmann as the two discussed the landscape for job licensing and regulatory reform in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Scroll through the assorted blog posts on this page, or take a look at the Platte Institute website, or at our Twitter or Facebook pages, and you’ll see that we continue to look forward to helping Nebraska develop good policy in the post-COVID-19 reality. From our first big webinar offering Policy Director Sarah Curry’s discussion...
Ernie Goss & Scott Strain on the economic impact of COVID-19 on Nebraska.