LIMBO: Some 230 miles of pipe has been sitting in this pasture near Gascoyne, N.D., since 2011 as the debate rages on over whether to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

By Deena Winter | Nebraska Watchdog

LINCOLN – South Dakota rancher Bret Clanton heard a Canadian oil pipeline company, TransCanada, was stockpiling pipe across the border in North Dakota. In 2011 he drove from his ranch to take a look.

At the top of a hill east of Scranton, N.D. — near a ghost town named Gascoyne — trucks unloaded pipe into a pasture. That field is now filled with rows and rows of mostly aqua-green pipe, some stamped with the words “made in Canada.” It’s where the pipe has sat ever since, waiting for the Obama administration to give the green light so it can be buried in American soil, filled with oil from Alberta, Canada and sent to Texas refineries.

The future of the 230 or so miles of unused pipe in rural North Dakota has caused consternation for environmentalists, libertarians, union workers, oil companies, farmers, ranchers, governors and politicians — from the lowliest county commissioner to the president.

Should a Canadian company be allowed to put 1,179 miles of this pipe in the ground and run 830,000 barrels of oil per day through it?

The question has vexed America since TransCanada applied for its permits in September 2008. Clanton is deeply interested in the outcome, since three miles of the pipeline would cross his cattle ranch near Buffalo, S.D.

Clanton occasionally visits the pipe yard and takes pictures of the pipe – a pile so big he can’t fit it in one frame. He figures TransCanada chose Gascoyne as a storage spot because it has a railroad spur once used for a coal mine. The few times Clanton visited the pipe yard and taken photos, a little white pickup stopped by to keep watch.

“You could drive right in the middle of it if you wanted,” Clanton said. “I don’t think they ever expected that it was going to end up laying there for three years.”

PIPES ON THE PRAIRIE: Bret Clanton snapped this photo when the pipes were being unloaded near Gascoyne, N.D., back in 2011.

In fact, some of the pipe has since been painted with white latex to protect it from the elements.

The Gascoyne pipe yard is not fenced, but TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard says it is “secure.”

Howard says another 250 miles of pipe is stored at a manufacturer’s facility in Regina, Sask., and the rest is at a manufacturing plant in Little Rock, Ark. The ultimate destination of the Gascoyne pipes hasn’t been determined, but if the project is approved it will end up in Montana, South Dakota or Nebraska.

To some, the fact TransCanada bought and stored much of the pipe for Keystone XL before getting all of its permits approved reeks of hubris.

“TransCanada was arrogant about eminent domain and arrogant about buying all the pipe,” says Jane Kleeb, executive director of Bold Nebraska, which has organized opposition to the pipeline in Nebraska. “They just assumed they would be welcomed with open arms like in 2008. We all know a thing now about tar sands (oil), property rights and the risks.”

For Clanton, the pipes are a symbol of a fight he’s been waging since he first saw surveyors on his land about six years ago. These surveyors “weren’t always good map readers” and “had trespassing issues,” he said.

“They wouldn’t tell you who they were or what they were doing,” he said. He’s heard from about eight land agents since then – agents he calls “a piece of work.”

Bret Clanton

“I would not wish that process on anybody,” he says. “They can say and do anything to procure your signature because they’re not accountable to anybody. … I think they’re hiring them out of a bar in Tulsa, Okla. They’re not the brightest bulbs on the block.”

Similar to the way one of TransCanada’s land agents in Nebraska also happened to be a preacher, Clanton says they’ve sent a few agents waving Jesus flags on their way into town.

“Christians fell right in behind ’em,” he says. He’s a Christian, too, he said, but he wasn’t buying it. He saw Native American land agents materialize to speak to members of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe.

“They know what they’re doing,” he says of TransCanada. “My issue on this whole thing is my state, South Dakota, gave the power of condemnation to a foreign, for-profit company. Your average person doesn’t understand the process that’s taken place.”

In his latest visit to the pipe yard Clanton saw “an endless line of trucks coming in and out,” and he believes they’re picking up fracking sand used to release oil in North Dakota’s booming Bakken oil fields.

The Keystone XL wouldn’t go through North Dakota – in fact, it seems to avoid North Dakota, even though TransCanada says one-fourth of the pipeline capacity will be used for light crude oil from the Bakken. That oil would be picked up at an “on ramp” in Baker, Mont., that TransCanada calls Bakken Marketlink.

But Clanton is skeptical of that plan. As controversy over the Keystone XL heated up, TransCanada highlighted its plans to transport Bakken oil, but Clanton remembers how the company had to be muscled into picking up the North Dakota oil.

TransCanada has a number of places where it will store or stage equipment along a proposed route while awaiting approval, which normally takes 18 to 24  months, so the company committed to producing materials such as pipes and pump stations “to make sure things were available in a timely fashion,” Howard said.

“Keystone XL was applied for in 2008 and was on track to complete the regulatory review process in 2010,” Howard said in an emailed comment. “The BP incident in the Gulf of Mexico and the Enbridge spill in Michigan changed the regulatory and political landscape related to our project.”

But the pipeline equipment had already been ordered. As it was completed, TransCanada took possession, Howard said.

After the pipe is laid, he said, it is subjected to “rigorous, internal inspections” with specialized equipment to detect even the smallest imperfections.

Clanton says the longer the permitting process drags on, “the scarier it’s getting.”

“All I ever wanted to be is a cowman until this was thrust upon me,” he said. He’s now a member of Dakota Rural Action, which helps landowners negotiate easements and land restoration.

Clanton has always thought of himself as an “ultraconservative Republican” but since the Keystone XL came along he’s been called lots of names, including an eco-terrorist.

“I don’t know what the hell I am anymore,” he says.

Contact Deena Winter at deena@nebraskawatchdog.org. Follow Deena on Twitter at @DeenaNEWatchdog

Editor’s note: to subscribe to News Updates from Nebraska Watchdog at no cost, click here.

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ABOUT-FACE: Nebraska was being hailed as one of the best states for transgender student-athletes, thanks to a little-noticed policy supposedly passed by the state high school activities association. Now a board member says it hasn’t yet voted on the policy.

By Deena Winter | Nebraska Watchdog

LINCOLN – Turnabout, it seems, doesn’t always equal fair play.

The head of a Nebraska board that governs school activities said the board has not yet voted on a policy protecting the rights of transgender athletes, a statement that appears to contradict what she told national media outlets such as the New York Times and Deadspin.

The group’s executive director, Rhonda Blanford-Green, had said the Nebraska School Activities Association passed a policy in December outlining a process to allow transgender student-athletes to change teams.

Not so.

CONFUSION: The new head of the high school activities association, Rhonda Blanford-Green, now says the policy wasn’t approved, as she previously said.

She now says her board of directors did not vote on the policy, as reported, and will do so in August.

Nebraska Watchdog reported last week the NSAA passed the policy, which sets up procedures for schools if transgendered students want to participate on the team they identify with – if a male student identifies as a female and wants to play on the girls’ team, for example.

But a member of the NSAA’s board of directors – the entity that supposedly passed the policy – told Nebraska Watchdog on Monday the transgender policy was discussed at the December meeting, but wasn’t voted on.

“We did not take action,” said Bob Reznicek, superintendent of schools for Boys Town schools. “Our understanding was we were going to vote on it in the spring.”

Reznicek, who has served on the NSAA board for 13 years, said the board typically discusses a policy one month and votes on it the next. He said he got a brief email from Blanford-Green on Monday confirming there was no official vote taken, so a vote would be taken at the board’s Aug. 21 meeting.

That is contrary to what Blanford-Green told multiple reporters. But this story has been odd from the start.

Stories about Nebraska’s transgender policy first appeared in the national press while few people in Nebraska seemed to know anything about it, until Nebraska Watchdog’s report came out last week. The policy was nowhere to be found in NSAA agendas or meeting minutes, although the policy itself could be found online.

But that online post has since been removed and replaced with a message from Blanford-Green saying the policy will be on the board’s August agenda to “eliminate any confusion on the transparency of the association or myself to formally address procedures for transgender participation within our board procedures.”

After other Nebraska media followed up on our story late last week, Blanford-Green told a Lincoln Journal Star reporter she proposed the policy to the board in November because she wanted to get it in the books before she appeared at a national conference on transgender student participation in sports.

Then, she told the Omaha World-Herald although the policy is on the books, it doesn’t appear in meeting minutes and would come back for “another vote”  July 11 “to ensure that it is placed on official meeting records.” That date apparently has since been pushed back to Aug. 21.

Reznicek tells a different story.

“Yes, we did discuss it, but no, we did not vote on it,” he said. “Whenever we take official action, it should be in our official minutes.”

Whether this is the first or second vote on the policy – which apparently is up for debate – does he think it will pass?

“I don’t want to speculate on that,” he said. “I don’t think anybody’s necessarily opposed to it.”

When asked why the vote wasn’t recorded in meeting minutes, Blanford-Green told Nebraska Watchdog via email she wasn’t sure. “There was a discussion and acceptance,” she wrote, and the situation “will be rectified.”

Asked about Reznicek’s statement that the policy had not yet been approved, Blanford-Green said, “You spoke with a board member and they have provided you with the answer. I don’t think an additional comment from me on a board member’s response is necessary.”

The other seven NSAA board members did not respond to phone calls seeking comment.

Blanford-Green was an 11-time All-American sprinter and hurdler at the University of Nebraska in the early 1980s. She left her job as associate commissioner of Colorado’s High School Activities Association, where she helped craft a similar policy in 2009, to take the top job in Nebraska last July.

Meanwhile, as awareness of the policy has spread in Nebraska, so has opposition. Al Riskowski, executive director of the Nebraska Family Council, said his group would oppose such a policy.

“I think parents should be involved in this type of a decision,” he said. “We certainly would hope that the board would open up public comment in regard to such a controversial policy.”

If a transgendered girl is allowed to participate on a girls’ team, that could be an unfair advantage and “becomes problematic when it comes to bathrooms, locker rooms and showers,” Riskowski said.

“Do we want little girls or young women exposed to a boy in their locker room shower?” he said. “If you’re going to change such a policy, parents should really be involved with such a shift. There’s a lot of parents who are going to care very deeply.”

Contact Deena Winter at deena@nebraskawatchdog.org. Follow Deena on Twitter at @DeenaNEWatchdog

Editor’s note: to subscribe to News Updates from Nebraska Watchdog at no cost, click here.

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Six simple words: “We don’t want to be Kansas,” are off and running as the Nebraska Democratic Party’s election year slogan for 2014.

Vince Powers

During an exclusive on camera interview (see video below) with Nebraska Watchdog’s Joe Jordan, State Chairman Vince Powers put the anti-Kansas bumper sticker front and center.

All this as Democrats and Republicans start lining up for two key races next year, governor and U.S. Senate.

While the races are important to both parties, for Democrats like Powers, 2014 is a make or break year.

Contact Joe Jordan at joe@nebraskawatchdog.org

To subscribe to news updates from Nebraska Watchdog at no charge, click here

The post Top NE Democrat’s mantra: ‘We don’t want to be Kansas’ appeared first on Watchdog.org.

PROSPECT: The president of Midland University in Fremont, Ben Sasse, is exploring a possible run for the U.S. Senate in Nebraska.

By Deena Winter | Nebraska Watchdog

FREMONT — Ben Sasse hasn’t even decided for sure whether he’s going to run for the U.S. Senate in Nebraska.

Already, the chairman of the state Democratic Party has called him a carpetbagger — tit-for-tat for all the Republicans who put the label on Democrat Bob Kerrey.

Like Kerrey, Sasse is a Nebraska native. Unlike Kerrey, he lives and works in Nebraska now, after taking jobs around the country before coming home about four years ago.

His roots run deep here at Midland University, a private Christian liberal arts university tucked in the town of Fremont where he grew up. His father graduated from the college and his grandpa worked there for 33 years, retiring as chief financial officer in the 1980s. Sasse attended the local Lutheran elementary school.

“I spent a lot of fifth grade in the hall,” he said, explaining that he had too much energy, talked too much and was just plain ornery.

He went to summer basketball camps, high school dances and gave his high school graduation speech as valedictorian at Midland. He played sports, walked bean fields and detasseled corn in the Fremont area.

“I became a lifeguard so I wouldn’t have to detassel anymore,” he said. “Detasseling is the hardest job I’ve ever had.”

He was recruited to wrestle at Harvard, to be exact and attended Oxford, St. John’s and got his Ph.D. from Yale. Upon graduation, he quickly learned he was good at “fixing broken stuff.”

His first job out of college was working for the Boston Consulting Group, a global management consulting firm. After two weeks of training, he got a call on a Sunday afternoon saying he needed to get on a 6 a.m. flight to Minneapolis the next day, where he spent the next four months helping Northwest Airlines avoid bankruptcy, improving planes’ turnaround time between flights.

From 2003 to 2005, he was chief of staff for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Policy, where a lot of what he did is classified, but he will say he worked on sharing intelligence between the FBI and CIA.

LISTENING: Ben Sasse says he expects to make a decision on the Senate race by mid-July.

“I think we’ve got a major problem and we don’t tell the truth about our enemies,” he said, defining our enemy as “jihadist Islam,” or those willing to kill in the name of religion.

After that, the Bush team tried to persuade him to return with other job offers, but he didn’t bite until he was offered a job at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Unsustainable entitlement programs were irresistible challenges to Sasse, given his penchant for fixing things.

From 2007 until the day Obama was inaugurated, he served as U.S. assistant secretary of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush — the fourth-ranking job in the department, working in policy and research.

For a time, he was charged with addressing a problem in Iraq where women were having babies at home rather than risk going to a hospital. He spent a week in the Green (protected) and Red (dangerous) Zones of Baghdad. There, he met soldiers who were serving their third 15-month tour of duty in six years.

“It was harrowing to see,” he said.

But since he’s not yet a Senate candidate, just engaged in a “listening tour” that should culminate in a decision by mid-July, he won’t say whether the war was a mistake. He does say he’s a believer in the Powell Doctrine, former Defense Secretary Colin’s Powell’s belief that nations should be reticent to go to war but do so with “unquestionable resolve” once all other political, economic and diplomatic means have been exhausted.

By 2009, his hometown college was flailing, at the edge of bankruptcy, when its board of directors turned to young Sasse for advice. He gave them hard recommendations.

Then they asked him to lead the institution out of troubled waters, and when he took the job at age 38, he became one of the youngest chief executives in higher ed.

He’d already convinced his wife, a Southerner, to buy a lake house near Fremont while teaching public policy at the University of Texas — and says the Alabama native fell in love with the state despite its “scary” winters. She has since become a one-woman chamber of commerce, trying to recruit people to move to Nebraska to raise their families.

After he arrived on campus, Sasse began eliminating tenured professors whose classes weren’t attracting enough students.

“Some (classes) literally had more professors than students,” he said.

That meant a lot of tearful conversations on the couch outside his office with “nice, well-meaning” professors about whether it made sense for them to stay at Midland. Lifetime tenure was gone, replaced by “term tenure.”

“The college doesn’t exist as a jobs program for teachers,” he said. “We raised a bunch of money and bought a lot of professors out.”

Enrollment has nearly doubled since he arrived, and was already growing at the fastest pace among Nebraska colleges when Midland recently bought Dana College in Blair, a Lutheran college that closed in 2010.

Sasse has also worked to “reinvent freshman year” to help students make the transition from high school – where they “have to get permission to pee” – to college.

“We decided not to waste a crisis,” he said, quoting Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff and now mayor of Chicago, recently dubbed “Chicago Bull” by Time magazine. Yes, that Rahm.

Sasse may be a self-described right-wing conservative – pro-guns and pro-life – but he isn’t afraid to credit Emanuel with being “incredibly effective” at things such as reducing crime.

He also admits he’s never run for public office before, and so is probably breaking some of the cardinal rules with such comments.

He considers his time at the helm of Midland his most interesting job experience so far, because “this is home … and this sector is so necessary to the American Dream.”

He said he loves his job at Midland, but that he’s worried about the kind of world he’ll leave his children before launching into a critique of Obamacare.

“Anything that takes 2,700 pages to write and 20,000 pages to regulate shouldn’t pass,” he said.

He said the national health program will set up more IRS-type scandals where the federal bureaucracy infringes on people’s rights.

If he enters the U.S. Senate race, it’s clear he’ll be a formidable candidate. What he lacks in name recognition he makes up for with Kennedy-esque looks and polished speaking skills. He’s on a national speaking circuit. He’s one of the top half-dozen listed by the Worldwide Speakers Group under health care, just a few notches below former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. That has him in front of audiences about twice a month.

He often brings one of his three children on his trips, and assigns them with playing the role of a cub reporter who reports back to the family at home. The kids have learned that the best headlines around the dinner table are the ones that poke fun at his screw-ups. Like the time he gave a whole speech in ALL CAPS, according to his reporter-child.

One health group that hosted him called Sasse one of the leading minds in health care, and he’s debated former Vermont governor and presidential contender Howard Dean on Obamacare several times. He calls Dean his “debate partner” and gives Dean credit for being open about his support for a European-style, government-run health care program.

Sasse spoke to a crowd of about 20 Friday at a Rotary Club meeting at the Knolls Country Club in Lincoln, and it was clear he knows Obamacare inside and out, as well as other government programs. He is, after all, a Harvard graduate – even though he sometimes merely says he went to college “in Boston.”

So why leave home and head to Congress – a place so broken that one senator is unlikely to fix it? Sasse said he’s not naïve about how hard it would be to make a difference, but he’s optimistic that “thoughtful people” can improve it.

“I’m the policy nerd and I care about national solutions,” he said.

Contact Deena Winter at deena@nebraskawatchdog.org. Follow Deena on Twitter at @DeenaNEWatchdog

Editor’s note: to subscribe to News Updates from Nebraska Watchdog at no cost, click here.

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Omaha Fire Chief Mike McDonnell

OMAHA—Fire Chief Mike McDonnell is talking.

One day after a controversial order from Mayor Jean Stothert kept McDonnell quiet, Nebraska Watchdog’s request to interview McDonnell was approved by the mayor’s office.

McDonnell, who faces an uncertain future at best, spoke exclusively with Nebraska Watchdog’s Joe Jordan about his iffy relationship with the city’s new mayor which is highlighted by a never ending multimillion dollar budget battle.

Contact Joe Jordan at joe@nebraskawatchdog.org

To subscribe to news updates from Nebraska Watchdog at no charge, click here

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TACKLING A TOUGH ISSUE: Nebraska is being hailed as one of the best states to be a transgender student-athlete, thanks to a little-noticed new policy passed by the state high school activities association.

By Deena Winter | Nebraska Watchdog

Updated 9 a.m. Saturday

LINCOLN – With no fanfare or media releases, the Nebraska School Activities Association passed a policy in December that protects transgender students’ right to participate in school activities, including sports.

And with that, Nebraska became one of just eight states with such a policy – although Nebraska is a bit of an outlier, joining blue states such as California, Oregon and several on the East Coast. The policy prompted Deadspin to recently name Nebraska “one of the best states to be a transgender high school athlete.”

The new policy was proposed by the NSAA’s new executive director, Rhonda Blanford-Green, who was an 11-time All-American sprinter and hurdler at the University of Nebraska in the early 1980s. Blanford-Green left Colorado’s High School Activities Association, where she helped craft a similar policy in 2009, to take the top job in Nebraska about a year ago.

How did she get the policy passed, unanimously, by her board in a conservative state that’s not known for being friendly to the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender community?

“We’re not trying to adopt a policy that allows same-sex marriage,” she said. “Or that every boy that thinks he’s a girl gets to participate.”

The policy simply adds sexual orientation to the NSAA’s equity code.

“I don’t see it as being controversial at all,” she said. “I see it as being very proactive.”

But not many Nebraskans seem to be aware of the new policy that has attracted the attention of the New York Times.

PROACTIVE: The new head of the Nebraska School Activities Association said the new policy is proactive.

David Bydalek, executive director of Family First Nebraska, said the NSAA needs to be careful in terms of the competitive balance between males and females. Family First is a conservative, pro-family nonprofit.

“From a physiological standpoint, there are differences,” he said. “We have different competition standards for different sexes and if you’re going to skew that in some way, they have to have thought that out pretty well.”

Some student-athletes might have a problem competing against a transgender opponent. He knows of high school wrestlers who feel uncomfortable wrestling girls because they don’t think it’s proper.

“That might be problematic,” Bydalek said.

Blanford-Green said it’s no different from saying the NSAA won’t discriminate against a student based on their race or disability.

“It’s no different than if I have a special-needs student who has a tube in stomach who wants to run cross country,” Blanford-Green said.

She said it is a proactive move so the NSAA is prepared if and when a transgender student wants to participate in an activity.

“I don’t think it was meant to have some big announcement,” she said. “It’s not controversial. I think the controversy will come when you have a 6-foot-4-inch male that wants to play volleyball.”

Or when a transgender student replaces another student on a team.

“That’s when you’ll see media releases,” she said.

The NSAA bylaws state that the organization recognizes transgender students’ right to participate in interscholastic activities without unlawful discrimination based on their sexual orientation. To ensure “appropriate gender assignment” for sports, the student’s home school would perform a “confidential evaluation to determine the gender assignment for the prospective student-athlete,” according to the policy.

Among the criteria schools would use to determine whether a transgender student is eligible to participate in NSAA activities are:

• A written statement from the student affirming “the consistent gender identity and expression to which the student self-relates”
• Documentation from parents, friends or teachers that the “actions, attitudes, dress and manner demonstrate the student’s consistent gender identification and expression.”
• Written verification from a doctor, psychiatrist or psychologist of the student’s gender identification.
• Medical documentation of hormonal therapy, sexual reassignment surgery, counseling, etc.

Once the school makes a decision, the school administrator notifies the NSAA, which would only get involved if the school denies the student from participating and the parents or guardians appeal the decision or another NSAA member school appeals the decision.

“NSAA doesn’t get involved until there’s controversy with the decision of the member school,” Blanford-Green said.

The NSAA would conduct a confidential review, with an appeal hearing within seven days by a three-person board, one of whom must be a physician or mental-health professional. The policy says the board can include a physician with experience in gender identity health care, or a psychiatrist familiar with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health standards of care, a school administrator, an NSAA staffer and an advocate familiar with gender identity and expression issues.

The NSAA policy recommends schools have a plan in place, educate staffers on transgender sensitivity, use correct names and pronouns according to students’ self identification, ensure “gender appropriate restroom accessibility” and reasonably accommodate “equitable locker room accessibility” and allow students to dress according to their gender identity.

Would the policy require a school district to build a new locker room, for example? Blanford-Green said most sports don’t require locker rooms, but “in certain sports you’d have to look at how you’d create an equitable situation.”

Blanford-Green said she has gotten no feedback on the policy, which can be found in NSAA minutes and is available on the NSAA website. She later told another reporter the policy is not in the minutes, and so it will come back for another vote on July 11 to put it in official meeting records.

No Nebraska students have indicated an interest in making use of the policy yet, but if and when they do, the NSAA will be ready.

“We don’t fly by the seat of our pants,” she said. “We won’t make arbitrary decisions. We have a template that tells us how to treat this person with respect and dignity.”

In Colorado, a trangender female wanted to run in cross country, prompting the activities association to pass a policy after she was allowed to participate. Despite having such a policy, a Colorado school district is being sued by the parents of a 6-year-old transgender girl for trying to make her use a separate bathroom.

Blanford-Green said most people just don’t want to talk about the issue. But she’s accustomed to breaking down barriers, as the first black woman to head up a state high school activities association and the first black administrator hired by the Colorado activities association. She also helped convince Gov. Dave Heineman to proclaim a day to celebrate the progression of women in athletics on the 40th anniversary of Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in education.

She said it doesn’t matter “whether or not we agree with the concept of transgender.” What’s relevant, she said, is that the NSAA has a policy rather than make decisions based on emotions, ethics or religious beliefs.

Bydalek said the NSAA needs to tread carefully when dealing with “hurting, confused” teenagers.

“If a teenage kid is dealing with sexuality issues, it’s a difficult thing,” Bydalek said. “It’s not an easy subject. You want to have compassion, yet you want to have a policy that makes some sort of common sense.”

Blanford-Green said she is proud of Nebraska’s designation as one of the top places for transgender students to live because it shows the rest of the nation that while Nebraska might be conservative, it’s showing “responsibility and huge progressiveness.”

“Obviously, Nebraska broke some barriers by hiring the first black female to lead an association ever in the nation,” she said.

And while Deadspin expressed shock that Nebraska banned gay marriage 13 years ago but has a transgender-friendly policy, Blanford-Green said she doesn’t see the connection.

“I don’t care about gay marriage,” she said, later clarifying that she has no opinion because it isn’t relevant to her job. “That’s for the politicians.”

Contact Deena Winter at deena@nebraskawatchdog.org. Follow Deena on Twitter at @DeenaNEWatchdog

Editor’s note: to subscribe to News Updates from Nebraska Watchdog at no cost, click here.

The post NE transgender students can change teams appeared first on Watchdog.org.

Mayor Jean Stothert

OMAHA-Early Wednesday afternoon Fire Chief Mike McDonnell was ready to talk about his uncertain future when a scheduled interview with Nebraska Watchdog was suddenly and unexpectedly cancelled.

Fire Chief Mike McDonnell

The plug on the interview was pulled shortly after Mayor Jean Stothert, who wants McDonnell gone but because of city rules can’t simply fire him, sent a memo, titled “Directive—Media interaction,” to several top city officials including McDonnell.

“Effective immediately, all interaction with the news media by any Department directors or any staff member of any city department regarding matters of City government will first be reviewed and approved by the Mayor’s Chief of Staff or the Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications, ” wrote Stothert.

One of Stothert’s political enemies, Fire Union President Steve LeClair, pounced on the memo firing off a scathing email with the new mayor’s directive attached.

LeClair writes, “I have immediate concern that a Mayor who campaigned on a platform of, among other things, transparency in government has taken the position of ‘circle the wagons and everyone keep your mouths shut’ within 48 hours of being sworn in.”

“It is in the best interest of the Citizens of Omaha that the Mayor’s office speaks with one voice regarding matters of City government,” wrote Stothert. “There should never be confusion or uncertainty regarding city policies and procedures.”

She went on to say, “Discussions involving matters of public concern occurring on the employees own time are not covered by this directive.”

LeClair, who wants the “own time” wording clarified, sent his email to several people including City Attorney Paul Kratz.

LeClair’s email also included a second attachment, a memo from McDonnell.

“Effective immediately, all Fire Department personnel must receive approval through the chain of command from the Fire Chief or Assistant Chief prior to interacting with the media concerning any matters of City government, “said McDonnell.

“We are currently asking for clarification but until further notice follow Mayor Stothert’s Directive.”

Nebraska Watchdog has contacted the mayor’s office regarding the interview with McDonnell. Nebraska Watchdog has not been told if the interview will be rescheduled.

Contact Joe Jordan at joe@nebraskawatchdog.org

To subscribe to news updates from Nebraska Watchdog at no charge, click here

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LINCOLN – The confirmed and prospective candidates for the U.S. Senate from Nebraska have varying views on the recent relevations about the National Security Agency’s prying into our lives.

In the wake of news that the NSA collects Verizon’s U.S. phone records and Internet content, Nebraska Watchdog asked the three men who are in, or considering getting in, the Senate race for their take on the latest scandal to grip Washington.

Omaha Sen. Brad Ashford — a Republican-turned-independent who said last week he’s inclined to run for the Senate as a Democrat — said Congress should be doing a better job overseeing the nation’s intelligence.

ASHFORD: Congress shouldn’t let private contractors conduct sensitive intelligence work.

“Congress has been asleep at the switch,” he said. “Where is oversight of our intelligence efforts? Why do we contract out sensitive intelligence jobs without clear standards to protect the privacy of law-abiding U.S. citizens?”

He called the lack of “effective congressional oversight” another example of the failure of Congress to work collaboratively.

Ashford said Americans must not forget President Dwight Eisenhower’s warning to beware of the military industrial complex.

“Unfortunately, we may very well have forgotten the warning,” he said. “Why is Congress authorizing the contracting out of sensitive intelligence work to private contractors? A big mistake.”

Asked whether he thinks the NSA leaker, former security consultant Edward Snowden, is a hero or traitor, former state treasurer Shane Osborn said via email that this is a bigger issue than whether Snowden acted appropriately or not.

OSBORN: Recent controversies show government has too much power.

“The real issue here is that government has gotten too large and too powerful,” said Osborn, who is running for the seat that will be vacated by U.S. Sen. Mike Johanns. “It’s an outrage that regular Americans cannot, and do not, trust our own government.”

Osborn found himself in the international spotlight in 2001 after his U.S. Navy plane collided with a Chinese fighter plane and he landed the plane on a Chinese island, where he and his crew were held captive for nearly two weeks. Osborn said having served his country, he knows first-hand the importance of being vigilant and aggressive in fighting terrorism.

Osborn said the Patriot Act should be re-examined regularly to make sure liberties are protected and government isn’t abusing its “loyal and law-abiding citizens.”

“We must also be mindful to not become a country like China where individual liberties are not protected,” Osborn said.

Asked whether he trusts the federal government to protect individual liberties in the face of terrorist threats, he said the public doesn’t trust the federal government “on much of anything right now.”

“Government thinks it can do whatever it wants to whomever it wants,” he said. “The founders intended to have a Republic in which the citizens limited the power and reach of the government and not the other way around.”

SASSE: Data collection is getting out of control.

Midland University President Ben Sasse, who is in the midst of a “listening tour” of Nebraska as he mulls a run for the Senate, said he doesn’t trust Washington — period.

“Whether Democrats are in charge, or Republicans are in charge, or the bureaucrats are unmanaged, I don’t trust a government with this much power,” he said via email. “The founders would be calling for a conversation about the proper role and limits of the federal government.”

And if the Patriot Act permits widespread collection of data on innocent American civilians, he said, “then that’s a problem” and it should be amended to clarify and limit its scope.

“Freedom and liberty are always dependent on the watchfulness of the citizens,” Sasse said.

Contact Deena Winter at deena@nebraskawatchdog.org. Follow Deena on Twitter at @DeenaNEWatchdog

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OMAHA—The party’s over, the work begins.

Mayor Jean Stothert with husband Joe following her swearing-in at Omaha City Hall

Mayor Jean Stothert starts her first full day in office staring at two budgets that are millions in the red.

The 2013 budget is running $13.5 million short, the 2014 budget is nearly $17 million in the hole.

Stothert—the city’s first woman mayor and first Republican elected since 1997—was sworn in Monday night before a full house at city hall that included Republican Gov. Dave Heineman.

KFAB’s Gary Sadlemyer spoke with Nebraska Watchdog’s Joe Jordan about the first days of the Stothert Administration.

Contact Joe Jordan at joe@nebraskawatchdog.org

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OMAHA—Ads on fire hydrants, firefighters working longer shifts, paperwork only in English, and no more city tax money for the homeless, the food bank, the zoo, community centers, anti-truancy programs and the holiday lights celebration.

ADVERTISING?
It’s just one of many changes a Tea Party group would like to see in Mayor-elect Jean Stothert’s first budget.

Those are just a handful of changes an anti-tax and spend Tea Party group wants to see in Republican Mayor-elect Jean Stothert’s first budget, the 2014 budget, which is due out in July.

Nebraska Watchdog first reported that according to several city hall sources Stothert is facing a 2014 budget, handed her by Mayor Jim Suttle, that is anywhere from $10 million to $19 million in the red. Stothert has since told the Omaha World-Herald that the deficit is $16.5 million.

During the campaign Stothert, who will be sworn in Monday night,  promised more money for police, while also vowing to cut taxes and improve city services.

Asked by Nebraska Watchdog what cuts she is ready to make, Stothert said, “We have to get through the budget process first.”

Her wait-and-see strategy though appears to fall far short of the plan detailed by Nebraska Taxpayers for Freedom. NTF—which was Tea Party before the conservative label became fashionable—has released a white paper, “Forward: A Plan of Action for City of Omaha.”

“The new administration must send citizens a clear message that it…will conserve and save instead of tax and spend, to manage the city using business principles,” says NTF.

Ripping through each department, NTF is pushing for changes many of which have rarely if ever been strongly considered.

Take the Fire Department where three dozen line saving items include an end to the current four-days on four-days off schedule which is “excessively expensive,” according to NTF. They’d like to replace 12 hour shifts with three 8 hour shifts arguing that some firefighters use the time off to “enjoy lucrative outside employment.”

Public Works would do less lawn mowing, tree cutting and street sweeping. In addition some street lights—it doesn’t say which ones—would be left dark at night.

And then there’s privatization for:

• Snow removal.
• City ice rinks, golf courses and marinas.
• Management of the TD Ameritrade ball park “because the city is losing money on this venue.”
• Major street resurfacing and maintenance.

Other recommendations:

• Funding cuts to subsidized housing.
• Abandon public art in parks.
• Require employees to provide a doctor’s note after two sick days, to “end sick leave abuse.”
• Lobbying the legislature to repeal the state smoking ban leading to repeal of the city’s anti-smoking ordinance “as the bans depress keno revenues.”

And then there are those taxes. NTF wants the elimination of the restaurant and cigarette taxes along with a lower wheel tax.

Contact Joe Jordan at joe@nebraskawatchdog.org

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