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Attracting and keeping new businesses in an increasingly competitive environment would help the state of Nebraska. In fact, an Omaha senator wants to give the state’s government a new incentive to lure and retain the businesses. It would, actually, be “a pot of money” to really use at his or her discretion.

Attracting and Keeping Businesses – Legislative Bill 729

In fact, State Senator Brett Lindstrom has introduced Legislative Bill 729. It would create a fund within the Department of Economic Development. It would help a high-impact business project or facility or to actually keep a business that is already located in a state. There is a high-impact business expecting to create a net benefit to the state. It would be through jobs and investments. It compared with the cost of the incentive.

Necessary Requirements

There is an assumption a project meets the necessary requirements that would include the thresholds for jobs and salaries. In fact, the governor would have the discretion to award the funding.

“This is just another little extra thing that the governor can then put on the table said let’s do the deal.” It was what Lindstrom told the Legislature’s Revenue Committee last week.

The spokesperson for Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts when he asked if he would support the bill, said the governor had no comment on the proposal.

Ricketts is in his final year in office due to term limits.

Also, LB 729 would create the fund. Also, the fund would not allocate any money into it. Plus, the state dollars which would be put into the fund could be at the discretion of the Legislature. However, Lindstrom also didn’t put a cap on the amount of money the governor could award for individual projects.

A two-term lawmaker, Lindstrom, who is also a Republican candidate for governor, said he was inspied by a similar program that was creating in Oklahoma in 2011. Also, since then the program has been awarding about $14 million to seven companies, according to Lindstrom. That did result in the creation of 3,500 jobs and $3.4 billion in investments by those companies.