Nebraska
Commentary: Nebraska and its ‘Great Plains Economic Opportunity Zone’
American businesses don’t have enough workers. The
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
notes that there are 1.7 million fewer workers in the labor force today compared to February 2020.
Great Plains states like the Dakotas, Montana, Nebraska and Wyoming have some of the
most severe labor shortages
in the nation. Now, the Nebraska legislature has opened the doors that are desperately needed to economic opportunity in the Great Plains, with the passage of legislation last month creating a unique economic opportunity zone in the middle of the country.
Like most of its neighbors, Nebraska employers need help finding workers.
Recent research
from the Kansas City Fed notes that the problem is worse in Nebraska than elsewhere: There are 2.5 job openings for every unemployed worker in Nebraska, almost twice the national average.
Recognizing the challenge is one thing. Taking common sense action to help improve the situation is much better. Legislators in Nebraska have done this with the passage of the measure. With the governor’s signature, the doors to opportunity are open in Nebraska.
Why is this legislation necessary? First, it addresses a barrier created by Nebraska’s occupational licensing requirements. If either of us wanted to drive in Omaha, our driver’s license would be recognized, and we could drive. Unfortunately, occupational licenses do not work this way. If licensed barbers from Iowa wanted to move to Nebraska and begin working, they would face significant delays and hardship in moving forward with their careers.
The new measure addresses this critical labor market friction for many occupations by implementing universal recognition. The bill will allow licensed workers with licenses in good standing for at least one year to have their licenses recognized. Nebraska joins 21 other states in taking steps to reduce barriers to interstate mobility — an important step when
licensing reduces workers moving between states
by about 7 percent.
Nebraska is not alone in moving forward with these reforms. There are
21 additional states
with some version of licensing recognition, and 39 states have passed licensing reforms for people with criminal records. Now, Nebraska has joined all of its neighbors in reforming universal recognition and most of its neighbors in reforming requirements for people with criminal records. Only South Dakota lags in permitting blanket barriers to workforce opportunities for workers trying to make a fresh start reintegrating into society, limiting opportunities there compared with nearby states.
Workers on the sidelines in Nebraska — perhaps underemployed or out of the labor force entirely — will now be able to work with fewer bureaucratic delays. This can have beneficial effects on the labor market in Nebraska and for workers moving between states in the region.
Research bears this out, showing that states that pass universal recognition experience a 1 percentage point gain in employment. Where do these new workers come from? Some come from other states; other workers come from the sidelines.
Research also shows fiscal benefits for states that adopted universal licensing recognition. These states saw a $1.7 million increase in adjusted gross income after enactment, compared with states that keep interstate licensing barriers in place.
These fiscal benefits come from households moving to states with licensing recognition, including households with dependents. Licensing recognition enables families to move to places of economic opportunity together.
However, there is always room for improvement. Limiting exclusions for several occupations is one way to make a good reform even better.
People with criminal records can also make a fresh start in Nebraska, creating the groundwork for a safer community. These reforms make it easier for people starting over to actually make a fresh start in the occupation of their choice.
Nebraska and its neighbors still license
dozens of lower-income occupations
. When licensing boards bar qualified individuals with criminal records from becoming licensed, even after applicants have completed the required education and training,
they can worsen public safety
instead of protecting it.
Nebraska’s law states that individuals can be barred from a license only when their criminal offense is directly related to the occupation or represents a substantial risk to public safety. Combined with greater due-process protections and setting time limits for how long a criminal offense can bar someone from working in a licensed occupation, this legislation significantly expands the economic opportunities of people trying to restart their lives.
In recent years, Nebraska has reduced some of its licensing requirements for lower-income occupations, reducing barriers to work for people just starting out in a profession. Together with these reforms, Nebraska policymakers have taken bold policy action to ensure employers will continue to have access to the workers they need.
Edward Timmons is a service associate professor and director of the
Knee Center for the Study of Occupational Regulation
at West Virginia University. Darwyyn Deyo is an associate professor of economics at San Jose State University and a senior research fellow with the Knee Regulatory Research Center at West Virginia University. They wrote this for
InsideSources.com
.
What the hell happened to my life?
My inner monologue was deafening in the stillness of the Nebraska morning. I hadn’t heard myself this clearly since high school five years ago, before I pushed off into life as an actress in New York City. I couldn’t be sure what made my thoughts so loud—maybe it was whiplash, my abrupt move from filming HBO’s High Maintenance to my childhood stomping grounds.
SEWARD, Neb. — Early childhood educators from Nebraska and surrounding states will gather at Concordia University, Nebraska, for the school’s annual Early Childhood Conference on June 7-8, 2026, with an optional pre-conference also planned on campus.
“The theme for this year’s event is Unshakable!” said Concordia Nebraska Assistant Professor of Education Dr. Drew Gerdes. “We know that teachers are hard workers; teaching is challenging in many ways but also rewarding. At Concordia, we have a strong history in developing and supporting teachers, and this conference is one way that we can connect with those in the field, support and encourage them, and offer opportunities to ‘fill their toolbox’ with new ideas and strategies.”
Conference keynote speaker Raelene Ostberg, founder of Thriving Together, will address attendees about finding and keeping joy in their work with students, families and colleagues. Thriving Together is an organization dedicated to supporting early childhood educators.
The Sunday evening dinner keynote speaker will be Rev. Dustin Lappe ’97, who serves at Messiah Lutheran Church and School in Lincoln, Nebraska. Organizers said Lappe has years of experience as both an early childhood teacher and a pastor.
“This conference will feature many break-out sessions on a variety of topics,” Gerdes said. “From the value of music in learning to differentiated learning to early literacy skills, participants will be able to hear from veterans in the field and leaders in education who have a great passion for sharing and helping others grow.”
Concordia Nebraska first hosted an early childhood conference decades ago under the leadership of then-program director Dr. Leah Serck ’58.
“Educators from Nebraska and many surrounding states look forward to this event each year, which has a rich history of bringing in high-quality keynote speakers and valuable topics,” Gerdes said.
More information, including pre-conference and conference details and pricing, is available at cune.edu/ecc. Early bird discounted registration is available until May 22.
Nebraska
Starting fires helped contain a Nebraska wildfire — and ignited another – Flatwater Free Press
This story is made possible through a partnership between Flatwater Free Press and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.
As the fast-moving blaze rolled toward Fire Chief Jason Schneider’s district in Cozad, he and his crew faced a literal uphill battle.
The Cottonwood Fire was tearing through the Loess Canyons, an area defined by steep slopes, narrow valleys, few roads and pockets of invasive eastern red cedar trees, which can throw embers and ash — and even explode — when they burn.
“You think you would have it put out, and you keep on moving north, and you’d look back south and it’s just going again behind you,” Schneider said.
But the situation started to improve when they connected with a prescribed burn group. They had equipment and showed Schneider and his volunteer crew how to use fire to contain the wildfire.
“It would have burned a lot more if they hadn’t showed up and helped us get it stopped where we did,” Schneider said.
Already, 2026 has marked Nebraska’s worst year on record for wildfires. As of May 6, wildfires have burned about 981,502 acres and dealt a blow to ranchers. They also have brought to the forefront the best arguments for and against a controversial and centuries-old land-management practice: Using fire to fight fire.
In March, the Cottonwood Fire, contained by prescribed burn techniques and past prescribed fires, made the case for the practice. In the Nebraska National Forest that same month, heavy winds turned the smoldering remnants of a prescribed burn into the Road 203 wildfire, bringing to life some landowners’ and managers’ worst fears.
The debate over prescribed burns had been simmering long before those wildfires and has grown louder in recent years as more Nebraskans turn to the practice. The Nebraska Prescribed Fire Council estimates that during modern times, 2025 saw the most acres burned in a single year by prescribed fire.
But in areas of the state like the western Sandhills, the practice has sparked backlash.
“There was a (prescribed burn) group that tried to establish a couple of years ago up around the Tryon, Mullen area up in there. And they almost lynched that group,” Keystone-Lemoyne Fire and Rescue Chief Ralph Moul said. “They said, ‘No, we do not want fire in the Sandhills,’ because there’s nothing to stop it up here.”
Despite the fear, there is overwhelming evidence that prescribed burns, when done correctly, can help prevent massive wildfires by burning up volatile fuels like cedar trees. They can make the land ecologically healthier and save ranchers money.
“The wildfires you’ve seen here in Nebraska the last few years are also a consequence of removing fire from the landscape,” said Kent Pfeiffer, program manager for the Northern Prairies Land Trust. “You don’t get rid of fire, you just change the nature of it … instead of having frequent, low-intensity fires, you end up with infrequent, high-intensity fires.”
The issue may be growing more urgent as the state faces dual threats. Large swaths of Nebraska’s native grasslands are in danger of becoming cedar woodlands — an already costly headache for ranchers. Meanwhile, climate change is bringing more extreme conditions, including intense stretches of drier and hotter weather that can lead to more destructive wildfires.
Drought conditions and major wildfires
“It’s time to innovate a bit more on the wildfire and prescribed fire side,” said Dirac Twidwell, a rangeland and fire ecologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “What we know is that overall, our fire management is not working.”
‘I burned them’
Tucker Thompson was in his 30s when he first helped out on a prescribed burn on another person’s property near Gothenburg back in the early 2000s. The rancher, who summers cattle in the Loess Canyons, knew some neighbors would be upset, but cedar trees were starting to sprout across his land. He wanted to get ahead of the problem, and he was curious.
By today’s standards, the group’s equipment was basic and their knowledge limited. Even though everything went fine, Thompson left thinking the entire practice was insane. He went home and took a chainsaw to the cedar trees across about 400 acres of his property.
“And then five years later, they all start coming back. Ten years later, it’s like, I have no choice. There’s no way of killing these dang things, so I burned them,” Thompson said.
Now, Thompson continues the practice and is a member of two burn groups. He helped firefighters contain the Cottonwood Fire, even as it ravaged his grazing lands.
Prescribed burns “decrease the fuel load in these canyons, so we can control these fires to some degree,” Thompson said.
The Loess Canyons area has one of the most advanced prescribed fire cultures in the entire country, Twidwell said. It has reduced the risk of catastrophic fire and made the land more suitable for grazing, which has boosted landowners’ profits, he said.
Up until the last 150 years, fire was common in Nebraska. Wildfires would naturally control species like eastern red cedar. Indigenous peoples have also used fire for a variety of reasons in this region.
Prescribed burns are common in other Great Plains states like Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas. In Nebraska, it’s more prevalent in the eastern and central parts of the state. The benefits extend beyond fire protection — it also increases biodiversity and wildlife. Even the grass that comes back after a burn is preferred by the cattle.
More than 92,700 acres burned in prescribed fires between Jan. 1 and June 30 last year, according to a survey of 26 organizations by the Nebraska Prescribed Fire Council.
But conducting these burns requires a lot of planning, post-burn monitoring, money, machinery and manpower. And even when it comes together, a change in weather can cancel the whole operation at a moment’s notice.
In order to conduct a land management burn, a landowner or tenant has to apply for a permit and submit a plan to their local fire chief, who decides whether to waive Nebraska’s open burn ban. By law, the plan requires serious documentation, including a list of on-hand equipment and a description of weather conditions needed to burn safely.
Fairbury Fire Chief Judd Stewart’s jurisdiction is filled with landowners and managers who use prescribed burns. Stewart says he had to cancel almost 50 burn permits in March when Gov. Jim Pillen ordered fire chiefs statewide to temporarily stop issuing them during the wildfires. Stewart wishes the governor would have given more consideration to areas like southeast Nebraska, where fire danger was lower. Those areas still have heavy fuel loads, and the window to burn is closing.
“As we approach mid- to late summer, when we start getting high temperatures … that vegetation will carry fire again, and now we’ve got those heavy fuel loads that are going to be hard to contain,” Stewart said.
Austin Klemm, a board member of the burn group that helped Schneider and others contain the Cottonwood Fire, said he is working with about six landowners who have invested roughly $250,000 to $275,000 to plan a burn that might not happen this year due to the ban.
“Some of these guys have invested tens of thousands of dollars in prep work to be able to burn,” Klemm said. “These guys have deferred grazing, did not graze at all last year, had to go find a place to stick cows or feed cows all last year.”
‘It’s dangerous’
Becky Potmesil doesn’t have to look far to see the devastation wildfire can cause. Potmesil raises cattle in the Alliance area of the Panhandle, on the western edge of the Sandhills. To the south, the Morrill Fire burned an estimated 642,000 acres, making it the largest on record in the state’s history. To the southeast, the Ashby Fire burned another 36,000 acres.
The winds have blown away the black, burnt grass, leaving behind only sand dunes. It looks like a moonscape, she said.
Drought conditions in 2026
“Anybody who’d do a prescribed burn out here in the (western) Sandhills in western Nebraska is crazy, and it’s dangerous,” she said. While she sees how there could be benefits in some Sandhills meadows, she doesn’t think it’s worth the risk in her area.
Moul, the Keystone-Lemoyne fire chief, is cautious about issuing burn permits in his Sandhills district. He likes for there to either be snow or green grass on the ground. The Sandhills have fewer fire breaks, less infrastructure and more extreme weather conditions like high-speed winds than other parts of the state, Moul and Potmesil noted.
Moul, an incident commander on the Morrill Fire, understands that prescribed fire has its place. But after seeing the damage caused by prescribed burn escapes over his career, he said fire chiefs shouldn’t allow them on or right before red flag days in their districts. Most of the burn groups know what they’re doing, Moul said, but a few have convinced local fire chiefs to issue permits on red flag days so they can “get the best kill of the trees.”
“But it was my experience when I worked with the state that we went to a lot of escaped fires because of prescribed burns that got away,” Moul said.
The Road 203 wildfire started as a prescribed burn in the Bessey Ranger District of the Nebraska National Forest. More than a day after the fire ignitions ended, heavy winds created a spot fire outside the original boundary as firefighters mopped up and patrolled the area, according to the Forest Service. The agency said 99.84% of its prescribed burns go according to plan. This one didn’t.
According to the Nebraska Prescribed Fire Council’s survey last year, 1.6% of burns escaped and required outside assistance, primarily from volunteer fire departments. Changing weather patterns and the spread of cedar trees are the primary reasons for escapes, the Fire Council said in an email.
“When the gap between prescribed fire acres and fuel load increases, it also increases fire behavior in both prescribed fire and wildfires causing us to adapt to riskier burns with increased planning and equipment.”
When Twidwell came to Nebraska in 2013, he was told prescribed fire would never be used in the Sandhills. Since then, he has seen multiple burns happen there as the culture continues to shift. Some of this is due to the spread of eastern red cedars in the area.
He knows some landowners will never be convinced, and he understands their concern. But beyond protecting the grasslands, Twidwell believes Nebraska needs to have more conversations on how to mitigate large wildfires by using fire.
“Everybody understands … the wildfire risk playing out,” he said. “Fewer understand the benefits and why certain groups are using prescribed fire.”
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