Does your business or organization have what it takes? Find out via Nebraska’s Edgerton Program?

How does your business measure its performance? How do you stack up with your competitors? The Nebraska Edgerton Program offers an opportunity for you to conduct your very own assessment of seven key areas of performance excellence: leadership, strategic planning, customer and market focus, measurement analysis and knowledge management, workforce focus, process management, and results.

These are the exact same criteria used by world-class businesses, and educational and health care organizations like Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Motorola, Caterpillar Financial, Cargill, Kenneth Monfort College of Business, Jenks Public School, SMS Health Care, and St. Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City, to name a few. A free assessment tool is available at: http://www.quality.nist.gov/. If you’re looking for a more thorough external assessment of your performance improvement system, along with in-depth guidance on ways you can improve, apply now for the Edgerton Award Program. Your application will be reviewed by external evaluators who will provide you and your company or organization with the most thorough feedback report you could hope to get.

Since 1993, more than 45 businesses and organizations have participated in the Edgerton Program, including Lincoln Industries, Behlen Mfg. Co., Saint Francis Medical Center, Eaton Corporation Torque Controls Division, Valmont, NEAPCO, Inc., Cargill Corn Milling and Tennaco Manufacturing. Complete the Eligibility Determination Form by Sept. 30 at http://www.edgertonaward.com/ (under “FORMS”) to find out if you qualify for the Edgerton Program. The complete application is due December 15. To learn more, contact Jenne Rodriguez at [email protected]

State Sen. Stuthman to help fill Sen. Chambers’ role

State Sen. Arnie Stuthman will be one of the seasoned veterans of the Nebraska Legislature when the 2009 session gets under way in January, a vantage point he hopes to use to put the brakes on some legislative proposals. “I’ll have to take over the responsibility of Sen. Chambers,” the Platte Center lawmaker said this morning, alluding to the former Omaha senator’s reputation for slowing down the process on bills he opposed.

Oftentimes, Stuthman said during the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce’s fall legislative forum at the Picket Fence restaurant, the “real value” a senator can serve is making sure a proposed bill doesn’t receive enough votes for passage. Stuthman will be one of the two or three most experienced senators in terms of length of service when the 2009 session convenes. Twenty-six seats will be up for election in November. Of the 49 senators, 36 who will report for duty in January will have two years or less experience.

Pickens seeks to help Nebraska increase wind power

Texas oilman-turned-wind power advocate T. Boone Pickens brought his alternative energy campaign to Lincoln Tuesday. (Editor’s note: Pickens has invested $10 billion in his own wind power project in the Texas panhandle.) Nebraska ranks sixth nationally in wind potential but only 20th in using wind to generate electricity. Gov. Dave Heineman and others involved in the development of wind energy said Nebraska is beginning to overcome some of the hurdles that have kept it out of the top 10.

In fact, the governor said Nebraska could climb into the top 10 within the next decade — an ambitious goal that would require more than a seven-fold increase in the state’s wind-generating capacity. Representatives from the state’s two largest utilities, OPPD and the Nebraska Public Power District, said there are substantial obstacles to wind power — including the fact that the ideal sites for wind farms are in north-central and western areas of Nebraska, far from the state’s population centers.

Also, they said, the need for electricity peaks in summer, when winds are calmest in Nebraska. There also are reliability concerns — NPPD’s 60 megawatt wind farm at Ainsworth, which went online in 2005, has been troubled by cracked blades and turbine problems in recent months. Other obstacles are building enough transmission lines to transfer electricity to customers and adapting the nation’s energy grid to handle the unstable stream of power generated by the wind.

Not everyone likes the big transmission lines, the represenatives noted, and more and more people are beginning to dislike the wind towers. Because Nebraska’s utilities are publicly owned and pay no taxes, federal tax incentives provided to develop wind farms are not available to them. Other federal incentive programs for public utilities are underfunded, those interviewed said. Under the Community Based Energy Act passed by the Nebraska Legislature last spring, private utility firms may develop wind farms with local farmers and farm groups and qualify for tax credits.

Nebraska Sec. of State meets with business leaders

Secretary of State John Gale stopped in Grand Island Tuesday morning for a business roundtable to explain the duties his office performs for businesses. Asking for a show of hands, Gale learned that several of the businesspeople meeting with him were notaries public.

He pointed out that notary laws have been tightened because there were too many instances of people not following the law. Too often, people were willing to “pre-notorize” documents, allowing people to sign them and fill in the date when not in the notary’s presence. “It’s a crime,” Gale said, noting that the state now requires people to take an open-book test to be a notary in an attempt to avoid such problems.

Gale also noted that as many as 8,000 Nebraska corporations were not filing annual paperwork in time for the right to continue to do business in Nebraska as legal corporations. Nebraska law requires corporations to renew their paperwork every two years.

Nebraska is in the Midst of Farm Country’s Boom

The farm economy in the Great Plains states are a bright spot in the otherwise gloomy national economic picture. In states like Nebraska, the housing market is holding up just fine, the banks are making plenty of loans, and employers keep adding jobs. Retail spending in the middle of the country was strong even before the $600 tax rebates this spring, and low interest rates and a tax provision in the economic stimulus bill are helping to goose already booming sales of farm equipment and pickup trucks.

The price of farmland in Nebraska has doubled in the past three years, primarily reflecting the boom in commodity prices. The increase also reflects the impact of rate cuts by the Federal Reserve that enabled buyers to bid up land with borrowed money. But if crop prices drop toward historical norms, it could mean sharp decreases in land prices that would devastate some farmers.

The availability of loans to farmers is the strongest it has been in five years, according to a survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, even as banks nationwide are becoming reluctant to lend money. The reason: There wasn’t much overbuilding of housing here, so most regional banks are not saddled with the same bad mortgage and construction loans as their counterparts on the coasts. The good times are not uniform across the region; livestock producers have been pummeled by high prices for feed and fuel.

In Blair, Neb., however, long-vacant storefronts have been turned into furniture shops and restaurants in the past couple of years, and Wal-Mart is looking to open a store just down the way. The billion-dollar Cargill plant that turns grains of corn into high-fructose corn syrup and ethanol just announced another $100 million expansion, adding a Danish company that makes enzymes out of corn — a reflection of booming global demand for all types of commodities.

That prosperity also shows itself on Lyle Schjodt’s farm a few miles outside Blair, where he farms 1,000 acres of corn and soybeans, 150 head of cattle, and 1,200 hogs. He still has the first tractor he ever bought, back in 1968, in a shed. “I’ve been farming for 39 years, and I haven’t seen a better year than this one,” he said. Schjodt is upgrading his equipment; he just ordered a $120,000 Case IH planter, a massive red device that deposits seed corn every seven inches in 30-inch-wide rows. He bought a new $50,000 Ford F-350 back in the spring, too. Nationally, truck sales are battered by skyrocketing fuel costs. But auto sales are up 8% in the Omaha area so far this year, according to sales tax receipts.

Nebraska Business & Industrial Expo Coming to Lincoln Oct. 1-2

The Lincoln Business & Industrial Products Show is considered one of the largest and diversified Business Expos in the Midwest. This year, the show will be held October 1-2 at the Lancaster Event Center. Admission and parking are free.

According to event organizers, the expo will give attendees the opportunity to see hundreds of products and services that can be used in day to day operations, collect literature, compare prices, and become acquainted with new suppliers all at one time. The Products Show officially opens at 11 a.m., Wednesday, October 1, and continues until 6 p.m.

The Show re-opens on Thursday, October 2, at 10 a.m. and is open until 4 p.m. If you are interested in showcasing your company and exhibiting at the Lincoln Products Show, contact Bob Mancuso, Jr. at 402-346-8003 or 1-800-475-SHOW.

Nebraska eyes more limits on Republican River water

State and local water officials are considering new irrigation restrictions in the Republican River basin in the wake of a lawsuit that has undercut Nebraska’s efforts to comply with a three-state river compact. Talks between state and local officials started recently, prompted by a lawsuit nine residents of the basin won in May.

They challenged a key part of a new state law that was the cornerstone of a plan to send Kansas more water. “Without LB701, we have to look at … regulations,” Jasper Fanning, manager of the Imperial-based Upper Republican Natural Resources District, said Wednesday. The law known as LB701, passed by the Legislature last year, gave natural resources districts in the heavily irrigated river basin the authority to set property taxes. But in ruling for the nine residents of the basin, a Lancaster County District Court said the taxes were unconstitutional.

Brian Dunnigan, acting director of the state Department of Natural Resources, said he expects his office and the natural resources districts will have a plan in place by the end of the year. Shortly afterward, lawmakers may again take up the issue of how to collect money for compliance because of the court ruling on property taxes. Kansas contends Nebraska used about 80,000 acre-feet, or roughly 26 billion gallons, more than it was allowed in 2005 and 2006. Kansas has demanded more than $72 million for the overuse in addition to a shutdown of wells that irrigate nearly half of the 1.2 million acres in Nebraska’s portion of the river basin.

Nebraska Cattlemen oppose ethanol mandates

According to Nebraska Cattlemen leaders, the ethanol hearing hosted Monday by Senators Ben Nelson and Tom Harkin in Omaha was a great opportunity to hear all sides of the energy debate. But Michael Kelsey, Nebraska Cattlemen executive vice president, said the state’s largest industry, beef, was not been invited to speak.

According to Kelsey, “renewable fuels are very important to the Midwest, and the nation as a whole,” but the Cattlemen believe that “mandating production and usage has never been good over the long term for any industry, for several reasons.” Mandates promote inefficiency and set an artificial demand, Kelsey said. “The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) next year will require approximately 3.5 billion bushels of corn, which is nearly 30% of what is currently grown in the U.S., Kelsey said. “Remember that the RFS is a mandate, meaning the 3.5 billion bushels of corn must be used to produce fuel and cannot be used for food, feed or export.” Kelsey added that the RFS does not promote a working relationship between industries, but instead forces a relationship.

Nebraska unemployment lowest in nation

The national unemployment rate in July rose to 5.7% from 5.5% in June. The highest unemployment rates can be found in Ohio (7.2%); California (7.3%); Illinois (7.3%); Rhode Island (7.7%); Mississippi (7.9%); and Michigan (8.5%). Nebraska had the lowest jobless rate at 3.4%.

Last call for Neb. Community Improvement Program project entries

What does it take to become a top overall community? The Nebraska Community Improvement Program (NCIP) has the answers. For 45 years, NCIP, a program of the Nebraska Department of Economic Development, has assisted communities with meeting challenges and building on strengths and resources to form a vision for the future.

The program recognizes communities annually for their improvement efforts during the past year, with an emphasis on the achievements of grassroots volunteers. By participating in NCIP and involving citizens in planning efforts, communities have successfully accomplished many projects.

For more information, visit www.neded.org or contact Lindsay Papenhausen at 800-426-6505 or [email protected].