As the Lincoln Journal Star reported on Monday, the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission is looking at allowing alcohol again in state parks, a move that would end a ban enacted in 1995.

The commission wouldn’t be giving drinkers free rein, though: It would still ban alcohol in swimming areas, roads and parking lots; bringing kegs into state parks; and drinking during quiet hours — 10 p.m.-6 a.m.

The Legislature has made efforts to end the ban over the past 15 years, but those attempts have failed. And judging from the comments by Commissioner Rex Amack to the Journal Star, the commission has been looking at repealing it for a while. (They’ll be holding a public hearing on the issue on May 28 in Gering.)

This is a decision that could have a significant financial impact on Central Nebraska’s state parks and recreation areas — but what kind depends on where you see the issue. The pro-alcohol financial argument is probably easy to deduce: People might be more likely to visit a state park or rec area if they know they’re able to pop open a cold one there.

But supporters of the ban might argue that it keeps the parks safer and makes them more family-friendly, ultimately attracting more visitors.

I can understand both sides on this one. On the one hand, a perfect weekend day spent outside includes a beer for a lot of people, and that’s entirely legitimate. Those people would be doing nothing to hurt the state parks they’re spending time in, and the fact that they can’t include alcohol as part of their recreation could be a significant deterrent for them.

On the other hand, I grew up in southern Nebraska, where several of the top weekend party spots for many of my classmates were Kansas state parks because alcohol was illegal in Nebraska’s. (Kansas’ rules have changed since then.) That’s the kind of business that a lot of state park rangers probably aren’t too happy to have — in most cases, it probably means safety concerns, more cleanup, enforcement headaches and possibly an offputting environment for other park visitors. (These types of problems at Lake McConaughy are what led the state to enact the ban in the first place.)

So either alternative carries some costs, but both have the potential to attract different types of visitors as well. Do you see alcohol in state parks as a net positive for rural Nebraska, or should the state stay as-is?

Earlier this week, the great rural blog The Daily Yonder posted a cool map of government data of average compensation in rural counties (includes wages, employer contributions for pension plans, insurance plans, government social insurance and bonuses). Here’s the post and a larger version of the map.

The data is from 2008, which might be a bit dated given the recession that’s deepened since then, but it’s the newest stuff we have. Central Nebraska generally doesn’t fare too well, with most of its counties shaded in some form of red, representing the lowest pay categories on the map. Garfield County, home of Burwell, has the lowest average compensation in Nebraska at $28,383, good for seventh-lowest in the United States.

A little ways south of Garfield County, Sherman County (county seat: Loup City) comes in 36th-lowest in the nation at $30,092. In between the two are two other Nebraska counties, Boyd in the far northern part of the state and McPherson in the Sandhills.

On the higher end of the area’s pay scale were Hall and Buffalo counties, home to Grand Island and Kearney, Hamilton County (Aurora) and Wheeler County, a sparsely populated county just east of Garfield County in the Sandhills. And judging by one of the lower maps on the post, many of Central Nebraska’s wages went up from 2007 to 2008, even as much of the rest of the country was dropping.

Of course, what’s not taken into account in these statistics is cost of living, and a dollar goes a lot farther in Burwell than Chicago, or even Omaha. Still, this is a not a great list to be on if you’re trying to attract new families.

So what say you? Are these statistics discouraging or meaningless? Or do they even reveal something encouraging?

I saw last week a note about ongoing nominations for Heritage Nebraska‘s second Hidden Treasures and Fading Places, two lists of historical and cultural landmarks across the state that are either unappreciated places to visit or places at some level of disrepair. Heritage Nebraska, a nonprofit group that works on historic revitalization, uses the lists to draw attention to less-visited places with a lot of historical resonance. (If you want to make a nomination of your own, give ‘em a call for more information.)

Last year’s Hidden Treasures and Fading Places are detailed at Heritage Nebraska’s blogs, but I thought I’d highlight the ones in Central Nebraska:

Hidden Treasures:

Hamilton Avenue Church, Hastings
Prairie Loft Center for Outdoor Agricultural Learning, Hastings

Fading Places:

Archeological sites statewide
Aurora Apothecary/Knights of Pythias Hall, Aurora (which was partially rebuilt last year)
Hastings Junior High School and endangered schools statewide (Hastings’ school was bought last year with plans for renovation)
Naval Ammunition Depot, Adams and Clay counties
Oregon Trail statewide
Rural schools statewide

A couple of friends asked me yesterday what nifty small-town sites were worth visiting in Central Nebraska, which got me thinking about my own list of Central Nebraska hidden treasures* (as you can tell, I’m a bit of an outdoorsy type):

*You’ll notice there’s several very cool, outdoorsy spots in Central Nebraska I didn’t include, like Calamus and Sherman reservoirs, the Nebraska Nature & Visitor Center, Rowe Sanctuary and so on. I didn’t include them because while they may be treasures, they’re not very hidden.

Olson Nature Preserve, Albion: I visited last March and was amazed at the juxtaposition of so many ecosystems in such close proximity — a spring-fed river, forest, wetlands and even the eastern edge of the Sandhills. Worth a stop if you’re headed north on Highway 14.

Happy Jack Chalk Mine, Scotia: I’ve only checked out the mine while it was set up for Haunted Hollow, which was pretty cool (and scary) in its own right. But Happy Jack is more than scary: It’s the only underground diatomic mine in the U.S. that’s open to the public.

Central Nebraska’s vineyards and wineries: I’ve only visited Miletta Vista near St. Paul and Cedar Hills near Ravenna, and both have sensational views and a wonderfully relaxed ambience. I know George Spencer Vineyard near Gibbon (which is apparently temporarily closed?) and Prairie Creek Vineyards near Central City have been popular, too.

Fort Hartsuff, Elyria: In the last year, Fort Hartsuff has gotten a lot of support from surrounding towns and beyond, which is a great thing — it’s one of the country’s few remaining Plains and Indian Wars forts, and it’s in great shape. The wide open-ness of the Valley County hills give it as ”Old West” of a feel as anything else in Central Nebraska.

Broken Arrow Wilderness, Fullerton: This former church camp, now owned by Doug and Darla Russell, includes a beautiful bluff along the Loup River that also boasts some cool history (it was the site of the first Independence Day celebration in Nebraska, in 1844). Great place for a getaway.

That’s my short list of Central Nebraska’s hidden treasures: What would you nominate? I’d love to hear your picks.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve written a couple of stories on small towns working hard to attract new families by building new houses.

In Loup City (pop. 1,000), the city government is working as the developer for the town’s first new housing subdivision in decades: It owns the land, is developing and paying for the infrastructure, and is crafting incentives to bring in people to build houses.

In Giltner (pop. 400), a group of families is offering the first lot of their new subdivision for free if the family can finish building a house there by October 2011.

They’re both examples of towns that think the rural life has something to offer young families — and are willing to be proactive in attracting them to small towns. It’s hard work to overcome the cultural pull toward the suburbs and cities, and towns like Loup City and Giltner are investing a lot of time and money in that struggle.

The same week, I also ran across an Associated Press story about a family that moved into a small North Dakota town that was offering a housing bargain like Loup City or Giltner. The family moved from Miami, bought a house and opened a bistro in town.

What they got for their trouble, the couple said, were cold shoulders, stereotypes and rumors, and even a competing business owner driving by their house shouting obscenities.

The article prompted a fascinating conversation on the Center for Rural Affairs’ Facebook page, and while this couple’s troubles are probably far from typical, I think it’s an instructive example of the necessity of the other side of recruiting new families: Welcoming them once they get there.

I see a lot of towns focusing on bringing in new families with incentives and promotions, but the work doesn’t stop with the people you’d like to see in your town; it has to include the people who are already there. Now, many of the towns I’ve covered have shown great kindness and hospitality toward people who are new, and I would venture to say that that kind of behavior is probably the norm.

But I also know that small towns have a real susceptibility to cliquishness, to wariness of outsiders, and that’s something that has to be overcome if they are to attract new people to live there. I know it because I saw my family experience it firsthand after we moved from Wisconsin to a small Nebraska town when I was 13. My parents lived there for about a decade, were active in their church and community, and even put four children through the high school — each one involved in loads of activities along the way.

They had plenty of friends and generally enjoyed their time in that town, yet even after 10 years there, they still felt distinctly like outsiders. It was communicated to them explicitly and implicitly in innumerable ways over the years. It wasn’t an outright resentment of them being there, but rather a continual reminder that this wasn’t really their hometown.

It wasn’t anything nearly so serious and “culture-shocking” as this couple in North Dakota describes, and as I mentioned earlier, situations are rarely as bad as the Miami couple’s. But it was the same type of thing that goes on in countless small towns across Nebraska and the Midwest. I’ve interviewed plenty of people who initially refer to themselves as being new in their small town — only to find out later they’ve lived there for a decade or two. That’s because the towns they live in are still subtly reinforcing the “you’re new here” message.

It’s a cultural phenomenon that new small-town residents need to be prepared for, but it’s also something of a blind spot in the Midwestern kindness that Nebraskans pride themselves on. If small towns are serious about attracting new residents, it’s something they need to work on just as hard as their housing developments and marketing campaigns.

Earlier this week I wrote about a new University of Nebraska-Lincoln study that found that the spring crane migration generated $10.33 million for Central Nebraska’s economy last year. (It’s a lower number than the ones in two 1990s studies; the study’s researchers say its because of more precise methodology, a smaller coverage area and a focus only on spring migration, rather than the whole year.)

You can check out the whole study here, and one table on page 21 stood out to me: It details where the visitors to four of Central Nebraska’s main crane viewing sites came from. Here are the percentages:

Central Nebraska     12%
Other Nebraska        39%
Iowa                             11%
Colorado                     9%
Missouri                      3%
Kansas                         4%
Other states               20%
Other countries       1%

That’s only one out of eight crane center visitors who come from our area (they defined it as a 12-county area, but I can’t find out which counties). Almost as many come from Iowa alone. Almost exactly half come from outside Nebraska.

I’m surprised that the number of visitors from Central Nebraska is so low — particular in a year with a weak economy, when many people might be more inclined to take shorter trips, closer to home. Now, I’d imagine that many crane-watchers from the area are more inclined to view them from other places outside the main crane-watching sites; many of them may have a favorite out-of-the way spot or a friend’s piece of land that might work perfect. Still, this means that out of the 27,000 people who, the researchers estimate, visit one of these four sites each spring, just more than 3,000 are from Central Nebraska.

According to many migration and aviary experts, the crane migration in Central Nebraska is virtually unique — one of the Plains’ signature natural events. It’s also, with the possible exception of Nebraska’s Junk Jaunt, our area’s single biggest tourist attraction by number of visitors. It draws observers from around the country and the world, yet relatively few from our own area.

Why? I suspect it’s mostly because the phenomenon is so old-hat to native Nebraskans — we’ve been around it for so long that we don’t realize it’s special, or if we did, we don’t care much anymore. Renee Seifert, executive director of the Grand Island/Hall County Convention and Visitors Bureau, put it well: “Those birds have been coming here as long as people have been here, and so for them it’s just another normal, natural occurrence. I think people don’t understand that this particular phenomenon doesn’t occur anywhere else other than the central Platte River valley.”

So what do you think? Do we Central Nebraskans just not get it, or is there another reason so few of us visit the crane-watching centers in our own backyard?

In the past week or so, we’ve gotten some good news about Central Nebraska’s ethanol industry. As the Aurora News-Register first reported last week, Aventine Renewable Energy has announced its plans to finish the Aurora West ethanol plant sometime in 2011.

The completion would come five years after ground was broken in late 2006. The plant is expected to produce 113 million gallons of ethanol per year once it’s finished, but construction has halted since late 2008, and Aventine filed for bankruptcy soon afterward. The project’s contractor, Kiewit Energy Corp., canceled its engineering, construction and procurement contracts for Aurora West and an Illinois plant in early 2009.

But Aurora Cooperative president and CEO George Hohwieler announced at the company’s annual meeting that Aventine officials had informed him that they plan to re-emerge from bankruptcy and have the plant finished in 2011, according to the News-Register.

In a news release today, Nebraska Ethanol Board administrator Todd Sneller confirmed those plans.

I’m no lawyer, but based on a few documents filed in Delaware federal bankruptcy court, here’s what appears to have happened: Kiewit filed an objection to Aventine’s reorganization plan in December, in which it said it’s still owed about $15.2 million for Aurora West construction.

Kiewit’s attorneys objected to several aspects of the plan, including the following: One, Aventine laid out three options for reorganization but didn’t say which one it would choose; two, Aventine didn’t say how it would treat Kiewit’s secured Aurora West claim; three, Aventine’s plans for revenue depended on the plant being built by early 2012 but didn’t commit to finishing the plant and didn’t say what would happen if it wasn’t; and four, Aventine’s stated liquidation value of the plant dropped to about $2.4 million to $5 million without an explanation to Kiewit.

Aventine filed a new plan Jan. 13. In another document filed the same day, Kiewit’s objection is said to be “resolved in [principle], subject to documentation.” The document also says Aventine modified its plan in several ways to meet debtors’ objections. (How exactly this 104-page plan changed to appease Kiewit is where the I’m-not-a-lawyer part comes in. Sorry.)

All of which is to say, Aventine and Kiewit seem to have come to some sort of an agreement that will allow the plant to be finished in 2011. And that would mean 113 million more gallons per year of ethanol produced in Nebraska and one less unfinished eyesore for Aurora.

I have apparently become the gatherer of Central Nebraska top-story lists. NTV ran its top 10 stories of the year over the weekend, and I thought it might be interesting to get another perspective on the issue.

NTV, which is based in Axtell, covers a larger area than the Independent, including Kearney and a quite a few places south and west of there. It’s also, obviously, less Grand Island-centric than The Grand Island Independent. That being said, here’s their list in chronological order:

1. Hastings’ Armour-Eckrich meat processing plant closes
2. Gibbon’s turkey plant closes
3. A tornado hits rural Aurora
4. State Fairgrounds groundbreaking in Grand Island
5. The Buckle distribution center groundbreaking in Kearney
6. $45 million Kearney school bond passes
7. Tenneco closes its Cozad plant
8. Denise Withee sentenced for dumping dogs in a field
9. Kearney physicians announce plans for new hospital
10. House fire kills three in Hastings

For the record, here are the Grand Island Independent’s top stories of 2009:

1. State Fair
2. Recession
3. Weather and harvest (tornado, delayed harvest, snowstorms)
4. First Americans bankruptcy
5. Yund Street shootings
6. H1N1
7. Grand Island airport boardings
8. Hastings meat plant closings
9. Ethanol
10. CNH layoffs

The Independent published its top 10 stories of the year today, and it’s one of my favorite issues of the year. I know everyone gets annoyed with how list-crazy the media tends to get at the end of each year (and rightfully so), but they’re a great reminder of what happened this year (or, in this case, decade, too) for a culture with a very short attention span.

Here’s a link to the Top 10 stories in rural Central Nebraska this year. And as a decade retrospective, I dug deep into the paper’s archives to find all of this decade’s top 10s for small-town Central Nebraska — essentially, all of the Independent’s 16-county coverage area except Grand Island itself. (Beat-specific year-end lists began in 2001. I began at the Independent midway through 2006; the rest of the lists were compiled by former Independent reporter Gretchen Fowler, with the exception of a few 2002 items by Carol Bryant.)

Looking for the area’s story of the decade? A few stories were longer-lasting than others: Ethanol has appeared on every top 10 list since 2001, the Comstock music festivals appeared in five years, school bonds appeared in four years, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan appeared in three years.

2008

1. Tornadoes hit Kearney and Aurora May 29.

2. Aurora‘s historic downtown Fidelity Building is burned down. Two teenage boys confessed and are sentenced in juvenile court.

3. Renewable energy: Ethanol plants in Ord, Albion and Central City shut down and construction halted in Aurora; NPPD seeks proposals for wind plants near Broken Bow and Petersburg.

4. Hospital construction/renovation projects in Hastings, Ord, Aurora, Albion, St. Paul and Broken Bow.

5. Adams County Treasurer Julia Moeller of Hastings is charged with felony tax evasion.

6. School bonds in Central City and St. Paul pass; Broken Bow fails.

7. Jim Proskocil keeps Comstock music festivals alive under new name while founder Henry Nuxoll is convicted of bad check charge.

8. Nearly a dozen Central Nebraska towns opt out of state’s mandate for fluoridated water.

9. Burwell City Council fires its economic development director; a new council is elected and reinstates director.

10. Al Klanecky of rural Wolbach is charged in federal court for storing hundreds of explosives at his farm.

2007

1. Ice storm (actually during the last two days of 2006) causes hundreds of millions in damage, leaves 100,000 homes without power.

2. School bond fights rage in Gibbon, Central City, Broken Bow and Ord.

3. One block of Broken Bow‘s downtown burns down April 1.

4. Four Central Nebraskans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan: Kevin Gaspers of Hastings, Ken Locker Jr. of Burwell, Christopher Pfeifer of Spalding, and former Marine Michael Doheny, formerly of Broken Bow.

5. Zoning battles are fought in Ravenna and Boone, Howard, Greeley and Custer counties over livestock operations and paunch manure.

6. Controversial housing development in Ravenna leads to a failed mayoral recall.

7. Ethanol plants near Ord, Ravenna and Albion begin production, construction ongoing at Aurora and Wood River plants.

8. Farm Service Agency offices in Loup City, Burwell and Greeley are closed.

9. Hastings is named “The Greenest City in America” by Yahoo, gets $250,000.

10. NPPD pursues three new privately run wind projects.

2006

1. Ethanol: Ground is broken on plants in Albion, Aurora and Wood River; plans are announced for plants near Ansley and St. Paul (neither plant is completed); construction continues in Ord and on Central City expansion.

2. Thomas “Tiff” Varney of Arnold murdered, and Seth Strasburg of Arnold pleads no contest to manslaughter.

3. Aurora, Gibbon and Cross County (Stromsburg/Benedict) pass school bonds for construction/renovation projects.

4. Shelby native Curt Tomasevicz competes in the winter Olympics as part of the U.S. bobsled team.

5. Two Central Nebraska soldiers killed in Iraq: Brent Zoucha of Clarks and Jeffrey Hansen of Cairo.

6. Valley County Health System in Ord investigates and replaces its CEO, Neelam Bhardwaj, amid controversy. (She later sued for discrimination and settled.)

7. Voters repeal 2005 law dissolving elementary-only school districts, including 28 in Central Nebraska. (The districts remain dissolved.)

8. Fullerton farmer Annette Dubas defeats Central City farmer Greg Senkbile for Legislature’s 34th District seat.

9. The Catholic Diocese of Grand Island clusters nine parishes north of Grand Island, ending weekend Mass at six of them.

10. Comstock music festival organizers implement a 21-step plan to control underage drinking in order to keep their liquor license.

2005

1. Missing persons cases: Ord natives Janelle Hornickel and Michael Wamsley die in a snowstorm near Omaha after taking meth and becoming disoriented; Central City native Kendra Benham dies in a traffic accident in Gage County but is missing for a week; an Indiana woman is missing for a month before being found under a bridge near Grand Island; rural Gibbon farmer Gerald Gillming is reported missing but turns up alive in Kansas five days later and is charged with false reporting.

2. May storms cause extensive hail damage in Hastings and flooding in Wood River.

3. Howard County Sheriff Troy Kaiser resigns after his deputies quit and he is accused of threatening to cut the county attorney’s throat.

4. Six people die in fires near Doniphan, in Kearney and in Hastings.

5. Twelve-year-old Crysta Naylor of St. Paul sells a pretzel shaped like the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus on eBay for $10,600.

6. Central City, Ravenna, Ord, Albion, Wood River and Alda move forward with ethanol plants.

7. A significant amount of money is stolen in an armed robbery at Henderson State Bank.

8. Hastings Mayor Rick Sheehy is appointed lieutenant governor by new Gov. Dave Heineman.

9. Former Clarks police officer Ron Jones is convicted of criminal mischief and theft that occurred while he was an officer.

10. Wood River firefighters Bobby Heminger and Kenny Woitalewicz are remembered on the first anniversary of their deaths.

2004

1. Wood River firefighters Bobby Heminger and Kenny Woitalewicz die on Valentine’s Day when a burning home collapses on them.

2. Five members of the military from Central Nebraska and two others with ties to the area are killed in Iraq or Afghanistan: Noah Boye and Eric Knott of Grand Island, Edward Iwan of Albion, Dennis Corral of Kearney, Kyle Codner of Shelton, Linda Tarango-Griess of Sutton and Jeremy Fischer of Lincoln.

3. Ethanol plants in Central City and Ravenna begin operations.

4. A fire destroys a historic building in downtown Hastings. Two people are injured.

5. One person is killed and 16 people are injured when a Greyhound bus crashes on I-80 between Shelton and Wood River.

6. Tornadoes hit Wheeler County, and Boone County is hit with flooding.

7. James Graf of Laurel dies when a crop duster crashes south of Wood River on June 21.

8. Shari Vincent of Aurora pleads innocent to second-degree attempted murder of her husband, Christopher.

9. Doug and Susan Kyhn of rural Farwell are severely burned by a propane explosion at their home.

10. Greeley and Wolbach schools merge to create the Greeley-Wolbach Titans.

2003 (Top 5)

1. Jose Sandoval is convicted of five counts of first-degree murder for his role in the 2002 Norfolk bank killings. The trial was held in Aurora after a change of venue.

2. Daniel Gannon of Grand Island is stabbed and killed on a North Loup River sandbar near Dannebrog. Joshua Boord of Grand Island is charged with felony manslaughter, but the charge is dismissed.

3. Construction begins on Central City ethanol plant.

4. The main stage at Comstock‘s Godstock music festival collapses because of high winds. One person is injured, and the rest of the festival is canceled.

5. Thirteen-year-old Daniel Burkhardt Jr. of Ravenna is convicted of four juvenile felony charges after attempting to sexually assault a 16-year-old girl and shooting the man who tried to help her.

2002 (The regional beat was split in two that year; the west list is first, followed by the Central Nebraska-related items from the beat’s other reporter, Carol Bryant)

1. Bombs were found inside mailboxes near Dannebrog and Scotia. No one in Central Nebraska was injured.

2. Twelve-year-old Daniel Burkhardt Jr. of Ravenna faces six juvenile charges after attempting to sexually assault a 16-year-old girl and shooting the man who tried to help her.

3. Bobby Joe Conn of Johnson is convicted of conspiring to kill his ex-wife, Alicia Siegel Conn of Litchfield.

4. Nordic Biofuels announces its plans to build an ethanol plant in Ravenna.

5. One person, Louis Lautenschlager, is killed and six others are injured in two separate explosions near St. Libory in June.

6. A mild earthquake (3.5 on the Richter Scale) in June is felt in Valley and Greeley counties.

7. A newborn boy is abandoned on the doorstep of a Shelton home with the umbilical still attached. He is placed with a foster family.

8. Rajitha Goli of St. Louis is convicted of operating a health care fraud scheme in Kearney and Sargent.

9. Justin Olson of Lincoln is convicted of first-degree assault and a weapons charge for shooting his parents in their Broken Bow home.

10. The first-ever Comstock Rock festival draws 30,000 people.

East-Central Nebraska:

5. Plans for an ethanol plant in Central City are announced.

6. A district judge rules that four hog confinement units near Cedar Rapids in Boone and Nance counties are a nuisance.

8. A sale of Allen’s of Hastings to Skagway of Grand Island falls through.

10. Atlantic Homes of Central City, with 175 employees, closes in August.

2001

1. Sixteen-year-old John Blume of Kearney sends a bomb threat to a network printer at Gibbon public schools. He is convicted of a juvenile terroristic threats charge.

2. Justin Olson of Lincoln is arrested for shooting his parents in their Broken Bow home.

3. Four men are arrested in the attempted murder of Alicia Siegel Conn of Litchfield.

4. Ten Central Nebraska counties discuss forming a regional health department. (The Loup Basin Public Health Department is eventually formed.)

5. Former Wood River resident Logan Flood of Lincoln survives a plane crash near Ainsworth.

6. The first Comstock Windmill Festival is held, and organizer Henry Nuxoll announces there will be a sequel.

7. $35 million worth of cocaine is confiscated west of Kearney on I-80, the largest-valued cocaine bust in Nebraska State Patrol history.

8. Wood River Jr./Sr. High school board votes to enter into an interlocal agreement with three elementary-only districts for a middle school arrangement.

9. Comstock Village Board President Dennis Johnson and board member Zelda Drake each call for each other’s recall. In a close, controversial election, Drake is recalled while Johnson is not.

10. Richard Huhman of Anselmo survives being struck by lightning while camping near the Calamus Golf Course near Burwell.

Could tolls be down the road for Nebraska? A new study says they could be an answer for the state’s roads funding shortfall.

The Platte Institute for Economic Research, a fiscally conservative thinktank based in Omaha, released a study last week calling for Nebraska officials to look at public-private partnerships  (read: toll roads) to help the state get through its funding crunch for roads.

In a public-private roads partnership, private risk capital is typically invested to design, build or maintain a road for a specific time period, and the private entity charges tolls on the road to recoup the cost, according to the study. After the contract expires, the state government can usually get the road back at no cost.

The study is authored by Shirley Ibarra and Leonard Gilroy, two analysts at the Reason Foundation, another California-based thinktank that advocates free markets. It goes into lots more detail about how these partnerships might work, but essentially it argues that these partnerships could jump-start several state roads projects that are stalled because of a lack of funding, like the $175 million Lincoln South Beltway project and the Highway 34/75 Missouri River crossing.

So will the Legislature give the idea a look?

The Legislature’s Transportation and Telecommunications Committee has its own report on highway funding due out this week. State Sen. Deb Fischer of Valentine, the committee’s chair, told the Lincoln Journal Star the report won’t include much on public-private partnerships, but she’d be interested to see if any private groups are keen on building roads in the state.

Another senator, Tim Gay of Papillion, told the Omaha World-Herald he’s skeptical about toll roads in a low-population state like Nebraska, but he’s interested in some of the study’s other ideas, like privatizing maintenance work.

In a blog post today, state Sen. Colby Coash of Lincoln called the partnerships “an interesting alternative” and asked his constituents what they thought.

This issue has a lot of hurdles to clear — logistical, procedural and attitudinal — in order to become a reality in this state. But with roads funding in a critical shortage, state senators sound open to anything. This could be an issue to watch long-term.

In this month’s Essent (PDF – it’s on page 6), the newsletter of the Nebraska Municipal Power Pool, I ran across some fun little factoids that illustrate just how closely linked many Nebraska towns are with their railroad-generated past.

Corrinne Pedersen, NMPP Energy’s manager of member development, noted a few Nebraska towns named after railroad officials. Here’s the few she mentioned:

— Shelton, for Nathan Shelton, auditor in the Union Pacific land department.

— McCool Junction, for Daniel McCool, general manager of the St. Joseph & Grand Island Railroad.

— Holdrege, for G.W. Holdrege, a Burlington exec.

— Kimball, for Thomas L. Kimball, a UP general manager.

(My favorite part about these names is the fact that Shelton’s doesn’t even seem to be named after a company bigwig — apparently even middle management got their own towns.)

A quick Google search comes up with several other Nebraska towns with railroad-inspired names: Brock, Sutherland, Ainsworth, Hastings and Coleridge (suggested by a railroad exec).

As this Omaha World-Herald article and this Nebraska Game and Parks information point out, many of Nebraska’s rural towns were quite simply built on the backs of railroad, having grown out of stations created every seven to 15 miles. This summary of Nemaha County history gives a fairly typical picture of how it worked: County bonds to help build railroads, towns built around depots, towns moved to accompany new tracks, and so on.

In some cases, as in Fairfield in this history, the railroads would actually name the towns themselves in alphabetical order by starting letter as they went down the line.

Just a fascinating reminder of how closely tied Nebraska history has been to that of its railroads.