The saga of Lincoln’s Fairness Ordinance has moved to the courts.
Kay Siebler, a leader of a group called Let Lincoln Vote, is asking Lancaster County District Court to order the City Council to enact an ordinance updating city discrimination protections to include gender identity, sexual orientation and veterans — or put it on the ballot.
The lawsuit is the latest move in a 17-month controversy over whether the city should update Title 11, the city code dealing with equal opportunity in housing, employment and public accommodation.
The lawsuit alleges that had city officials followed its charter, the Let Lincoln Vote ballot initiative to get the ordinance passed or on the ballot wouldn’t have been thrown out.
The group made the same argument to the City Council: That the city charter does not require the Lancaster County election commissioner to verify the signatures, and therefore doesn’t require — as state law says — a notification in red ink indicating whether circulators are paid or volunteer.
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That red ink notification, or the lack of it, led the election commissioner to throw out Let Lincoln Vote’s ballot initiative signatures last August.
That ballot initiative was just the latest turn in a process that began in February 2022 when the City Council passed an ordinance broadly updating Title 11 — a decade after a different City Council had passed a more narrowly worded ordinance.
In addition to adding protections for sexual orientation and gender identity, the 2022 ordinance included veterans and updated definitions of marriage, race and natural origins; strengthened definitions and updated disability protections.
Opponents, led by the Nebraska Family Alliance, mounted a successful referendum petition drive, gathering enough signatures to force the council either to rescind the ordinance or let Lincoln voters decide.
A decade earlier, following a similar referendum petition, the council had done nothing and the original Fairness Ordinance sat dormant. This council was determined not to let that happen.
Division among supporters on how best to proceed — some worried they didn’t have the organization or financing in place to successfully overcome well-organized, well-financed opponents and there weren’t sufficient supports for transgender people likely to be targeted — prompted a divided City Council to rescind the ordinance.
Siebler and other supporters then gathered signatures for its own ballot initiative, convinced voters would approve a Fairness Ordinance, given the opportunity.
The group collected more than 11,0000 signatures — well over the number needed — but in August the Lancaster County election commissioner threw them out, saying they were invalid because they didn’t include the notice in red ink as required by state law.
Let Lincoln Vote filed a second ballot initiative to get the question on the May ballot, but were frustrated by what they said was an inability to get city or county officials to ensure the petition forms were accurate and valid this time around.
Now they’ve asked the court to intervene. So stay tuned.
Aiming for synchronicity
If you thought there was no science to making traffic flow smoothly along city streets, think again.
The city got a $100,000 federal grant through the Nebraska Department of Transportation to use software designed by Iowa State University Professor Anuj Sharma. The grant will pay $80,000, the city the remaining $20,000.
Dan Carpenter, the city’s traffic engineering manager, said the city can collect lots of data about how many cars go through an intersection, how long they sit at red lights and how many go through an intersection on a green light. But analyzing all that data is time intensive.
Enter Sharma’s software, which can more effectively crunch all that data to show how the city’s timing of traffic lights is working and how it might improve.
The city has been working to make the lights more efficient through a $6.8 million initiative called Green Light Lincoln. In September 2021, city officials touted the work, saying it had reduced the time Lincolnites spent in cars by 1.2 million hours, meant 68 million fewer vehicle stops, a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and an annual saving of $23.7 million in fuel costs since the program began in 2016.
The professor’s software will continue that work.
“It’s another tool in our toolbox to do that,” Carpenter said.
It will also allow Lincoln to compare its system to cities of comparable size, he said.
Will it result in dramatic changes Lincoln’s motorists will notice?
No, though maybe noticeable to the very observant among us.
But Carpenter warns that motorists will still find themselves stopped at lights that drive them nuts, which, he noted, turn red for a reason. Even if it might not be immediately obvious.
Keeping the water flowing
Lincoln Transportation and Utilities wants to give a nearly 13% jump in the salary range for nine positions for two different jobs that help keep Lincoln’s water and wastewater systems up and running.
Both jobs are basically technicians, one an electrician who monitors the high-voltage motors that make water pumps and other large equipment run (or get restarted when a thunderstorm knocks one out), the other a computer tech who runs the centralized system that operates the city’s water and wastewater systems.
There are three of the technicians that handle the high-voltage electrical work and six of the computer technicians for Lincoln water and wastewater systems.
Steve Owen, superintendent of water production and treatment, said similar positions outside the city pay more, which resulted in the loss of several people. The city-county Human Resources Department did a study that bore out that theory and officials are now asking the City Council to make the jobs more competitive.
If the council approves the changes, the pay ranges would increase from $58,772-$75,055 to $66,310-$84,675.
With the possible change on the horizon, the city has been able to hire more people, Owen said, and is in the process of filling the last two open positions.