This has been sitting on my desk for a few days now, buried under my books. Excerpt from the New York Times:
IF new construction is the cardinal symptom of municipal economic health, Omaha has to be in the pink of vigor: $2 billion in new construction in the last five years in a city of fewer than half a million souls. This includes an arena and convention center, a revitalized riverfront with a campus built by the Gallup Corporation, skyscrapers from the First National Bank and Union Pacific, and a $90 million performing arts center opening this month.
My friend and neighbor, Curtis Christensen (also the city's public finance lawyer), tells me that Omaha pays its bills on time and that's one reason why Moody's and Standard & Poor's give our municipal bonds their top ratings. Even during the Great Depression, pay as you go was the law of the land in Nebraska: in 1932, construction of the Capitol in Lincoln came in under budget (at $9.8 million) and was paid for before it was completed. If we were a country, Go-Big-Red-State Nebraskans would invade Iraq, but only if we had the money to pay for it.
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