Opinion: Amendment 2 means more funds for community health

Amendment 2 means more funds for community health
By Sen. Chris Beutler
Opinion Letter to Lincoln Journal Star

The Community Health Endowment of Lincoln will award about $1 million in grants this year to various local organizations to improve the health of our community. What if we could make that $2 million, or even more, each year? And what if we could do that without raising taxes and without asking for donations?

We can. How? We can vote “yes” on Amendment 2 this November.

Amendment 2 is a proposal I guided through the Legislature last session, with final passage on a 42-0 vote. It offers a change to the Nebraska Constitution. Right now, there is outdated language in the constitution dating to 1875. This language unnecessarily restricts how the public endowments of cities and other public entities can invest their funds. These funds are prevented from maximizing the interest they earn.

Amendment 2 would modify the constitutional restriction and allow endowment funds to use modern investment strategies — the same strategies already available to charities, public pension funds and private foundations. These entities are generally guided by the “prudent investment standard,” which is also required by Amendment 2. This essentially means that those who handle public endowment funds would be legally required to invest them with “care, skill, and diligence.” Amendment 2 also authorizes the Legislature to make any further restrictions it deems appropriate.

Right now, public endowments are essentially limited to investing in bonds, which do not earn much in terms of interest. If Lincoln’s Community Health Endowment were allowed to invest in quality stocks, professional estimates indicate that the fund would grow by nearly $80 million over the next 20 years. After allowing the fund to grow at the rate of inflation for future generations, that means an additional $22 million would be available for community grants during that same time period. That’s $22 million more to help fund our community’s health care needs. And that’s $22 million more to help ease the growing burden on our tax-funded human services programs.

As you may recall, the Community Health Endowment was created about 10 years ago, when the city sold Lincoln General Hospital. Rather than using the proceeds from this sale to fund the city’s general operational needs, city leaders put that money into a separate public endowment fund. Interest earned from this fund has been used to support nearly $9 million of health-related initiatives in Lincoln and the surrounding areas throughout the last decade. Many of these initiatives relate to health care for the poor, elderly, homeless and mentally ill.

The Grapevine Project is one such program. About six years ago, the Lancaster County Medical Society and the local health department started this project through a grant from the endowment. The project was designed to help our low-income citizens pay for prescription medications. After a few years, the project’s focus shifted from paying for prescription medications to funding a full-time “patient advocate” whose job was to search out free programs operated by the drug companies themselves. During the past three years, this project has brought more than $6 million in medications to Lincoln. In addition, the project reduced Lancaster County’s indigent medication costs by nearly 70 percent, from $150,000 to $50,000 per month — a $100,000 monthly savings for our taxpayers.

It’s hard to see a down side with such a project. And as more of our citizens find themselves either without health-care coverage or with inadequate coverage, there will be no shortage of similar projects seeking help from our Community Health Endowment. We need to make sure the endowment continues to grow so it is able to help meet those needs.

We can do that. We can give the Community Health Endowment and all public endowments throughout Nebraska the tools they need. And we can do all this without raising taxes. We can vote for Amendment 2.

State Sen. Chris Beutler represents the 28th legislative district in Lincoln.