The 11th Annual NACO Legislative Conference is open for registration.  The morning and afternoon speakers have been confirmed to be in attendance and the event is scheduled to be held at the Holthus Conference Center in York, Nebraska on October 13th from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Two State Senators are slated to speak to the group during the day.  Senator Curt Friesen from York will review the 2016 legislative session and preview the 2017 session in the morning and Senator Mark Kolterman from Wahoo will deliver his perspective on health care cost and retirement issues.  Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael Heavican and State Court Adlministrator Corey Steel will finish the morning discussing the relationship of Nebraska's court system and how it impacts county government.  NACo Program Manager, Katy Rowings will also be in attendance to speak on using county dollars wisely in corrections and pretrial services in re-entry initiatives.

The agenda can be viewed on the NACO webpage or by clicking here.

The agenda included a seven and one-half hour training on the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practices (USPAP) taught by the Moore Group from Lincoln. Ruth Sorensen, Property Tax Administrator of the Department of Revenue approved 17 1/2 hours of continuing education for those attending the entire workshop.  The workshop also included an afternoon tour of Wardcraft Homes manufacturing plant in Minden, Nebraska so assessors and appraisers could view first hand the process and materials used in the preparation, building and delivery of a manufactured home from that facility.  

Workshop photos can be viewed here.  

Ever hear someone mention a home or business VPN and wonder what they are talking about? A virtual private network (VPN) is a secure connection joining two or more networks through the Internet. The connection is often encrypted to prevent unauthorized access to the data being transmitted. Once a connection is made between the endpoints, devices can communicate as if they were on the same physical network. Below are a few of the many VPN uses.

A VPN can be used to access local resources while out of the office. Forget to email yourself a document from your work computer while you are traveling? Just sign into the VPN, and access the file directly as if you were still at your desk. The VPN is not limited to file access. While connected, printers, applications, files, phone systems, time clocks, computers, and servers are accessible without compromising either network.

When using the Internet at a public location, that site or someone on their network may see your network traffic. Connecting to the Internet through a VPN will hide the traffic from others. They may see you are using the Internet, but they will not see how you are using the Internet. Keep in mind the device you are connecting to may still log your traffic, but the people in between will not be able to.

Before the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC's) Net neutrality regulation, many Internet service providers throttled video streaming services and larger downloads by limiting connection speeds. With throttled connections, a VPN was a way to get better download speeds thus increasing the video quality. With a VPN the Internet service provider cannot distinguish the difference between video streaming and other Internet traffic and therefore cannot throttle the traffic.

NACO's 2015 Directory of County Officials is a valuable resource that not only gives you names, addresses, phone numbers, fax numbers and e-mail addresses of every county official in the state, but includes a listing of county board meeting days, NACO districts, county seats, NACO officers and directors, affiliate officers and NACO staff.

As of  January 2016, NACO will no longer print the hard copy of the directory and send one to each county.  The directory has been made a part of the NACO website through a clickable and searchable icon and will be updated as corrections are submitted. The directory on the website is downloadable for a printed copy and it can also be transferred electronically to office computers and devices with memory storage such as smartphones and ipads.

For a copy of the latest 2015 directory, click here for the order form.

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The 2015 County Board Handbook and related revisions are now available! The cost for a current handbook, including legislative information from the 2015 session, is $80.00/book plus $18.00 shipping and handling per book. The 2015 Supplement to the County Board Handbook is available for $25.00 plus $5.00 shipping and handling. The order form is available on the NACO website. For questions, contact Elaine Menzel by email or call her at (402) 434-5660 ext. 225.

NACO County News Article By Jacob Terrell  

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