DAS Website: From the Director's Desk

Teammates,

Last week, I testified in front of the Nebraska Legislature’s Appropriations Committee in support of Governor Pillen’s budget recommendations. Governor Pillen’s budgetary and legislative priorities focus heavily on Nebraska’s children, workforce, tax structure, and government efficiency.

During my testimony, I gave a high level brief of exactly who DAS is and what we do for our customers and the people of Nebraska. As you all know, our main customers are our sister agencies. The Governor’s budget recommendation for DAS includes necessary appropriations so that we can best serve our fellow agencies, so they in turn can serve the people of Nebraska. Some areas of DAS’ budget that I specifically want to highlight are:

State Building Division (SBD) Leases – While we’ve worked to consolidate a lot of DAS’ real estate portfolio, and house state agencies within state-owned buildings, the State still needs to lease out commercial office space. The increased appropriations request for our SBD leases is important for our SBD team to be able to continue to provide office space for agencies to operate.
State Accounting – Our State Accounting team has worked hard over the last several years to improve how they’ve compiled the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR). Part of these improvements require updating our ACFR reporting software as well as increasing staff for the ACFR team.
IT Upgrades – We are implementing a necessary upgrade to our JD Edwards/EnterpriseOne System.
Inflation Impacted Expenses – As high inflation has impacted Americans throughout the country, a number of our services have also been impacted including fuel, maintenance, and insurance for our Transportation Services Bureau’s state fleet, and an increase in insurance premiums for our Risk Management Division.

These are all critically important appropriations requests to ensure that DAS can continue to serve our customers at the high level they’ve come to expect. Thank you to our State Accounting Team, Legislative Liaison Sarah Skinner, and all of our teammates who worked hard to put together DAS’ budget recommendations!

From the Director's Desk

Teammates,

More from the Director's Desk: