Omaha's $45 million in tobacco tax to UNMC delayed but will still help support school's project
The City of Omaha will still contribute up to $45 million in tobacco taxes to a University of Nebraska Medical Center, but the payments will start later and be tightly Omaha's mayor and City Council have pledged to contribute up to $45 million over 10 years to Project NExT, a project led by the University of Nebraska Medical Center and its clinical partner, the Nebraska Medical Centre. The city's 3% occupation tax on tobacco and vaping products will be used to fund a new academic medical facility at the university. However, the university has not yet begun construction and has received $300 million from the state. The funding will include donations from philanthropists, the private sector, debt, and state and city contributions. The university is focusing on a first phase of Project NexT, which would include a new medical center providing patient care and clinical research trials, and a new in-patient veterans’ hospital and research facility for response to pandemics, natural disasters and environmental catastrophes.
게시됨 : 일년 전 ~에 의해 christopher burbach, Christopher Burbach World-Herald Staff Writer ~에 Environment
Smokers and vapers in Omaha will help pay for a new academic medical facility at the University of Nebraska Medical Center to the tune of about $4.5 million a year for 10 years, but the city tobacco tax revenue won’t start flowing to the university quite yet.
Omaha’s mayor and City Council previously pledged to contribute up to $45 million over 10 years to Project NExT, a joint effort of the University of Nebraska Medical Center and its clinical partner, the Nebraska Medical Center. The money is to come from the city’s 3% occupation tax on tobacco and vaping products.
The city’s contribution is tied to state funding of up to $300 million. The city’s annual payments of about $4.5 million were to begin this year, with revenue that was generated in 2023.
But the university hasn’t yet begun construction. It also hasn’t yet begun receiving the $300 million from the state.
So Omaha’s tobacco tax revenue will instead go into the city’s general fund. But it will be used primarily to help pay for a city parking garage and street work in support of UNMC’s Saddle Creek campus development.
The university is focusing on a first phase of Project NExT. That would include a new academic medical center to provide patient care and clinical research trials along with teaching and training of health care providers. The university is calling it Project Health: Building the Healthiest Nebraska.
Currently estimated to cost $2.19 billion, the facility would be the largest project in university history. Work is under way to determine a more precise estimate of the scope of the project and its cost, en route to completing a detailed plan and submitting it to the NU Board of Regents. The university is still putting together its funding, which will include money from philanthropists, the private sector and debt as well as the state and city contributions.
Construction could begin in 2025, said UNMC Chancellor Dr. Jeffrey Gold, who will take the reins as president of the University of Nebraska system in July.
“A lot depends on finalizing the funding stack, because we will not go forward to intermediate design review with the Board of Regents, of course, until every last dollar is committed,” Gold said. “But we’re getting there. We’re getting closer and closer.”
The university previously identified a 7½-acre site on the northern edge of campus, the former site of the Munroe-Meyer Institute, as the site of a new academic medical center.
Two other phases of Project NExT would be federally funded and could come later. Those could include a new in-patient veterans’ hospital and a research facility to boost the nation’s response to pandemics, natural disasters and environmental catastrophes. Discussions continue on those potential projects.
“If the VA continues to partner with us, as it looks like they will, that will be a separate project that they will plan,” Gold said. “We will work with them and they will fund it... And then the larger health security program, also as that goes forward, would be completely funded by federal stakeholders, the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, etc.”
The Omaha City Council created the tobacco tax in 2012 as a way to raise revenue to help pay for the Nebraska Medical Center’s Fred and Pamela Buffett Cancer Center. The tax was controversial at the time. It originally had a sunset clause that would kill the tax in 2022. But the City Council made the tobacco tax permanent in 2019 when it also voted to tax vaping products.
This will be the first year the bulk of Omaha’s tobacco tax revenue will go into the general fund. The city pledged the $45 million for Project NExT in 2021 as part of about $93 million it committed to UNMC campus expansion and Project NExT. That also included $30 million for a city-owned parking garage west of Saddle Creek Road, and $18 million for public improvements like the redesign of the Saddle Creek Road and Leavenworth Street intersection.
The City Council recently passed an amendment to that 2021 interlocal agreement with UNMC. It increased the city’s contribution to $20 million for public improvements along Saddle Creek Road. And it explicitly ties the city’s tobacco tax money to the state’s allocation.
The state’s potential $300 million would be 15% of the current cost of the project. The City of Omaha is committing to providing 15% of what the state contributes, Assistant City Attorney Jennifer Taylor told the City Council.
“If the state ultimately decides to fund this project at a lesser amount, the city would then also fund the project but at a correspondingly lesser amount,” Taylor said.
State law puts restrictions on how the city contribution can be spent. Although Omaha can — and is planning to — spend its funds on the city-owned parking garage and streets, it cannot give money directly to UNMC but for a medical facility.
“The City of Omaha is only allowed to actually reimburse UNMC as a nonprofit academic teaching facility for certain expenses, primarily the construction of a medical or hospital facility,” Taylor said. “So we will only be able to utilize the funds under this agreement to reimburse UNMC for actual hospital construction expenses.”
주제: Environment-ESG