March 31, 2016 at 9:30 AM - Executive Committtee Meeting

The "Water and Natural Resources Tour" (formerly known as the UNL water Tour) is asking for sponsors this year.  Sponsorship will guarantee space for participants.  In the past we have had difficulty reserving space as did others.  Attached find sponsorship information.

Last month Seier expressed interest in attending and there may be others interested.

Congressman Jeff Fortenberry is asking for our board's support for the proposed Chief Standing Bear National Trail.  Like most National Trails this one is for the most part is a virtual trail that will be designated on maps and a web-site.  The physical portion of the trail will be markers at significant points or where the trail crosses major roadways and areas where there is an existing trail.

The portion of the the virtual trail in LPNNRD is on our west edge in Butler County and in the Shell Creek Valley from north of Columbus through Newman Grove and north into Antelope County. A complete map is available on the website " www.chiefstandingbear.org ".

With the Nebraska 150th Year Centennial set for 2017 the goal is to have this federal designation in place in 2016.  Congressman Fortenberry is leading the effort in the House and is asking for Senator Fischer to take ownership in the Senate.  Fortenberry is asking for a letter of support from each NRD that the virtual  trail passes though. 

In February some employees began receiving IRS notices that an attempt to file their taxes had been made from a suspicious source. Currently 15 of our 18 employees have received this notice or were informed of this when filing their federal income taxes.

We use a firm to produce our W-2 forms called Greenshades. Subsequent investigation has revealed problems with many companies who use Greenshades.  Greenshades is denying any problem on their end although evidence shows that this denial is questionable.  Greenshades had a data breach last year that could account for the problem plus their former security might not have protected as it should have.

The old system has employees log in with their last name and social security number for access to their W-2, thus if a hacker has these two items they could see and copy individual W-2s. Greenshades recently changed their log in system that requires a log in and then access is granted through a return email to a company email account.

Thompson could not find any time that our security was breached from external attempts and feels the problem originated from another source.

Employees have been encouraged to work with the IRS, file a police report, place an alert on their credit report and set a personal password on Greenshades.

We have worked with HBE and followed their recommendations to protect our employees.  They also recommend employees purchase Identity Theft Insurance and have said several companies with this problem are reimbursing their employees for upto one year of protection.  Their recommendation is for Zander Insurance Company who has an individual policy for $75 per year. We should consider this for our employees.

The fall out from this is time and concern by our employees and fear of what the future may hold.

Management is concerned that if the problem is with Greenshades there is also some exposure to our directors.  The dollars listed on our directors W-2s is small enough that filing with IRS is not very likely, but there could be exposure to director names and social security numbers.

A good recommendation would be to allow employees and directors to purchase Identity Theft Insurance on their own from any source and reimburse them up to $75 upon proof of purchase.  The cost to the district for 18 employees would be $1,350 and the cost for 19 directors would be $1,425.