The original plan that Nebraska wanted to pursue, was the establishment of a state owned trunked radio system, which over time would be built-out to cover the entire state. However, when the state saw the price tag from Motorola, they got a bad case of sticker shock. From that point on, they decided that it would be more cost-effective to approach the interoperability issue from a regional perspective, rather than from a statewide viewpoint. Moreover, Nebraska decided that it would be best interest of all parties that each system should be locally owned, and not follow the trend in Illinois and South Carolina, where the vendor builds and maintains the system; whereby, each agency leases airtime for a fee that can be very expensive for smaller agencies.
In the future, I would look for more wide-area trunking system to go into place over the next 10-15 years. These may be on VHF or UHF, but would be linked via microwave to the other systems. Likewise, with the federal government building their nationwide VHF, P-25 TRS over the next decade, its possible that agreements could be reached between local agencies and the federal government to better share their resources. Currently, the Montana, Virgina, and Wyoming are looking to do just that, since they are building VHF-High band P-25 trunking systems.
73's
Ron