Legislative Update #6

Most of the political world in Nebraska would agree that the best day of the year is when the Legislature adjourns sine die. I think ALL of us would agree that the second-best day of the year is the last day of regularly scheduled public hearings on bills! That day was last Friday. Whew! Now they will focus mainly on all-day debate of priority bills for the remainder of the session. The next couple weeks will seem very routine-like, and despite what’s on the agenda, a sense of calm regularity looms like a song. Start the morning with a prayer and the pledge of allegiance, debate bills on the agenda and recess at noon; start at 1:30, debate bills on the agenda and adjourn around 5. It will almost seem like a regular job. Well, maybe.

This week will begin the long process of debate on 50-75 fairly non-controversial bills with a few highly debatable items sprinkled in between. Senators have already passed 32 bills this session and another almost 40 await the 2nd and 3rd votes for the session, but the bulk of the bills designated as Senator, Committee, and Speaker Priorities are still on the ready-and-waiting shelf with only 23 working days left in 2026. That’s not a lot of time to get to over a hundred more bills this session.

The Appropriations Committee has mostly finished their work for the budget adjustments, but the Economic Forecasting Board added another $175M to the already very deep budget hole last Friday. This is not good at all for those who are in the state funding world. School funding, the University, prisons, and Medicaid are the top users of state dollars, and they are being squeezed to the near point of collapse. What’s the alternative? Raise taxes? Pause the decreasing of income taxes? Lower the amount of funds put into property tax credits? Find new revenue sources? All of these should probably be on the table over the next couple of weeks, but only a couple of those will be - and let you all guess which ones are. Budget debate starts next Monday probably.

Have a great week; and let’s see those temps stay above freezing for the rest of the season???

~Kent