This week marks the last week of bill hearings for the Nebraska Legislature. On March 28, the Unicameral will move to all-day, and potentially, evening debates. This past week we passed several milestones. Priority designations have been made. Senators were asked to designate their one priority bill by Tuesday, the same deadline for each committee […]

This past week, LB 753 received the necessary votes to invoke cloture after eight hours of debate and then received 31 votes to move the bill to Select File. LB 753 creates the Opportunity Scholarships Act and allows individual and corporate taxpayers to qualify for a non-refundable tax credit equal to the amount the taxpayer […]

The Legislature cleared its first filibuster last week after eight hours debating LB 77, Sen. Tom Brewer’s priority bill to enact Constitutional Carry (of handguns.) I was happy to be one of 36 senators who voted to end the filibuster and move the bill to the second round of debate. It takes 33 votes to […]

Anyone watching the Legislature will have heard some of the more progressive senators extending debate on non-controversial bills in the hopes of wasting time and avoiding hearing the controversial bills such as Constitutional Carry, some education and tax reform bills, voter ID, and the abortion ban bill. Spoiler alert: We will hear all of those […]

Tuesday, Feb. 21 marks Day 31 of the 90-day session and Feb. 23 is my one-year anniversary as your District 42 senator. Although we have now completed many bill hearings, we have only begun to pass bills through the first round of debate. This leaves much work ahead of us if we want to get […]

In the last three weeks, the standing committees have taken public comment on more than 300 bills. Last week marked the final week of all-day committee hearings. Now, the Legislature will return to morning floor debate and afternoon committee hearings. The last day for bill hearings will be March 24. Following that date, we will […]

This past week was a busy one at the Legislature. All the standing committees held morning and afternoon hearings, which will continue again this week. A total of 133 bills had public hearings, including several controversial issues such as voter ID, constitutional carry, abortion restrictions, criminal justice reform, tax cuts, and education issues. These issues […]

Bill introduction came to an end last week with 812 bills and over two dozen constitutional amendments.. We also adopted permanent rules for how the Legislature will operate this biennium. Although there were many proposed changes, those advanced from the Rules Committee were fairly non-controversial; however, there may be two more rule changes in the […]

It has been a busy week in the Legislature. The Unicameral kicked off the week by debating the Committee on Committees report, which makes committee membership assignments. The tone of the debate is an early indication of the strong divisiveness that we are seeing in the body. Although the Legislature is nonpartisan, there will be […]

The first days of the Legislature are under our belt and we got a good taste of how the session might go. After all the ceremonial activities, we spent the first day approving temporary rules and electing the new leadership and committee chairs. I was happy to be elected by my peers in the third […]