Legislative Update #1
Good afternoon and happy weekend!!
You normally would have received our highly-formatted, nicely put-together, long-form update from me on Friday to highlight what happened during the first 3 days of this brand new legislature….BUT…Julie caught a bug and called in sick on Friday. She’ll be back in action this week and things will return to normal but for today, this is me sending a simpler update to y’all.
What’s happened?
Well we elected a large bunch of new Committee Chairs right away on Wednesday morning. Most were by acclimation with only one contender, but a few had challengers and required a vote. In the end, only 1 Democrat secured a leadership position.
Next the Committee on Committees met to place their colleagues on their respective committees as required by law and their rules. The first meeting lasted about 5 minutes before erupting into a fight and disbanding. There were subsequent meetings Wednesday afternoon, but they ultimately adjourned without a consensus. It actually took all of Thursday for them to finally settle on their report to the Clerk, which was adopted without much fanfare on Friday morning. The Democrats are now in the minority of every committee except Urban Affairs, not even any ties, 4-4, which is pretty unusual.
You can click here to see the report of the Committee on Committee which contains the chairs and the members of each: https://www.nebraskalegislature.gov/pdf/committees/roster.pdf
Bill introduction began on Thursday morning and will continue until January 22, Day 10. So far there have been 129 bills and 3 constitutional amendments introduced. Not bad but also, we have 17 people who really didn’t have much of a runway to get bills drafted and the Revisor’s Office has been in some sort of a log jam so bill requests are coming back slower than normal. Thing will probably be steady this week as we have 5 days of introduction in front of us.
What’s forthcoming?
Rules hearing and debate. Senators proposed 24 rules changes last week, some of them EXTENSIVE, and some of them small. The hearing for those rules changes will be on Thursday afternoon, the 16th. In General, zero to a couple of rules changes usually come out of the Rules Committee and zero to two of them get debated and pass. One of them that is expected to be heavily discussed is a proposal to change the committee structure in 2027 to combine the Natural Resources and Agriculture Committees and create a new Committee on Technology. This has been discussed for quite a few years as each of the NR and Ag committees usually gets less than 20 bills annually resulting in the committee process for those committees only taking 3-4 weeks of easy hearing days, when others take 8 weeks of long and arduous hearings going well into the evenings. Debate on those rules changes is scheduled to begin on January 22nd.
The Governor will give his State of the State Address on Wednesday of this week and will likely unveil his budget and other proposals to the Legislature and Public. This usually sends things around the Statehouse into high gear for those who have budgetary concerns.
The new Chief Justice will give his first State of the Judiciary Address on January 28th.
Ok, we’re on to week 2 tomorrow…here’s to the fist of four 5-Day work weeks this session, where we are hopefully looking at a June 2nd or earlier adjournment date! Let’s Go!!
Chat soon,
Kent Rogert, President
Jensen Rogert Associates