Legislative Update #2

Happy Friday! We survived the first of 4 five-day work weeks…although they were only in session less than 2 hours a day. And the last 2 days gave us 50 degrees and sunny and calm! Don’t worry, Sunday and Monday it will be back in the single digits….

After eight days in this 90-day session, Senators introduced 432 bills and 14 resolutions that propose to change the laws of the land in Nebraska. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? Well…Houston we have a serious problem on our hands. The Revisors Office has been seriously backed up for a multitude of reasons that I won’t get into, but what we’re likely to see on Day 9 and Day 10 next week is ANOTHER 400 bills and resolutions, or more. Despite the new Legislative Rule adopted by the 2024 Legislature limiting each Senator to 20 substantive bills, the total will not likely lessen from what we’ve been seeing the past few years. I know we’ve surpassed the 1,000 mark in requests for draft, but I expect that we’ll see maybe 800-850 total introduced by the end of Day 10, which is the last day (mostly) that bills can be introduced. I guess we’re better than Texas where there were almost 1500 pre-filed (can’t do that in Nebraska) with an expectation of around 5000 total this year alone. YIKES

Hearings start next week as well and will continue through March…yeah…that’s 10 weeks of hearings. Super fun.

The Governor gave his State of the State Address on Wednesday and showed us his budget proposals. Needless to say, my session is now busier. The Executive Summary has a couple of charts where he is repealing about 40 initiatives people worked very hard to pass in the past 2-4 years. The hearing on the mainline budget bill should be quite entertaining.

Thanks, and chat soon…we’ll know a whole bunch more next week!

~Kent