Paul Hammel: Another legislative session in the books, along with another budget crisis averted
Some State Capitol watchers say they can’t relax until state legislators go home for the year.
As a reporter who chased the occupants of the “Hall of Hot Winds” for too many decades, I can attest that the fire drill-like finish to legislative sessions leaves you ready for something different. Or a stiff drink.
Paul Hammel
Late-night sessions — which used to be a rarity — are par for the course these days, with debates extending 12 hours or more in the waning days of a legislative session.
Filibusters also used to be as unusual as a soaking rain in spring, but now are as common as the migration of the Sandhill cranes.
Reporters are notoriously underpaid (so please keep subscribing and contributing to this news source) but you have to wonder how state senators, who have been paid $12,000-a-year for the past 38 years, put up with it.
They deserve a raise, if you ask me.
Senators went home last week after a 60-day session in which the crowning achievement was closing a monumental gap in state tax revenue that grew to beyond $600 million. Passing a budget is really the only thing they’re obligated to do.
The gap was created when the projected collection of state tax dollars fell far short of funding government services.
What happened? There were some deep cuts passed by the Legislature to reduce state income taxes, which has been a popular move in many other states.
The cuts were scheduled to be gradual under the law passed in 2023. The state’s top rate for individual income tax, which had been 6.84%, is scheduled to eventually drop to 3.99% by the 2027 tax year. Corporate tax rates are also scheduled to fall to 3.99%.
Those were mighty deep cuts — cuts I thought I’d never see in Nebraska where he have many more cows and land than tax-paying people and corporations.
Lawmakers could have done the easy thing to solve the budget gap, by extending the gradual drop in income taxes to say 2028 or 2029, thus preserving hundreds of millions in tax revenue. They could have also increased cigarette taxes, something that hasn’t been done for 24 years, to come up with more funds.
But instead Gov. Pillen and the Gang of 49 again passed a series of “sweeps” from purportedly idle state reserve funds, along with cutting some services, to solve the second budget crisis in the past two years.
(This is a solution, but a pretty temporary one. You can’t keep stealing from the cookie jar forever, and it looks like next year’s lawmakers will again be facing another big budget gap.)
The biggest fight over this year’s budget was over a proposal by Gov. Pillen to spend $7 million a year to help families pay for private and parochial schooling for their kids until President Trump’s tax credit for private school tuition takes effect in 2027.
As I recall, state voters rejected the use of state funds for private school tuition, opting instead to use that money for public education. So, in the end, that proposal failed, and rightly so. The voters had spoken.
Pillen, meanwhile, berated legislators, writing in a social media post that if he ran “that show” (the Legislature) their work would be done by April 1, and that lawmakers would be too tired to “go out every night drinking and eating” with lobbyists picking up the tab.
(That’s pretty bold talk from someone who is in hot water, and the subject of a law enforcement investigation, over the granting of a $2.5 million, no-bid contract to a lobbyist/friend. Wonder if any eating and drinking was involved?)
I often mused when I was covering the Legislature that I’d make things run more smoothly if I ran "that show."
But I watched a lot of smart Speakers of the Legislature try, and fail, at their own efforts of getting 49 senators to get along better.
The bottom line is we have a unique Unicameral where debate, and disagreement, is encouraged, and where you can use the rules to block progress and force a compromise.
It's like herding cats. It ain’t pretty always, but it seems to work, even during this last session.
And now that lawmakers have gone home, we can relax.
Paul Hammel has covered the Nebraska state government and the state for decades. He is a retired senior reporter for the Nebraska Examiner and the former Capitol Bureau Chief for the Omaha World-Herald. A native of Ralston, Nebraska, he loves traveling and writing about the state.
