While many parts of the world celebrate Earth Day, here in Nebraska we celebrate our very own homegrown holiday – Arbor Day. Also this week, History Nebraska gave the Historic Preservation Award to Main Street Beatrice (MSB). I had the honor of presenting this award to Michael Sothan. Congratulations to MSB, and to all of our Nebraska communities working to better our state in a variety of ways.

At the beginning of the current session, I began the work of shepherding sixteen bills through the legislative process. Despite the lack of time for debate this year, several have made good progress. One of those, LB 90, relating to tax incentive performance audits, has been incorporated into another bill. I selected LB 562 as my priority and will discuss that later in this update. LB 401 will be studied over the interim and brought back next year.

Six of the remaining bills I am carrying have been included in the main line budget bills. Five of those deal with Medicaid reimbursement rates for hospitals, assisted living facilities, nursing homes and behavioral health providers. The last one appropriates funding for the development of broadband for precision agriculture.

Underpinning all of our budget discussions is the latest revenue estimate from the Nebraska Economic Forecast Advisory Board. The forecasting board is composed of nine people from across the state and met Wednesday afternoon. When we bring the budget to the floor next week, their forecast will help determine the revenue available to be allocated, appropriated, or given as tax credits.

Only minor adjustments were made to their previous projections. Revenue amounts for the current fiscal year were lowered by $80 million to $6.36 billion. The adjustment was based on anticipated decreases of $200 million in individual income and sales and use tax receipts, offset in part by projected increases of $120 million in corporate and miscellaneous tax receipts. Total projected revenue receipts for FY2023-24, however, were raised by $25 million and the FY2024-25 projections were raised by $55 million.

So with basically a net change in revenue of zero for the next couple of years, we made minimal changes to the budget in the Appropriations Committee, and voted to bring it to the floor in the form of five bills. Governor Pillen was excited about the forecast and commented that we can continue work on returning some of the tax money to the people of the state of Nebraska.

The budget will be out in a print version on Tuesday for review, and we will take up debate on the budget on Wednesday, May 3. The Speaker has chosen to make the five budget bills a “super priority” which gives him the ability to determine the order of taking up amendments, length of debate on each issue, and when votes will be taken.

Included in the budget package are three “big ticket” items. The largest was the Governor’s proposal to create a billion dollar Education Future Fund, to be used to increase state aid for K-12 schools. Another substantial item was the Perkins County canal project to manage water coming down the South Platte from Colorado; $574.5 million was set aside for that purpose. A new prison is the third highest in cost. Some of the previously allocated funding was given spending authority of $70 million the first year to begin building that project. These three will no doubt generate plenty of discussion on the floor.

I was very pleased to see my provider rate bills included in the budget package, I am very thankful to get that funding for those entities. During covid, we learned about the staffing challenges many nursing homes and hospitals were, and still are, facing. We were recently briefed on another side to this problem, that bringing in traveling nurses and other personnel is not always the answer we had hoped, for a number of reasons.

Another consequence has been hospitals having to house and care for long term patients who are waiting for space in a nursing home facility. Hospitals have had to absorb much of that cost and in some cases, the wait has been for several months to a year. As a state we are still trying to work through the effects of pandemic. Again, I want to emphasize, we must work to keep our care facilities, at every level, viable and open as an option in both rural and urban areas.

LB 626, known as the “heartbeat bill”, which would restrict abortions after about six weeks, was up for second round debate on Thursday. An amendment to change from a six week ban to a 12 week ban was offered but not adopted. After a four hour filibuster, a cloture vote failed to garner the needed 33 votes. The final cloture vote was 32 ayes, 15 nays and two not voting. I support LB 626 as a co-sponsor and voted for cloture.

My priority bill, LB 562, The E 15 Access Standard Act, did advance to the second stage of debate on a vote of 32 ayes, 1 nay, and 13 not voting. An amendment from the Agriculture Committee will be offered to remove some requirements, add some waivers and include blender rates and tax credits. Nebraska ranks second in ethanol production in the entire USA, yet is nearly last in consumption. Consumers can’t use what they can’t buy, so this bill is designed to increase accessibility and the option to use E 15. Increasing the statewide blend rate from the current 9.6% to the goal of 14% would save consumers around $50 million per year on fuel costs, while benefiting the state economy and the environment.

Contact me at any time at mdorn@leg.ne.gov or call 402-471-2620. You can also watch the session by clicking the Nebraska Public Media icon on the website: nebraskalegislature.gov