A dozen legislative days are already in the books and all bills for the session have been introduced.  The total for this session is 739, above average for the past few 90-day sessions. Each and every bill gets a public hearing in Nebraska – only a few states in the country grant this – making our citizens the “second house” of our unicameral legislature.

I introduced nine bills for this session, have signed on as a co-sponsor for several and am considering a few more. Three of my bills deal with funding solutions for Gage County and the federal judgement. Those are LB 472, LB 473 and LB 474.

LB 472 would adopt the Qualified Judgment Payment Act and authorize a sales and use tax to pay for federal judgments. This would be a short term, specific and limited tool to allow political subdivisions like Gage County to broaden the base for paying off an otherwise insurmountable judgment more fairly. A sales tax, for example, would even garner some funding from sales tax paid in Gage County by those simply traveling through. The sales tax would end when the judgement is paid. This bill has the support of the Gage County Board which continues to look for ways to pay the judgment.

LB 473 would be a different avenue towards paying federal judgments, and would make it possible to obtain a low interest loan from the state.  LB 474, the last of this group of bills, would change the way wrongful incarceration and convictions claims are handled and paid by the state.  The road ahead for these bills will be a long one, given the pressing issues of property tax relief and the state budget.

I have three bills that will be heard by the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee. Those include LB 239 which changes the requirements for giving notice on county budget hearings; LB 524 relating to annexations under the Nebraska Budget Act; and LB 525, regarding the sale of county land in fee simple.

One of my bills, LB 106, deals with the disclosure of DNA records under the DNA Identification Information Act. I have reintroduced a bill, now under LB 107, first brought by my predecessor which would clean up some language regarding city and village plumbing boards.

My final bill, LB 666, provides for the transfer of a program to train first responders and EMTs in rural areas to the University of Nebraska Board of Regents. This bill will go before the Appropriations Committee because it involves the Nebraska Health Care Cash Fund.

And speaking of the Appropriations Committee, that’s the committee seat I wanted and got – so now I am working hard to come up to speed as quickly as possible on this important duty.  All my afternoons are spent in Appropriations, this being my only committee assignment because it meets five days a week.

Right now we (in the Appropriations Committee) are getting reports from the Legislature’s Fiscal Office. We will review the state budget three separate times over the course of the next few months and the first step is hearing from the Fiscal Office.  Each fiscal analyst provides an overview of budgets for agencies, boards, and commissions.

After this first ‘run-through’ of the budget, public hearings are held.  At this stage, the committee hears from state agencies regarding their budget requests along with other legislative bills seeking funding through the budget process.

Once the public hearings are done, the committee again sits down and reviews agency requests and bills asking for state dollars, which are debated and reviewed. This is when the real work begins.  The nine of us on the committee will hammer out what will be in the budget and what will be out.

The committee must present a balanced budget to the legislature by the 70th day.  The committee tries to leave some General Funds available for bills that went to other committees which may have a fiscal impact (known as an “A” Bill).  The budget is voted on and passed first before any of these other funding requests. After the passage of the budget, the legislature knows how much additional funding is available for those remaining requests. As in the past couple of years, I expect this amount to be limited.

As bills are scheduled for hearings, I encourage you to come to the Capitol and testify on any of the issues that concern you. Each public hearing is scheduled with at least seven days’ notice, and can be found on the legislative website:  www.nebraskalegislature.gov.  If you have any questions or comments, or if we can help guide you through any of the legislative processes, please contact my office at mdorn@leg.ne.gov or call 402-471-2620.