Senator Tom Brewer
43rd District
7-10-2020

The recent decision by the federal court to put a halt to Nebraska Public Power District’s (NPPD) R-Project high voltage power line continues to be in the news. The President and CEO of NPPD, Mr. Tom Kent, was quoted in the North Platte paper the other day with respect to the R-Project power line. He said, “Nothing’s changed from a factual basis to change our decision at this point.”

Speaking specifically to the route of the R Project, Mr. Kent also said, “From what we’ve seen, we’re in the best place from a utilities standpoint.” The article did not mention what would be considered the “best place” for this powerline from a citizen’s perspective.

The landowners’ eight-year struggle against this power line should have ended when the judge issued his ruling in this lawsuit. Given Mr. Kent’s comments to the newspaper, it is clear he intends to press on with this misguided project along the same bad route regardless. Unfortunately, NPPD can make decisions and do things the people of Nebraska have no effective recourse against. The only check the law places on NPPD’s power is their elected board. Given the history of the public being ignored on this project, this remedy is clearly insufficient. The people need a much stronger say in the laws that govern our public power entities in Nebraska. The process we use to site power lines in this state is broken. The statutes empowering public electrical utilities to conduct this process is badly in need of updating. A lot has changed since we decided to be the only state in the union with 100 percent public-owned electrical utilities.

I have often wondered why we need these new transmission lines intended to hook up new production capacity when the state has over 900 megawatts of surplus electrical generation. We have enough excess electricity in Nebraska to power a second city of Lincoln. Transmission lines are built to move electricity long distances. There are no industrial generators of electricity in the vicinity of the R-Project, unless you consider all the wind energy facilities that will sprout like weeds if this power line is ever built. Not taking the impact of those projects into consideration even though they are bound to be built is a part of the reason the judge said that the permitting process failed to follow the law.

When Nebraskans have to pay a lawyer and haul government agencies into court in order to get them to finally listen to them, something is dreadfully wrong with the laws that govern that agency.

Please contact my office with any comments, questions, or concerns. Email me at tbrewer@leg.ne.gov, mail a letter to Sen. Tom Brewer, Room #1101, P.O. Box 94604, Lincoln, NE 68509, or call us at (402) 471-2628.

Senator Tom Brewer
43rd District
7-3-2020

I have traveled all over the world, and I believe America is the most multi-ethnic, most racially integrated, most colorblind country on Earth. We promise civil rights with the rule of law, and we rely on our courts to back up that promise. Our market economy makes economic mobility possible here in a way that is only a dream in many other nations. The idea the United States today is a horribly racist country has no relationship to truth or reality.

We fought a Civil War to end slavery. That war resulted in over 800,000 casualties. Adjusted for today’s population, that would be the equivalent of over eight million casualties. No nation on the face of the Earth has ever laid such a sacrifice upon the altar of human freedom.

In 1863 President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves in the states in rebellion.

1865, President Lincoln led the effort to get the 13th Amendment passed in Congress, legally abolishing slavery throughout the United States.

Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and 1871, the Enforcement Act of 1870, the Force Act of 1871, the KKK Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1875. These were all efforts to advance the cause of integration.

In 1868, the 14th Amendment was ratified by the states. It guarantees due process and equal protection of all citizens, especially freed African slaves. In 1870, the 15th Amendment was passed to guarantee the right to vote for all citizens.

The Insurrection Act was amended in 1871 to allow use of the military to enforce, among other things, voting rights and desegregation. In 1871, Ulysses S. Grant sent a thousand soldiers to hunt down Klansmen in South Carolina and they captured 600 of them.

In 1948, President Truman issued an executive order to desegregate the US military.

In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in the Brown versus Board of Education decision, nine to zero. It ended legal racial segregation in schools.

In 1957, President Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, AR to protect nine black students entering Little Rock Central High School against the order of the governor. In 1959, he ordered the desegregation of the Washington, D.C. public schools.

In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act with an overwhelming majority of Republicans in the House and the Senate. It prohibits discrimination in voting, public accommodations, public facilities, public education, Federal assistance programs and employment.

In 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act that prohibited denial or restriction of the right to vote. It forbids discriminatory voting practices nationwide.

This list just scratches the surface. I could fill every page of this newspaper with all the things Americans have done to make this the least racist country on Earth. We will continue to make our union “more perfect” as Americans have done throughout our history. We have always grown as a society by building people up, not tearing things down.

Please contact my office with any comments, questions, or concerns. Email me at tbrewer@leg.ne.gov, mail a letter to Sen. Tom Brewer, Room #1101, P.O. Box 94604, Lincoln, NE 68509, or call us at (402) 471-2628.

Senator Tom Brewer
43rd District
6-26-2020

When the virus hit, we had a cattle market. For better or worse, this market has worked in Nebraska since before we were a state. The large industrial meat packers turned out to be the critical point of failure in this market. When a large number of their employees turned up sick with the virus, the plants closed or severely reduced production. When that happened, ranchers no longer had a market to sell their crop. I do not think it can be overstated the amount of stress and despair this caused thousands of family farms and ranches around the state. Nothing like this has ever happened in living memory. Helping the number one industry in Nebraska simply must be our top priority.

Ranchers in the Sandhills are very strong and resilient people. They are also very industrious entrepreneurs. When the traditional cattle market failed, they created a new one selling animals directly to the public. This isn’t a new idea, but it’s never been tried on this scale before. Unfortunately, they now face another bottleneck. The critical point of failure in this new market is the small town meat locker. These lockers quickly became overwhelmed and most people now cannot make an appointment to slaughter and process an animal until next spring. The uptick in demand is a good thing for these small businesses, but the ranchers still need a viable market to sell their crop and make a modest profit. The traditional cattle market will eventually come back, but it is still struggling to recover and will be for some time to come.

I want to help expand the capacity of small town meat lockers in Nebraska. Selling the most valuable thing we make in Nebraska should be safe and easy to do. There are a lot of different aspects to this problem. It is a small town economic development problem. There are workforce housing issues, and problems with expanding city services and infrastructure in small towns. It is a skilled labor problem. To my knowledge, we don’t even have a school that teaches the ancient art of butchering an animal here in the Beef State. This trade must be learned on the job at the employer’s expense. It’s a public policy problem. The federal laws concerning meat inspection have not been substantially updated since the 1960s. Our state law has been silent on this issue since the early 1970s when Nebraska did away with its state meat inspection program. It’s time to update the law.

Other rural states are currently taking action to address these problems, and help grow and protect this new direct-to-consumer beef market. There are a lot of ways we can make the retail sale of beef direct to the public much easier for a small town locker than it is now. Not only can it be easier, it can be safer and more profitable for the rancher and the locker. That is good for Nebraska.

Please contact my office with any comments, questions, or concerns. Email me at tbrewer@leg.ne.gov, mail a letter to Sen. Tom Brewer, Room #1101, P.O. Box 94604, Lincoln, NE 68509, or call us at (402) 471-2628.

Senator Tom Brewer
43rd District
6-19-2020

The people of Nebraska scored an incredible victory in federal court this week. District Court Judge William J. Martinez ruled against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and Nebraska Public Power District (NPPD) in a case concerning the “R-Project” high voltage powerline. This monstrosity was going to cut through the heart of Nebraska’s most beautiful and sensitive area in the Sandhills, but the judge’s decision in this case has put a stop to the project, hopefully for good.

The judge vacated NPPD’s permit from USFWS and sent the matter back to that federal agency. I expect an appeal is being discussed, so this is not 100 percent over. Regardless, an appeal of this decision or a new environmental impact study may take years to complete. I expect them to keep trying. If they do, we will keep fighting them.

When I first began campaigning for the legislature in 2016, hundreds of citizens from across the district raised concerns with me over this powerline. Helping stop it became a campaign pledge for me. We quickly learned the planning and decision-making on this project had happened years before I took office. Much could have been done to oppose or at least steer this project in a way that reduced citizen anger over it. My predecessor supported this project, and he took a position against the vast majority of the people that were going to be affected by it.

What I found particularly interesting in the Judge’s 116-page decision was the fact that nothing he said was a surprise. The basis for his argument will be very familiar to people who have been raising these issues for over eight years. I have raised these same issues in scores of discussions with NPPD. I have traveled to Denver and told the regional director of the USFWS these same points. I flew to Washington, D.C. and did the same with the Under Secretary of the Department of Interior. Countless citizens have sent letters and emails and attended public meetings all saying the same thing, yet we were ignored at every turn. But the judge listened.

This power line is the key ingredient in the plan to cover Nebraska with more industrial wind turbines. The judge clearly saw through this poorly camouflaged purpose, and sided with the people. He did so because the people were right on the law all along. I am so honored to represent people with this kind of grit. Their efforts are the most heroic example of citizen-led government I have ever seen. I hope this stands as an example people can take inspiration from. They remind me of one of my favorite quotes;

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent….” Calvin Coolidge.

Please contact my office with any comments, questions, or concerns. Email me at tbrewer@leg.ne.gov, mail a letter to Sen. Tom Brewer, Room #1101, P.O. Box 94604, Lincoln, NE 68509, or call us at (402) 471-2628.

Senator Tom Brewer
43rd District
6-12-2020

Since I first took office in 2017, I have introduced legislation, prepared testimony for lawsuits, and petitioned every echelon of government I could think of to stop or change the route of the NPPD’s “R-Project” high voltage powerline. NPPD claims the line is needed for “load balancing and redundancy” which I do not doubt it will provide. But the main reason for the line, one NPPD will not acknowledge, is to provide future wind facilities a way to connect to the electrical grid. This incredibly bad idea will slice through the heart of Nebraska’s most beautiful and sensitive terrain in the Sandhills and inflict damage that will not heal in our lifetimes. Also, studies from wildlife biologists clearly show it will further kill the endangered Whooping Crane. I’ve asked the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy for help, but so far the agency has not intervened.

What could possibly be worth all this destruction? The answer is money for the small percentage of property owners and companies receiving federal subsidies paid to the owners of industrial wind turbines.

After a terribly incomplete and fundamentally incompetent EIS (Environmental Impact Study), the US Fish & Wildlife Service gave the green light to this wrong-headed project about a year ago. However, construction has yet to begin because the R-Project is delayed by a citizen-led lawsuit aimed at the US Fish & Wildlife Service.

This week I learned that a little more truth had been brought to light. Bluestem Energy Solutions (the parent company of Bluestem Sandhills) plans to build an industrial wind energy facility in Cherry County. The vast majority of citizens in Cherry County oppose this project. Last Tuesday, June 9, the Cherry County Commissioners approved extensions to the original CUP (Conditional Use Permit) that they originally approved in 2019. Bluestem Sandhills now has until 2024 to begin development of the facility.

This CUP extension was approved by Commissioners Martin DeNaeyer with Tanya Storer who seconded the motion. James Ward voted against the extension.

Bluestem cited the on-going litigation over the R-Project and issues with their “interconnection” request to the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) as reasons for their CUP extension. This makes the chief purpose of the R-Project powerline plainly obvious: connect wind turbines in western Nebraska to the power grid.

If the SPP interconnection queue is full, then what is the purpose of adding more wind energy to an already saturated market/grid? Nebraska already has over 900 megawatts of surplus electricity generation, enough to power a second city of Lincoln. What is the point of tearing up a very special part of our state to add additional transmission lines that will only result in more wind turbine facilities and more interconnection requests for a power grid that is already maxed out?

Please contact my office with any comments, questions, or concerns. Email me at tbrewer@leg.ne.gov, mail a letter to Sen. Tom Brewer, Room #1101, P.O. Box 94604, Lincoln, NE 68509, or call us at (402) 471-2628.

Senator Tom Brewer
43rd District
6-5-2020

The First Amendment to our constitution protects five different God-given rights. Last Saturday night the 30th of May the people of Lincoln and many other cities across Nebraska and the nation were exercising two of those rights; “…the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” I wholeheartedly support people exercising these rights. The oath I took to support and defend those rights has no expiration date.

Four blocks west of the Capitol building sits the City/County building. There was a large police presence there, so some of the crowd turned East and headed down the four blocks of Lincoln Mall toward the Capitol. Businesses and apartments on both sides of the street lost windows. Some were looted and one was burned. Some people lost their places of business either temporarily or permanently. Tens of millions of dollars in property damage was caused, most of it to private property. Video from the Nebraska Association of County Officials building showed dozens of people inside the building on a destructive rampage that lasted nearly 45 minutes.

By the time the vandals reached the Capitol, a constitutionally protected protest had turned into a rioting mob. Windows in the Capitol building were broken out and the statute of Abraham Lincoln was defaced with graffiti. The police were badly outnumbered and couldn’t stop the violence and destruction until a lot of damage was done.

To my stunned amazement I have watched talking heads on the news and mayors of large US cities, and even governors of some states tacitly supporting this violence and rejecting help from their state and federal government. The mayor of Washington, D.C. has stated she wants the National Guard and other federal law enforcement out of the city.

No one can exercise a right at the expense of another person’s rights. You do not have a right to riot. No cause is so noble it justifies burning some innocent person’s home or business. Senior elected officials around the country should remember that justice will be served one way or another. If the people cannot count on our justice system to protect them, vigilante justice will fill the void, and that is a dangerous prospect.

I believe in the weeks to come we will learn a lot more about exactly who many of the violent rioters were. Several came from out of town to exploit the protests for their own evil aims. These criminals have interfered with the constitutional rights of legitimate protesters and those whose property they destroyed. We will learn there are groups of people claiming to be anti-fascist, while their stated goal is to topple our constitutional republic and replace it with a communist, totalitarian government. They practice violent lawlessness to achieve their objectives. They need to be found and brought before the bar of justice swiftly, because their attempts at instigating violence have endangered law enforcement, peaceful protesters, and other members of the public. Law and order must be restored immediately.

Please contact my office with any comments, questions, or concerns. Email me at tbrewer@leg.ne.gov, mail a letter to Sen. Tom Brewer, Room #1101, P.O. Box 94604, Lincoln, NE 68509, or call us at (402) 471-2628.

Senator Tom Brewer
43rd District
05-29-2020

In 1975, the “Open Meetings Act” was created by the Nebraska Legislature with LB 325. The intent of the Legislature was clear: “It is hereby declared to be the policy of this state that the formation of public policy is public business and may not be conducted in secret. Every meeting of a public body shall be open to the public in order that citizens may exercise their democratic privilege of attending and speaking at meetings of public bodies, except as otherwise provided by the Constitution of Nebraska…”

Much has changed in the last forty-five years since this law was passed. The Open Meetings Act has been amended a dozen times. These changes come through the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee. I currently serve as chairman of the Committee, so it is my job to be concerned with how the Open Meetings Act is working.

In 1975, the internet, video teleconferencing, and things like YouTube were all nothing but science fiction that you saw on The Jetsons. Now they are an everyday reality. I think government should take advantage of these advances in technology. A wise man once said the law should be stable, but it should never stand still. Last year, part of our committee priority bill, LB 212, included a bill that I introduced to give some local bodies more opportunities to use teleconferencing.

Under the law today, public bodies (like a county board) must keep minutes of the meeting. The law says that, “…each public body shall keep minutes of all meetings showing the time, place, members present and absent, and the substance of all matters discussed.”

The “substance” the law requires is sometimes a judgement call. Things discussed in the meeting may or may not be fully chronicled in the minutes. A number of my constituents often complain that the substance of all the matters discussed is often left out of the minutes of a county board meeting they regularly attend.

Were all these meetings video recorded and then archived on a publically accessible website, there would be no question what was discussed. This video record, combined with the minutes, would more fully memorialize the meeting than just the minutes alone. It could stand for itself.

It might ruffle some feathers with a few of my colleagues, but it is not just local units of government subject to the Open Meetings Act. We should consider how it should apply to the Legislature. Both committee hearings and debate on the floor should also be memorialized in a publicly-available video archive. The written transcript would still remain the official record.

Had the Chairman of the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee had the technological wonders we have today, I am confident requiring a publically accessible video archive of meetings subject to the Open Meetings Act would have been part of the original bill back in 1975. I would argue that our state adopted the principles to create this video archive transparency for government proceedings. The technology we needed to achieve this intent has finally caught up.

Please contact my office with any comments, questions, or concerns. Email me at tbrewer@leg.ne.gov, mail a letter to Sen. Tom Brewer, Room #1101, P.O. Box 94604, Lincoln, NE 68509, or call us at (402) 471-2628.

Senator Tom Brewer
43rd District
05-22-2020

Most people will agree that meat inspection is important to protect our food supply and the health and safety of consumers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports about four thousand people die each year and over five million are sickened by tainted or contaminated meat. Back in 1997, the Federal Department of Agriculture forced Hudson Foods to recall 25 million pounds of hamburger after folks came down with E. Coli infections. This is one of those functions we cannot afford to get wrong.

With all that said however, is government-run meat inspection the only way to make sure our meat is safe to consume? Are there other ways to do it that are even more effective and less costly and less burdensome than the government bureaucracy we have now? Should consideration be given to the vast differences between a small town meat locker, and an industrial packing house? Can the Nebraska Legislature address this issue in the seventeen remaining days of the 106th legislature? We shall see.

Agriculture Committee Chair Sen. Steve Halloran and I have been working on this for some time now. We have several ideas that would make selling the most valuable thing we create in “The Beef State” less of a hassle for those that sell it. And this means the process of turning cattle into beef has to be something that a small town meat locker can navigate without getting bled dry by lawyers and bureaucrats. Recent events have revealed government-created barriers to entry in this market that producers have known about for a long time. These barriers are causing serious problems for small, family-owned businesses in our rural communities. The difficulties being faced by our small town meat lockers are also closing off a potential market for cattle that our ranchers could really use right now.

This issue must be recognized as something that affects economic development in small town rural Nebraska. The USDA announced this week it would provide one billion dollars in loan guarantees to help rural businesses meet their working capital needs during the coronavirus pandemic. The town of Mullen, for example, is in a federal HUB zone (Historically Underutilized Business) which makes even more grants and low or no-interest loans available there. There are a number of government programs designed to help, and I hope they do. But ultimately, more government bureaucracy and more government programs are not the solution to this problem.

In the time we have before the session re-starts, I am bringing other senators and stakeholders together. I am dead-set on finding the solution in this legislative session. I believe we can find a market-based answer that is superior to the federal government bureaucracy we are currently forced to use. Nebraskans are counting on us to get this done.

Please contact my office with any comments, questions, or concerns. Email me at tbrewer@leg.ne.gov, mail a letter to Sen. Tom Brewer, Room #1101, P.O. Box 94604, Lincoln, NE 68509, or call us at (402) 471-2628.

Senator Tom Brewer
43rd District
05-15-2020

I am very conscious of the fact that I am a state senator in “The Beef State.” I represent the largest district in the state: about one fifth of Nebraska’s total landmass. The 43rd district is about the size of Denmark. There are nearly forty thousand people here and more than a million cattle.

Folks around the world are reading about the pandemic-related problems in our food supply chain. It is one that most outsiders do not understand. Our ranchers do not generally sell beef: they sell cattle. The big packers buy the animals, and each of them is individually slaughtered and inspected by the USDA. In some states, this inspection is instead completed through a state program.

The big processing plants have hundreds of workers in close quarters. They are already maintaining hygiene standards required for food processing facilities, but that has not prevented the transmission of COVID-19 among staff. Those plants are the biggest hotspots in our state.

As a result, there is disruption in the industry. The critical step of turning animals into meat is bottlenecked, with just a handful of packers processing almost all the retail meat supply in the United States.

There are also local meat lockers that provide exempt custom processing of animals for ranchers’ families and for the few animals that ranchers sell directly. That doesn’t require a USDA or equivalent inspection, because the animal’s owner is having his own animal slaughtered and butchered and is not selling the meat. But if the local butcher wants to put that meat in his case and sell it retail to the public, Nebraska law and federal law say that meat has to be USDA-inspected.

Let’s be clear: that custom processing exemption still requires that the meat be processed in a sanitary way. It requires careful production and business records. But for some reason, that meat has to be stamped “not for sale.” The difference comes down to that stamp. The meat inside the butcher paper is just as good and just as safe as meat inspected by the USDA. But it cannot be legally sold as meat to buyers in the quantities that most families buy meat in.

In another beef state, Wyoming, they have state meat inspection. Ironically, having more state bureaucracy allowed the governor there some greater flexibility in cutting so-called bureaucratic red tape. I am not ever in favor of building more bureaucracy. But if there is a way we can change our state law to give some flexibility to our ag producers, I think the Nebraska Legislature has a duty to act right now.

I believe that Nebraska beef is the finest in the world. Our beef is so good it sells itself. My colleagues and I have a responsibility to get big government out of the way, so Nebraska producers can focus on what they are best at: feeding the world.

Please contact my office with any comments, questions, or concerns. Email me at tbrewer@leg.ne.gov, mail a letter to Sen. Tom Brewer, Room #1101, P.O. Box 94604, Lincoln, NE 68509, or call us at (402) 471-2628.

Senator Tom Brewer
43rd District
05-08-2020

The ongoing pandemic and the government responses to it are still causing very serious damage to the economy. There are more people unemployed in the United States right now than any time in our nation’s history. The unemployment insurance office at the Nebraska Department of Labor is swamped with more claims that it has ever had to process in the history of the program.

For folks who farm and ranch, there is a different set of problems. Processor slowdowns have led to full freezers and lots of animals that cannot be slaughtered. The market is uncertain, and that is putting it mildly. One thing that remains constant is that property taxes are too high.

Last year, we had a different kind of emergency: blizzards and flooding. A lot of folks had ground that flooded last spring and has yet to make it back into productive use. One source of relief that I want to make sure folks know about is part of Senator Linehan’s LB 512 that was signed into law by Governor Ricketts at the end of May 2019. That forty-page legislative bill included a lot of moving parts. One very important piece was in the six pages added via Senator Steve Erdman’s AM 1755.

Senator Erdman’s amendment was based on his LB 482. It says that property tax values must be reduced for ground that has been destroyed in a calamity, to reflect the impact of that destruction. Under the language in Senator Erdman’s amendment, damage to land or an improvement is considered “significant” if it exceeds 20 percent of the property’s current taxable value.

When a property owner experiences a significant loss from a disaster, the owner should file a Nebraska Department of Revenue Form 425 (Report of Destroyed Real Property) with their County Assessor and County Clerk. Once the county board of equalization receives a Form 425 report, the county is required to adjust the assessed property value to reflect the loss during that assessment year.

There is a lot of debate about how to provide property tax relief. There is a lot of debate about how to pay for the services that are currently funded with those tax dollars. But one thing is crystal clear to me: a property owner whose ground cannot be productive because of some disaster should not be paying taxes as if that ground were generating income as usual. It just is not right. If a property owner suffers a loss like this, that loss has to filter through to tax valuations and it should lower his tax bill. Taxing people on ground that they cannot use due to a natural disaster is not the Nebraska way. I am grateful that Senator Erdman’s common sense amendment gives our folks some relief, even if it is only one year at a time.

You can read more about how to file a Report of Destroyed Property on the Nebraska Department of Revenue’s website at http://revenue.nebraska.gov/PAD/real-property.

My staff and I are continuing to monitor and improve our state’s response to the hardships created by the flooding crisis and the pandemic.

Please contact my office with any comments, questions, or concerns. Email me at tbrewer@leg.ne.gov, mail a letter to Sen. Tom Brewer, Room #1101, P.O. Box 94604, Lincoln, NE 68509, or call us at (402) 471-2628.