When the Apostle Paul was imprisoned in Rome and couldn’t go anywhere or do much of anything, he wrote a letter to the church at Colossae instructing Christians there to “make the most of every opportunity,” Colossians 4:5. Perhaps, being under house arrest altered Paul’s view of time and helped him see the inherent value of each new day. Time is a very precious commodity precisely because it is the measurement of our lives. How we spend our time matters.

Having acknowledged these simple truths about time, I am sad to have to report about how the budget debates in the Nebraska State Legislature last week waisted a lot time. Please don’t get me wrong on this: Debating the State budget is one of the most important things State legislators do. Debating how the State should spend your hard-earned tax dollars is a matter of grave importance to me, but debating the budget is hardly what State Senators actually did last week.

Sen. Steve Lathrop of Omaha hijacked the budget debate last week. Sen. Lathrop is the chair of the Judiciary Committee. Lathrop’s top priority this year before he retires as a State Senator is to deliver on prison reform. His bill LB 920 encapsulates his philosophy for rehabilitative prison reform. Instead of debating the budget, Sen. Lathrop filibustered the budget bills so that he could waste 50 hours talking about his ideas for prison reform in LB 920. As a result, the budget never got the proper debate it deserved.

This year’s budget is the most important budget the State of Nebraska has had to pass in the six years that I have been a State Senator. Because of the filibuster, State Senators were denied the opportunity to amend the budget and fix some of the problems with it. Instead, Senators were forced to listen to Sen. Lathrop as he introduced 21 separate amendments on LB 1011 alone.

One of my main concerns with the budget has been not to obligate the State of Nebraska for future spending. This is especially true with spending for the American Rescue and Recovery Act of 2021 (ARPA). This year and next year lawmakers will be able to spend roughly 1 billion dollars in ARPA monies, but if these monies are not spent correctly, they will obligate the State down the road. Many of the ARPA projects that were approved do just that; they will obligate the State for future spending. If half of the ARPA monies end up obligating the State of Nebraska down the road, then it would result in a 10 percent increase in our future budgets.