Greetings from Lincoln! This week I’d like to talk about our process here in the Nebraska Legislature. Often when I am visiting with people, they ask me questions about how things work in the Legislature.

First, our Sessions actually cover two years, a biennium. The first year, the long session, is sixty days. The shorter session is thirty days. These are days which the Legislative body convenes in the Legislative Chamber. There are also “recess” days in which the body does not conduct committee hearings or debate legislation. These are often later in the session and are nearly always Fridays and Mondays. These days are important because they allow time for us to be back in our districts, meeting with constituents, conducting town hall meetings, and taking care of our jobs outside the Legislature. We are not technically full-time Legislators and most of the Senators do have other careers.

The Legislative Session begins on the first Wednesday after the first Monday each year. The first day of Session is procedural. There is a swearing in of any newly elected or appointed Senators, and there are speeches from the Governor and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. On the long session years, the first year of each biennium, we also hold elections for Committee Chairs. After the Chairs are elected, each Senator is referred to standing committees so that they are meeting each day. Appropriations meets every day so senators on that committee are only on that committee. All other committees meet either one, two, or three days each week. There are also special and select committees which do not have set meeting schedules. Appointments to those committees are made by the Executive Board.

Bill introduction begins and continues for the first ten Session days. Generally there are between six hundred and eight hundred bills introduced each year. Each of these bills is referred to a committee who then schedules and holds a public hearing on each bill. After the bill hearing, the committee has three options: They can do nothing on the bill, holding it in committee; they can indefinitely postpone, or kill, the bill; or they can advance the bill to be debated by the entire Legislature.

There are three rounds of debate that each bill can go through; General File, Select File, and Final Reading. At each stage the bill can be amended and advanced or indefinitely postponed. It requires 25 votes, a majority of Senators, to advance the bill, and If the bill is advanced from General File, it goes through the enrollment and review process – the bill goes through our bill drafting office for amendments to be incorporated and to be edited. The bill is then debated on Select File where again it can be amended and advanced or indefinitely postponed. If advanced, it goes back through the enrollment and review process again. Then the bill is placed on Final Reading. On Final Reading, if a senator wishes to amend the bill, then there has to be a vote to return the bill to Select File for purposes of amending the bill. If there are no amendments, then a vote is taken on whether the bill will pass or fail.

If passed, the bill then goes to the Governor who may either sign the bill (and then it’s a law!), decline to sign the bill (which also becomes law), or veto the bill. If the Governor vetoes the bill, the Legislature can either take no action – and the bill does not become law – or they can vote on whether or not to override the Governor’s veto. An override requires a supermajority (30 votes).

Laws take effect three months after the end of the Legislative Session, or upon a date specified in the bill, unless they are passed with an emergency clause in which case they take effect immediately, or upon any effective date specified in the bill. A bill must receive 33 votes in order to pass with the emergency clause.

Greetings from Lincoln! Here in the Legislature we had a very productive week. We worked through quite a few priority bills, including mine, LB 35. After a couple hours of good discussion, the bill was advanced to Select File. I understand concerns from people that any allowance for overweight trucks could do damage to our roads, and roads funding is a big issue this year, but this bill is very important, economically, to western Nebraska, and to the rest of the state as well.

On Tuesday, March 29, we advanced several bills from Select File to Final Reading, including LB 100, the bill which would take away the ability of people to use the defense of “not guilty by reason of insanity” if they committed a crime while voluntarily intoxicated or high. We also advanced LB 389, the Angel Investment Tax Credit Act, which I think will make it easier for business start-ups to obtaining financing.

LB 20, introduced by Senator Beau McCoy of Lincoln, is another tool in the fight against meth. Several years ago we passed a law which began to regulate the sale of psuedoephedrine products (a common ingredient in meth). LB 20 goes a step further by creating a database of over-the-counter purchases of ephedrine, psuedoephedrine, and phenylpropanolamine. This measure, while possibly inconvenient as these are common ingredients in cold and allergy medications, is an attempt to stop meth producers from simply going from store to store buying more of these products. The requirement will not apply to prescriptions.

We also had good discussion on LB 305, introduced by Senator Tyson Larson of O’Neill. This bill establishes a state meat inspection program. This bill has been very controversial this year as opponents have focused on the fact that having a state meat inspection program could pave the way for the opening of horse processing plants in Nebraska. The inspection program would not just be limited to horses, however. I know this can be a difficult subject for people – I have heard from many, on both sides of the issue. Most people do not like the idea of horses being processed in the same way other animals are. Horses are majestic animals and often considered part of the family, especially where the horses are show horses. However, there is an end-of-life issue to consider, and we have also had heartbreaking instances here in our state where people could not afford to feed the horses and they were literally starving to death. The debate on this bill was thoughtful and it was advanced to Select File on Wednesday.

Greetings from Lincoln! This week I’d like to talk a bit about our priority bill process in the Legislature. There are usually between 600 and 800 bills introduced each Session, and many of those come out of committee for debate on General File, so we do not always have time to discuss all of them during the time we have here each year. Because of this we have a process of allowing each Senator to choose a priority bill each year. Each standing committee is allowed two priority bills, and the Speaker of the Legislature also chooses several bills to be Speaker Priority Bills.

These bills will be debated as long as they have been advanced from the committee to which they were referred onto General File. Unfortunately, this does not always happen. After a bill is introduced, it is referred to a committee, which then holds a public hearing on the bill. Sometime after the hearing, the committee holds an executive session and votes on whether to advance the bill to general file, to indefinitely postpone the bill, or to take no action on the bill. These options are the same even if a bill is chosen by a Senator as a priority bill. For example, my bill, LR 2CA, which I had hoped to make my priority bill this session was not advanced out of the Government, Military, and Veterans’ Affairs Committee. So to choose that bill this year would have been a “waste” of my priority bill designation as that bill would not have had debate on the floor.

For this reason I chose LB 35, a bill which is vitally important to Scottsbluff and the panhandle as it will allow Western Sugar to complete their re-haul season. I am still hopeful that we can work out the concerns that some committee members have regarding LR 2CA over the interim. I would like to see that bill pass so that the people of Nebraska have a chance to vote on whether they would like to allow counties to choose a county manager form of government. If I had chosen LR 2CA as my priority bill, I would have asked that LB 35 be made a Speaker Priority so that it could still get passed this Session.

I’d also like to briefly mention the debate we are currently having over LB 84, the roads funding bill. Funding our highway budget is vitally important. We need good infrastructure. We also need to have the expressway system funded so we can get the Federal dollars to finish this project. Especially in our district, we need to have the Heartland Expressway funds available so that the highway goes through Nebraska and not Wyoming. You also may be hearing that LB 84 would fund roads at the expense of other programs, like Medicaid or childrens’ services. I do not believe this needs to be the case. It does not need to be either/or. The Appropriations Committee has the flexibility to craft our budget in such a way as to fund what needs to be funded and make necessary cuts.