This past week was a busy one at the Legislature. All the standing committees held morning and afternoon hearings, which will continue again this week. A total of 133 bills had public hearings, including several controversial issues such as voter ID, constitutional carry, abortion restrictions, criminal justice reform, tax cuts, and education issues. These issues will consume much of the remaining time in this session.

There are 97 bills scheduled for hearings this week before we return to our normal schedule – morning floor debate and afternoon hearings, on Monday, February 13. The final day for committee hearings will be March 24. At that time, the Legislature will go to all-day floor debate.

Speaker Arch will have to carefully schedule bills to ensure we have a productive session. We can expect filibusters for many of the controversial issues I mentioned above, plus the Unicameral tries to at least debate all of the Senator, Committee, and Speaker priority bills, which go to the front of the queue ahead of other legislation. The Speaker will also mix in bills that qualify for “consent calendar,” which are bills that receive a unanimous committee vote, have no opponents (or an amendment that resolves the opposition’s issues), and have no fiscal note.

Since each Senator has one personal priority, each committee has two priorities, and the Speaker has 25 priorities, the total number of priority bills grows to just well over 100 bills. It will be difficult to get through all of the priority bills this session and it will be very unlikely that nonpriority bills will be heard if they do not qualify for consent calendar. With this in mind, it will be important for bill sponsors to work with other Senators to try to amend their bills into another priority bill, including committee priority bills. This of course can get tricky because you do not want to allow someone else’s bill to sink yours. However, there are advantages to combining bills, because the other bill sponsor can bring additional supporters to your combined bill package.

I introduced 12 bills this year. Some should qualify for consent calendar, others could get merged into a committee omnibus bill, and a couple may get to the floor early and move forward without a priority designation. However, I will ultimately need to choose between two or three bills that are important to me for priority status. Since everyone is focused on getting their portion of the Cash Reserve surplus, it is critical to focus on funding bills that have a likelihood of passage. Next year will likely be too late to get a bill with a significant fiscal note approved. Over the next couple of weeks, the rest of my bills will be heard in committee. At that time, I will be in a position to finalize my plan to move the bills forward.

I have several bills with upcoming committee hearings:

• LB32, February 7 at 9:00 a.m., Banking, Commerce, and Insurance Committee. Requires insurers to supplement insurance policies or certificates relating to coverage of individuals under 65 years of age who are eligible for Medicare by reason of disability or end-stage renal disease.
• LB433, February 7 at 9:30 a.m., Health and Human Services Committee. Provides requirements for distributing funding for behavioral health regions and would restore funding to the 17-county Region II Behavioral Health District headquartered in North Platte.
• LB434, February 10 at 1:30 p.m., Health and Human Services Committee. Requires the Department of Health and Human Services to enroll long-term care hospitals as providers under the medical assistance program.
• LB281, February 15 at 1:30 p.m., Natural Resources Committee. Creates a grant program through which $30 million could be awarded to rebuild the State 4-H Camp at Halsey.
• LB31, March 6 at 1:30 p.m., Transportation and Telecommunications Committee. Requires two-person crews on trains and light engines.

I will continue to keep you informed each week regarding the upcoming bills of interest that will be heard. Please provide your input directly to me at mjacobson@leg.ne.gov or 402-471-2729, make plans to testify, or submit your thoughts on the public comment portal available at the top of every bill page at NebraskaLegislature.gov.