Week of March 17, 2025
Gig Worker Bill Overcomes Filibuster, Becomes Law
LB 229, Sen. Hallstrom’s bill to classify certain gig workers like Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash drivers as independent contractors under employment law, passed Final Reading and has been signed into law by the Governor. With exactly the 33 votes needed, the measure successfully overcame the first major filibuster challenge of the session.
Both Winner-Take-All Proposals Advanced
On Monday, the Government Committee advanced both Winner-Take-All proposals. All eyes were on the suspected swing vote on the committee, Sen. Wordekemper, who has indicated that he voted them both out on the principle that he believes in honoring our legislative process by allowing for the measures to see full and fair debate. He has hinted both publicly and to internal sources that he is likely a no at least on Lippincott’s LB 3, the more straightforward of the two bills. There’s some speculation as to whether he or other moderate-conservatives might find Sen. Dorn’s LR24CA more palatable in that it submits the question to a vote of the people.
Dueling Time Change Proposals Both Advance
Senators again delayed settling the “Time War” between competing measures to end the biannual changing of clocks in Nebraska, advancing both LB 34 from Sen. Hunt to establish permanent daylight saving time and LB 302 from Sen. Murman to move us to permanent standard time. Given that multiple members have voted twice for both measures to allow them to move forward but will likely go one way or another on the Final Reading vote, it’s hard to say exactly how that could shake out. LB 34 had a vote of 27-18 with 4 not voting; and LB 302 had a vote of 27-15 with 7 not voting. So some of those not voting thus far could be waiting to show their hand on the final vote, but it appears that daylight saving time may have a slight advantage from those numbers. Whichever measure is signed by the Governor last would be the one that becomes law. Both measures, however, have conditions that would need to be met prior to taking effect, involving an act of Congress or passage of similar bills in our neighboring states or both.
Committee IPP of ADC Bill (LB 102) Sparks Protest
If you were tuned in at all this week, you may have caught that a series of events caused Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh to begin taking extra time on bills up for debate to air some grievances. This was in response to the Health and Human Services Committee’s move to Indefinitely Postpone (“IPP”) the bill she had planned to make her personal priority bill, Sen. Spivey’s LB 102. The bill would have provided an annual update to the Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) program’s cost of living adjustment and bump up eligibility and benefit levels to better reflect current costs of living and help struggling families make ends meet.
A couple of weeks prior, Spivey had filed a “pull motion” on the bill, a little-used but legitimate move provided for in the legislative rules which allows for a senator to attempt to force a bill out of its committee of jurisdiction by a majority vote of the body if the committee has failed to act on the bill. In recent legislatures we’ve only seen a handful of these, but there are cases in which it’s a strategic and appropriate move for a bill that might have 25 votes in the larger body but which is being blocked by the particular committee it went to. With this legislature’s committees leaning increasingly toward a partisan advantage on the right, this was a way for Sen. Spivey to attempt to get LB 102 to the floor for debate if she thought it lacked the votes to get out of committee.
Last week, then, the committee in their private executive session decided by a majority vote to move to Indefinitely Postpone the bill rather than to let it sit there unadvanced. This means they took a step to proactively “kill” the bill before Spivey could attempt to get the votes to pull it to the floor by a vote of the body, and is by legislative norms very much not part of normal practice. Typically in this scenario, if the bill didn’t have the votes, it would stall in committee, but the introducer could theoretically continue to work on it and attempt to win it more votes throughout the biennium.
The word around the rotunda was that the committee wanted to “teach her a lesson”, which is unprecedented for my time around here and seen by insiders as rather vindictive. While they may have disagreed with her use of the pull motion, it’s perfectly permissible by legislative rules. This kind of strong-arming is yet another in a series of displays of a willingness to bend norms and precedent in order to make a show of the power held by the majority over the minority. In my time at the Capitol, this is the first pull motion I’ve seen utilized by a Democrat.
It doesn’t seem that Sen. Cavanaugh will continue indefinitely protesting this perceived affront to herself and Sen. Spivey, but it does point to larger tensions bubbling just under the surface that could come to a head if more shenanigans of this kind unfold.
Priorities Announced, One Derailed by Trump Administration
All senators and committees have selected their priority bills for the session. You can view a full list here.
LB 299 (Ibach), Sen. Juarez’ priority bill, was derailed by threats of funding cuts from the Trump administration. The bill would have allowed work-authorized immigrants, primarily “Dreamers”, to be eligible for unemployment insurance benefits and to participate in public employers’ retirement plans. A federal Dept. of Labor official reached out to Governor Pillen and the Department of Labor last week to advise them that the bill’s passage would jeopardize some $400 million in federal tax credits for the state because it would violate Trump’s Feb. 19 Executive Order. That order “generally prohibits illegal aliens from obtaining most taxpayer-funded benefits.” After learning of the potential fallout, original bill sponsor Sen. Ibach removed her name from the bill, so it has now become Sen. Juarez’s bill. She has said she can’t see a way to proceed with it this year; but since it was already designated as her priority and can’t be undone, I’m told the plan is for her to gut the bill and replace its contents with that of another bill via amendment.
What’s Next
Sen. Hansen has asked Speaker Arch to pass over LR25CA on Monday’s agenda, so the first bill up for debate will be LB376. Hansen’s proposal is the constitutional amendment to create an independent legislative compensation commission to determine senators’ pay. Since this news came over the weekend, we are unsure as to the reason, but one possibility is that Hansen determined the measure didn’t have the votes and would have died on the floor if debate proceeded. When it was taken up last week, several members spoke in opposition around a general theme of not finding it appropriate for legislators to put forth to a vote of the people a measure that would raise their salaries now, at a time when inflation and the cost of living is straining so many, and/or while senators are either failing to deliver effective economic relief for working Nebraska families or actively making their lives more difficult, with some variance in the particulars of those viewpoints.
Also on Monday, we will learn which bills Speaker Arch has selected as Speaker Priorities. As Speaker, he gets the privilege of selecting 25 bills as priorities, which senators could request through the end of last week. Generally, the Speaker gives preference to bills that are already on General File and which have minimal to no opposition or potential to cause major controversy. It’s a way for a senator to give a major boost to a bill’s chances of making it through debate to passage this year if it’s a bill that might not have won their personal priority designation, but which still could be important and earn the support of a majority of the body.
Word is still that Sen. Raybould’s priority bill LB 258, which places a number of caps and restrictions on the voter-approved minimum wage law, could be taken up for debate any day now. Friday is a recess day, and we’re down to the final two weeks of public hearings, which will conclude on Friday, March 28.
