Capitol Fly on the Wall

Friends, this will be my last post of the year. As someone who has been a Capitol insider for years now, this session has been far and away the most unprecedented, difficult, and contentious one I’ve ever experienced — and I know many of you feel the same way. As

Surprise, we’re done! On Tuesday, Speaker Arch announced that Thursday would be the final legislative day of the session, a week ahead of what would have been the 90th day. The announcement came after Arch received a guarantee from Governor Pillen that he would not wait to issue any additional

Much to catch up on this week- we’ll get right into it: Voter ID (LB 514) The disagreement between Govt. Committee Chair Brewer and original bill sponsor Sen. Slama over how the voter ID ballot initiative should be implemented continued last week, after Slama had pulled her bill in retaliation

We’re in the home stretch of the 2023 Legislative Session, with roughly two calendar weeks of session time remaining. Before the body took up the final round of debate on controversial social issues in LB 574, they gave final approval to the state budget and advanced the Revenue Committee’s priority

Budget and Tax Measures Debated, Advanced Last week was all about the numbers, as senators advanced the state’s biennial budget and “The Package”, a set of Governor-backed proposals intended to shore up public school funding and lower taxes. The budget bills (LBs 818, 814, and 813) saw many attempts to

We’ve finally made it to the turning point in every legislative session: budget time! The proposed budget for fiscal years 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 can be viewed here. The provisions of the budget on the floor are contained in LBs 814, 818, and 813. LB 814 is the “mainline” budget bill

Friends, I retract any former statements about any other weeks being the most eventful yet. This one will go down in the legislative history books, with the shocking last-minute upset that led to the death of LB 626, the 6-week abortion ban. But before that debate began, a few other

The legislature officially passed its first bill of the session this week when senators sent LB 376, a package of updates to Nebraska’s liquor laws, to the Governor’s desk for signing. Senator M. Cavanaugh continued her filibuster, but with a softer approach, allowing a handful of other “technical cleanup” bills