Capitol Fly on the Wall

Debate Drama, Budget Debate Begins and Priority Bills Advance After a long Easter weekend, Senators came back to Lincoln on Tuesday, kicking off the week with mostly “non-controversial” consent calendar priority bills while awaiting the release of the Appropriations Committee’s biennial budget proposal. A procedural note for you watchers: the

Child Welfare Investigative Committee, Debate on Governor Appointees and Budget Bills Headed to Floor Senators continue to debate priority bills and are gearing up to debate the budget, one of their major tasks for this legislative session. That along with some fireworks over a governor’s appointment to the Board of

Housing Protection Bill Advances, Student Restraint Bill Stalls and Debate Highlights With all-day floor debate well underway, we’re finally getting to the juicy parts of the legislative session. A lot happened this week as priority bills got their time on the agenda, and we finally got to see whether bills

Virtual Meetings Bill Advances, First Filibuster, Speak Priority Bills Announced On Thursday, senators completed their first week of all-day floor debate. Most of the week’s debate was taken up by a filibuster of a bill to protect student journalists’ freedom of speech. The rest of session began to take shape,

Priority Bill Selections, Tension-Filled Executive Session, and Final Hearings Wow, time flies! We’ve already reached the midpoint of the 90-day legislative session. Friday marked the last committee hearing date and the deadline for senators and committees to designate their priority bills. Those milestones along with a couple of substantive floor

Public Hearings Wrap-Up, Installment Bill Advances, and Priority Bill Selections Senators were relieved to wrap up most of their committee hearings this week (the Judiciary Committee lags behind and will finish this next week). As senators’ priority bill designations begin to roll in and committee chairs finalize their committee packages,

This past week, senators completed yet another week of all-day hearings. Committees have held public hearings on almost 700 bills in just six weeks! Soon, they will finally be able to devote the majority of time to floor debate and voting bills across the finish line. Senators did, however, hold

Countdown to End of Hearings, Controversial Election Bills, Special Session for Census Data With Friday marking Day 30, we are officially one-third of the way through the legislative session. The four-day week started out with senators debating and advancing the first batch of substantive bills, followed by more committee hearings