1 week Ago
There are 32 days remaining for the Legislature to do its work this session. That work has to involve crafting a state budget that will balance out a projected $289 million revenue deficit without raising taxes while doing the least damage to programs and services that will have to be cut in the process. That budget discussion could take up to 20 of the days remaining in the 90-day session, leaving little time for the consideration of priority bills.
In particular, priority bills that are sure to be filibustered like LB89, which would require transgender individuals to use restrooms and locker rooms and play on sports teams matching their gender assigned at birth, are unlikely to be brought to the floor by Speaker John Arch, largely because debate on the measures would take up far too much valuable time. Setting those controversial bills aside isn’t a bad thing. Those measures are not as pressing as the budget, which has to be passed and signed off on by Gov.
Jim Pillen by the time the Legislature adjourns in early June. People are also reading..
. Southeast Nebraska city without any electrical workers after linemen quit en masse On the Beat: A serious Bob Dylan concert at Omaha's Orpheum Theater Nebraska wide receiver dismissed from team 3 months after joining Huskers Hundreds gather at Capitol in Lincoln as part of nationwide anti-Trump demonstrations NU regents will name volleyball arena at Devaney for ex-Husker coach John Cook Norfolk man accused of UNL hate crime turns self in to police Lincoln McDonald's manager arrested after allegedly pointing gun at carload of boys Lincoln men lose $1.36 million in online trading scam, police say Nebraska man wanted in false bomb case killed in Montana shootout Nebraska defeats UCF to win the College Basketball Crown tournament Pawnee City got more than 400 applications after offering $50,000 incentive 34-year-old Lincoln man accused of sexually abusing young girl Nebraska Department of Education forced to halt use of $9M in leftover pandemic funding 102-year-old WWII veteran recently honored by Gov.
Pillen killed in crash near Scottsbluff Lincoln councilman can't change vote to reappoint pandemic-era health board members Getting there won’t be easy. Pillen’s proposed budget closes the revenue gap through service cuts and cash fund sweeps as state revenue growth has flattened and transfers out of the general fund for property tax credits, water projects and other priorities has dramatically increased, from $517 million in 2022-23 to $1.7 billion in the upcoming 2025-26 fiscal year.
Adding to the budget pinch are Trump administration cuts and elimination of federal grants, that, to choose one example, are forcing the Legislature to appropriate funds to the University of Nebraska in order to maintain research programs that depended on federal grants. Chillingly, Omaha Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh, who is on the Appropriations Committee, has raised the specter of Nebraska rapidly replicating the disastrous “Kansas experiment” of the 2010s.
There, deep income tax cuts dramatically dropped state revenues, forcing cuts that decimated state government, services and public schools. After five years, the experiment was ended, and income taxes increased. That structural issue of unsustainable tax cuts creating flattened revenue needs to be addressed along with the impact of potential cuts in services, like a proposed 45% cut in funding for local health departments.
The simplest short-term solution is Sen. Tom Brandt’s that would pause the deep income tax cuts passed by the Legislature two years ago. That would generate an additional $497 million over the next two years, covering most of the budget shortfall.
So the Legislature will spend the next month looking at cuts to agencies, programs and services along with incremental revenue increases, like eliminating sales tax exemptions, as it wrestles to fix this year’s budget crisis and will probably have to do the same in 2026 and beyond..
