Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
Sorted by date Results 51 - 75 of 187
Whenever it comes to delivering on property tax relief for the good, hardworking citizens of Nebraska, governmental entities with tax asking authority always seem to find ways to shut it down, and that is exactly what is happening in Nebraska again this year. Today I would like to inform you about how the Nebraska Department of Education is undermining the Legislature's efforts to provide property owners with some much-needed property tax relief this year. Earlier his year Sen. Tom Briese of...
Are Nebraska's elections fair, accurate, and transparent? To answer this question, concerned citizens must consider how Nebraska counts its ballots in statewide elections. Nebraska uses ES&S vote counting machines to count its ballots during statewide elections. ES&S stands for a company called Elections Systems & Software. Understanding how these ES&S vote counting machines work is critical for answering these crucial questions about the integrity of our elections. The use and accuracy of vote...
Last week Nebraska State Senators learned that the Federal Bureau of Land Management will soon begin enacting the Buffalo Resource Management Plan in Wyoming's Powder River Basin. This means that a moratorium is being placed on the mining of coal in that region because the lands are federally owned. In their attempt to go green, the Biden Administration is refusing to renew lease agreements in the Powder River Basin, which supplies roughly 40 percent of the nation's demand for coal. This...
High School shop classes are beginning to make a comeback. For those of us over the age of 50 shop classes were considered a high school staple, but many high schools have since retired these classes and switched to technology classes. According to the National Center of Education Statistics, this trend of students taking fewer credits in shop classes started in the 1990s. The result of students taking fewer shop classes over the years is that demand has now gone up for people working in trade...
Nebraska’s tax system is broken and cannot be fixed. Whether it is the Nebraska State income tax, the State sales tax, the property tax, or the inheritance tax, each of these taxes is beyond repair. The State individual income tax is too complex for the average citizen to understand. In order to show this, consider this instruction from the Nebraska Department of Revenue’s own website: “Taxpayers whose federal adjusted gross income is larger than the threshold amount determined under secti...
Last week Dannette Smith announced her resignation as director of Nebraska’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) effective August 4, 2023. I was not surprised by the announcement. I am not suggesting that Smith did a poor job as director. Dannette Smith did about as well as any director could have done given the set of circumstances she inherited and the state of affairs of DHHS that she was dealt when she first took over the Department four years ago. DHHS is Nebraska’s largest sta...
Nebraskans are still fuming about their new property valuation notices and I don't blame them one bit. The deadline for filing an appeal is June 30, and this year we could see the highest number of property valuation protests ever filed in the history of our State. High property taxes are the number one reason why people leave our State. Nebraska's property tax system is a failed experiment in taxation. In 1966 the citizens of Nebraska voted to amend the Nebraska State Constitution, creating...
On June 22, 2023 the Regents of the University of Nebraska will vote to approve Rodney Bennett as the new chancellor of Nebraska's flagship university. Although the Regents are accepting feedback from the public, the procedure is just a formality. The vote will essentially be a rubber-stamp, ceremonial vote because the decision to hire Bennett has already been made. If you were to ask me what the three highest priorities of the new chancellor should be, I would answer as follows: First, the...
Do you like the new valuation notice you received on your home or property? Most Nebraskans I know from Omaha to Scottsbluff are outraged over their new valuation notice, and my phone has been ringing off the hook ever since these notices went out over a week ago. The only ones who stand to benefit from these notices are those who plan to sell and move to another state with a better tax system than ours. No matter where you look across Nebraska, property values went way up this year. They even...
Last Thursday was the final day of the Unicameral Legislature's 2023 Legislative Session. The final days of the session were hardly void of drama, overrides, and surprises. For example, State Senators voted to override the Governor's veto to fund the State Auditor's staff, voted to reconsider the appointment of the Nebraska Public Employees Retirement Systems director, and voted not to confirm a commissioner to the State Racing and Gaming Commission. In addition, three important bills were...
This week we celebrate Memorial Day. Memorial Day is a day set aside as a national holiday for honoring those military personnel who died while serving our country in the U.S. Armed Forces. Memorial Day differs from Veterans Day and Armed Forces Day in that it is a day for honoring our fallen heroes from past wars whereas Veterans Day honors all those who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces and Armed Forces Day honors those who are currently serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. How did the...
May is budget month for the State of Nebraska in the Unicameral Legislature. The main budget for the year will add up to $10.7 billion. The Legislature has been busy debating four primary budget bills, so today I would like to tell you about a few items in the budget that will benefit Western Nebraska. Fort Robinson is first on the list. Fort Robinson stands to receive $20 million dollars to be used for improvements to the fort. $2 million has been designated to memorialize the all-Black...
Last week we began debating budget bills in the Nebraska State Legislature. One of those bills, LB 818, appropriates $574 million for construction of the Perkins County Canal Project. That canal would deliver 1000 cubic feet of water per second (cfs) to Nebraska. Funding for the Perkins County Canal became the subject of a three-hour floor debate after Omaha Sen. John Cavanaugh introduced an amendment to reduce the funding to $449 million. According to Sen. Cavanaugh Nebraska would be better...
This year's legislative session has been unlike any other. Because a small group of State Senators decided to filibuster every bill, it has affected the way we do business this year at the State Capitol in Lincoln. In the Army soldiers are taught to improvise in order to solve difficult problems when under fire by the enemy. In the State Legislature, legislators sometimes have to use rules they are not ordinarily accustomed to using in order to get the business of the State done, and that is pre...
Last week the Nebraska State Legislature began debate on LB 562, which is the priority bill of Sen. Myron Dorn of Adams, NE. LB 562 is the Adopt the E-15 Access Standard Act. The bill requires gasoline filling stations to offer E-15 gasoline at half of their pumps within five years and offers grants to filling stations to upgrade their pumps to accommodate E-15 gasoline. E-15 gasoline is a mixture of gasoline and ethanol where the percentage of ethanol in the blend never exceeds 15 percent. The...
Last week the Nebraska State Legislature advanced LB 626, which is commonly known as the Nebraska Heartbeat Act. This bill would limit most abortions to the sixth week of pregnancy when heartbeats are normally detected within developing babies. The primary intention of the bill is to put strict limitations on abortions which are performed for the convenience of the mother, rather than for medical reasons. On January 6, 2023 Medical News Today, published an article entitled, "When does a fetus...
Property tax relief has always been my number one priority in the State Legislature. Last Friday the State Legislature began debate on the Revenue Committee's primary property tax relief bill for 2023. Although LB 243 was introduced by Sen. Tom Briese of Albion, the Revenue Committee adopted his bill as a committee priority bill and amended several other bills into it, including one of my bills. So, today I would like to tell you about what the Legislature is currently doing to provide all...
Life in the Unicameral Legislature is always full of surprises. Last week I saw things I thought I would never see. The structure of the Unicameral Legislature is such that it allows for a single State Senator or a minority group of State Senators to control how the debate on a bill proceeds on the floor. So, today I would like to tell you about what has been happening at the Capitol in Lincoln and how I intend to fix it. Sen. Machalea Cavanaugh of Omaha has effectively derailed the first half...
One of the bills that I co-signed this year is LB 712. LB 712 was introduced by Sen. Brian Hardin of Gering. This bill is important because it would help with the needs of the Panhandle once they add an additional 3,000 people to the workforce for a new ballistic missile upgrading project. Seldom does the Panhandle ever get to be the recipient of legislation that would significantly benefit the economy of the Panhandle and this bill would do just that. LB 712 appropriates $26 million to the Grou...
Last week we started floor debates in the Nebraska State Legislature, and the first thing on the agenda was to confirm the governor's appointments. In the past, this process would usually take three to four hours of floor debate to complete. The appointments would be confirmed and the Legislature would then move on to other business, such as debating bills. That has not been the case this year. A few Democrats have decided to hold up the confirmation process. Consequently, we spent the first...
State agencies are supposed to work for the State of Nebraska. State Senators represent the people of Nebraska because they are elected by the people of Nebraska. So, it is inappropriate for the director of any state agency to tell the Legislature what to do. Instead, it is the job of the Legislature to make the laws, and it is the job of each state agency to carry out those laws. That is, unless you work for the Game and Parks Commission. Protocol for the director of any state agency is to...
By now many of you have received a postcard or two in the mail indicting me for trying to repeal term limits. Since these postcards went out in the mail, I have received numerous phone calls and emails about term limits. I deeply appreciate the phone calls and the emails I have received. I have been especially blessed by constituents who have sought me out to find out the truth about what this is all about, so today I would like to set the record straight about what the Legislature is trying to...
It's hearing season at the State Capitol! Every bill that gets introduced in the Unicameral Legislature gets a public hearing. Hearings for certain committees will last through the month of March. Last week the Legislature held hearings on four of my bills, so today I would like to tell you about the hearings on those bills. The first of my bills to have a public hearing was LB 28, a bill designed to save taxpayers from paying too much in property taxes whenever the Tax Equalization and Review...
This year I was elected chair of the Rules Committee. At the beginning of each biennial session of the Nebraska Legislature new rule changes get proposed by State Senators and so it becomes the job of the Rules Committee to sift through their proposed rule changes and decide which ones to advance up to the floor of Legislature for a full debate. This year we received an extraordinary number of proposed rule changes. We received a total of 58 proposed rule changes this year. By way of...
The 108th Legislature has begun. The legislative session began on January 4 and will extend through the month of May. This will be the longer 90-day session. The reason for the longer session has to do with passing the Statewide budget. On the first day of the session in odd numbered years we always elect a speaker and the chairmen of the standing committees. Out of the 14 committee chairs elected there were only three positions that had more than one candidate. 11 of the 14 committee...
