Breaking down the cost of Nebraska’s ‘most expensive’ special session

LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) – Nebraska’s current special session is shaping up to be the costliest one in the state legislature’s history.

According to Clerk of the Legislature Brandon Metzler, it has cost just under $127,000 since it began on July 25.

“It’s, on a daily basis, the most expensive special session,” Brandon Metzler, Clerk of the Legislature, said. “It’s certainly somewhere in that ten to fifteen thousand dollars a day.”

Much of how the money has been spent can be broken down into three main categories:

• Per diem for senators, which has totaled over $86,000 so far.
• Salaries for employees such as pages and sergeants working the session specifically- that has been just under $23,000.
• And the cost of printing each paper, for each bill and it’s amendments, for each senator. So far, more than $14,000 has been spent on that alone.

“We’re talking about 100, 150 pages,” Metzler said. “And every time it’s a rewrite, that’s another printing of the same 150 pages. So they add up very quickly.”

LB4, the Nebraska bill introduced at the beginning of the session to set aside tax-payer money to cover the session’s expenses, planned for a session lasting 10 days. Monday was the tenth day, and the end date is still unknown.

“You have an ongoing special session with undetermined costs at this point,” Metzler said. “And yet we have a bill with a hard cap on what that costs.”

He said that there are still enough funds to cover the session for around another week. Going longer than that could mean having to bring LB4 back onto the floor, where it can be amended to allocate more funds to cover the session’s cost.

Click here to subscribe to our 10/11 NOW daily digest and breaking news alerts delivered straight to your email inbox.

Copyright 2024 KOLN. All rights reserved.