Nebraska
Judge rejects plea to drop charges against former History Nebraska director | Nebraska Examiner
LINCOLN — A Lancaster County judge has rejected a request by former History Nebraska Director Trevor Jones to dismiss the felony theft charge he faces.
District Judge Susan Strong, in an eight-page decision released Monday, ruled that the State of Nebraska had provided enough evidence to show that the case against Jones should proceed to trial.
Jones, through his attorney, John Ball of Lincoln, had contested a recent decision to bind his case over from county court for a trial, prompting a hearing before Strong a month ago.
The judge ruled that state prosecutors had met their burden of providing “probable cause” that a crime had been committed.
Jones, 51, faces up to 20 years in prison for felony theft by deception, a charge that was spawned by a critical state audit in 2022 — an audit first reported by the Examiner.
Jones, who resigned shortly before that audit came out, is accused of redirecting about $270,000 in funds provided by the Nebraska State Historical Society Foundation to cover financial losses caused by COVID-19.
Instead of depositing the fund with the state treasurer, as required, Jones deposited the funds into a private foundation he had helped create, to bolster its accounts.
Money never used for intended purpose
Investigators also testified that the funds were never used for their intended purpose — to cover lost revenue due to the pandemic.
Jones, according to court files, has maintained that he was directed to deposit the funds into the newly created History Nebraska Foundation by the executive committee of the History Nebraska Board of Trustees.
The former director also argued that he had full discretion on how to spend the money, a contention disputed by the donor of the funds, which were provided, at Jones’ request, for the purpose of covering financial losses caused by the closing of history museums during the pandemic.
Corey O’Brien, a chief prosecutor in the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office, has maintained that Jones either lied about his intended use of the money or failed to correct a false impression in order to get the $270,000 donated.
Enough evidence to bind over for a trial
Judge Strong, in her ruling, said that “the evidence supports the inference that defendant knowingly, intentionally, and unlawfully obtained the funds by deception.”
“This evidence is sufficient to establish probable cause to believe that the Defendant committed the crime of theft by deception,” she added.
Jones’ stint at History Nebraska director covered six years and was marked by efforts to modernize the agency’s collections, but also by employees’ complaints about unnecessary and heavy-handed supervision of their work.
He also spatted with the long-established Nebraska State Historical Society Foundation, a spat that prompted him eventually to establish a new replacement to raise funds, the History Nebraska Foundation.
A bill is pending in the Nebraska Legislature to end History Nebraska’s status as an independent state agency and put it under the governor’s director. Debate on Legislative Bill 1169 has not yet been scheduled.
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Nebraska
Nebraska’s governor doesn’t carry a state-issued phone. Critics call it an abuse of state disclosure laws. – Flatwater Free Press
For more than two years, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen did not make or take a single call on his cellphone while on the clock as the state’s chief executive — at least none that there is any record of, according to his office’s top attorney.
After the Flatwater Free Press filed a public records request for call logs from Pillen’s cellphone dating back to September 2023, the governor’s general counsel said no such records exist.
“Governor Pillen does not have a state-issued mobile phone,” the lawyer, Michael J. Donley, said in an email earlier this month — more than four months after Flatwater filed the request.
The revelation marks Pillen’s latest step to shield his communications from public view. He broke with more than 30 years of gubernatorial practice by not releasing a public schedule in March 2023, just two months into his first term. And in August of that year, his office refused to release four of his emails in response to a public records request, citing “executive privilege” — a justification that does not exist in Nebraska’s public records laws.
“I don’t email, I don’t text,” the first-term Republican governor said in response to criticism from Democratic lawmakers over his refusal to release the emails. “Texting when it’s for anything other than logistics, I don’t do.”
His decision not to carry a state-owned cellphone makes him the first governor in at least 20 years not to do so — and, advocates say, amounts to an attempt to circumvent state law.
“It’s absurd to think that simply moving his business to a private cellphone means that none of those records are available to the public,” said Gavin Geis, the director of Common Cause Nebraska, a transparency-in-government watchdog group. “That’s just an abuse of the whole public records process.”
Flatwater sought the records after the online news outlet the Nebraska Examiner reported in January that Pillen had steered the Nebraska Department of Economic Development to award a $2.5 million no-bid emergency contract to a lobbyist who had joined Pillen on state trips to South Korea and Japan.
Flatwater also requested emails between Pillen’s chief of staff, Dave Lopez, and former state economic development officials, including one who told the Examiner that Lopez had provided input on the state’s contract with Julie Bushell, the lobbyist. That portion of Flatwater’s request, which covered an 11-day period last July, also yielded no records, according to the Governor’s Office.
Under Nebraska law, “all records and documents, regardless of physical form, of or belonging to this state” or local governments are a matter of public record — meaning Nebraskans have the right to examine them, with exceptions allowed for investigative police records, personal information, trade secrets and a host of other sensitive documents. The law does not explicitly say whether records from public officials’ personal devices or private email accounts are subject to the law, but prior attorneys general have held for decades that they are.
Pillen’s office repeatedly claimed that Flatwater’s request sought “a record which does not exist” but declined to elaborate. Laura Strimple, a spokeswoman for the governor, said Pillen’s office “is transparent, follows the law, and has diligently responded to the countless public records requests we receive, including several from your outlet.”
“If you choose to publish this non-story, your outlet will have demonstrated once again that it is more interested in political hits and sensationalism than news that matters to hardworking Nebraskans,” Strimple said in an email.
She did not respond to follow-up questions about whether the governor has ever used his phone for state business and whether his office would consider those calls a matter of public record.
Full statement from Gov. Pillen’s spokesperson
After Pillen’s general counsel said records of the governor’s cellphone calls don’t exist, Flatwater sought to understand whether Pillen’s office believes that records of public business stored on private devices are not a matter of public record, an interpretation breaking with decades of precedence. The attorney, Michael J. Donley, said his initial claim “was more limited than how (Flatwater) characterized it,” but did not respond to follow-up questions seeking clarification.
In response to more emails seeking clarity, Pillen’s spokeswoman, Laura Strimple, said:
“If you want a response beyond what we have already told you, then you’ll print in full that:
- Governor Pillen’s administration is transparent, follows the law, and has diligently responded to the countless public records requests we receive, including several from your outlet.
- As we have repeatedly informed you, your public records request asked for a record which does not exist. We have fulfilled the parameters of your request with that answer.
- If you choose to publish this non-story, your outlet will have demonstrated once again that it is more interested in political hits and sensationalism than news that matters to hardworking Nebraskans.”
State law also requires Pillen’s office to maintain a file of all letters it sends denying records requests, and for that file to be made available to any person on request. Donley did not respond to multiple Flatwater requests to review the file, in conflict with the law.
Reporters often use the state’s public records law to find out who government officials are communicating with via phone, email and text.
In 2013, the Omaha World-Herald used call logs obtained under the law to reveal Nebraska’s then-lieutenant governor, Rick Sheehy, had made 2,300 phone calls on his state-issued phone to four women other than his wife, one of whom told the paper she had a four-year affair with Sheehy. He resigned a day after The World-Herald contacted him about its findings.
Such probes have historically not been limited to communications stored on state-owned devices.
In 1997, then-Attorney General Don Stenberg issued an opinion declaring that “public records need not be in the physical possession of an agency to be subject to disclosure under state records acts.”
Lawyers in then-Attorney General Jon Bruning’s office cited Stenberg’s opinion in 2012 when the office determined that members of the Gage County Board of Supervisors were obliged to turn over emails from their private accounts in response to a request from the Beatrice Daily Sun, which sought emails between the board and the county’s medical director, who had resigned.
In 2015, lawyers in then-Attorney General Doug Peterson’s office directed Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert, a Republican, to turn over texts she had sent on her personal phone to City Council members. “It seems to us that the records at issue here are those pertaining solely to the City’s business,” Peterson’s office wrote. “There is no right of privacy for matters that are not private.”
The Nebraska Association of County Officials, a nonprofit that serves and lobbies for all 93 of the state’s counties, tells its members the same. A presentation from the organization’s 2025 annual conference warned that text messages dealing with the public’s business “will be considered a public record.”
A spokeswoman for Mike Hilgers, Nebraska’s current attorney general, declined to say how he advises state agencies on public records stored on private devices. Neither Bruning nor Peterson, both Republicans, returned phone calls seeking comment.
Max Kautsch, a Kansas-based First Amendment rights and open government attorney who also practices law in Nebraska, said Pillen “is gambling that there will be no political consequence from narrowly construing the law.”
“In Nebraska, there is a collective hunch that public officials cannot conduct the public’s business on private devices,” he said. “But the governor wants to push back on what the consensus is on the law. The Legislature should make his obligation clear.”
Courts and attorneys general in other states have largely agreed. A 2014 study from Oklahoma State University found that courts and attorneys general in 18 states had addressed access to public records on private devices. In 15 of those states, authorities held that such records were open to public inspection.
That interpretation isn’t universal. Kentucky’s Supreme Court recently zagged, ruling 4-2 in April that public officials don’t have to disclose records of government business conducted on their private phones.
David Cuillier, director of the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida, called the Kentucky case “an outlier,” not the start of a trend. “At least I hope not — because it’s ludicrous to say that government employees and officials can do government business secretly just by using their own laptop or cellphone or Gmail or Yahoo account,” he said. “That defeats the whole purpose of public records laws.”
In Nebraska, Pillen’s decision to eschew a state-issued phone marks a break with at least two decades of precedent.
Former Republican Govs. Pete Ricketts, who preceded Pillen, and Dave Heineman, who served from 2005 to 2015, confirmed to Flatwater that they had state-owned mobile phones that they used for state business. Heineman, who served as lieutenant governor under Gov. Mike Johanns, said he believed Johanns had one, too.
Johanns, who was governor from 1999 until 2005, did not return emails seeking confirmation. Nor did former Gov. Kay Orr, who served one term as governor starting in 1987.
Former Gov. Ben Nelson said he may have been Nebraska’s first governor to carry a mobile phone after his election in 1990. The technology was in its infancy, and mobile phones were so big that a state trooper carried it for him, he recalled.
The Democrat couldn’t remember ever receiving a public records request for his call logs, he said. He took more heat from reporters over his public appearance schedule — something for which Pillen was criticized in 2023 for not making available to the press, breaking with more than three decades of practice.
Nelson faced a different kind of criticism, he said. He recalled a reporter asking about the frequent weekend hunting trips detailed on his calendar.
“The people of Nebraska — they’re telling me they want less government, so I’ve been trying to give it to them,” Nelson recalled saying.
The room filled with laughter, and the reporter who had asked about the trips looked sheepish, Nelson said.
“But the point is,” he said, “she knew my whereabouts.”
Nebraska
Nebraska Dept. of Agriculture proposes ban on food and beverages containing any amount of THC
LINCOLN, Neb. — A public hearing Thursday drew strong opposition to proposed rules that would label food adulterated and illegal if it contains any amount of THC and its derivatives, potentially decimating Nebraska’s hemp and CBD industry.
The regulations would affect products like gummies, beverages and oral tinctures. Over 490 people wrote in opposition to the new regulations, while only three supported them.
The rule changes stem from an executive order issued by Gov. Jim Pillen in January requiring state agencies to review laws regarding the use of synthetic THC in food and beverages. The order was made to align with federal law coming in November 2026, which bans synthetic THC products and limits total THC concentrations in hemp products to not exceed 0.4 milligrams per container.
The proposed Nebraska rule goes beyond that federal standard.
“I would say it’d be similar other than it does say no THC. It is zero THC,” said Andrew Bish, chief operating officer of Bish Enterprises. “It’s not we are deferring to the federal government standard and aligning with the federal government standard. It is, in fact, a different standard.”
Fifteen speakers testified during the hearing, with many calling for the Department of Agriculture to regulate the industry rather than enforce outright bans.
“I respectfully urge the department to pursue a balanced science-based approach that protects public safety, targets specific problems, strengths and standards where necessary and holds bad actors accountable without unnecessarily eliminating access to products that may Nebraskans find valuable and beneficial,” said Dr. Andrea Holmes, a professor of chemistry at Doane University.
Many who testified were shop owners who said the regulations would result in major business losses and reduced state revenue.
“In 2025, we pay over $1 million in sales tax. We expect to be over $1.3 million in 2026,” one speaker from The Cannabis Factory said. “We’re not opposed to regulation, or oversight, or even additional taxation.”
The Department of Agriculture will review comments and decide if any changes need to be made. If not, the regulations go to the attorney general and the governor for approval.
The regulations include a carve out for the medical cannabis acts, meaning people with medical cannabis cards could get prescriptions that would not be affected by this proposed regulation change.
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Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen said Thursday that he has asked President Donald Trump to issue a major disaster declaration for damage caused by storms that hit the state May 15-18.
The storms spawned tornadoes and flash flooding across Buffalo, Fillmore, Gage, Howard, Jefferson, Nemaha, Thayer and Thurston counties. There were numerous downed power poles and lines as well as extensive damage to schools, building and roadways. Damage just to public infrastructure is estimated at nearly $5 million.
In addition to the disaster declaration request, Pillen said he also has requested access to the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, which provides funding to governments to allow them to rebuild in ways that will reduce or mitigate future disaster losses. Approval would allow the state to apply for such grants.
Thursday’s disaster declaration request is the second in two months. Back in May, Pillen requested one for historic wildfires in March that impacted Arthur, Garden, Grant, Lincoln and Morill counties. At the time of the request, it was estimated there was at least $9.7 million in damage from the fires, which were the worst in Nebraska’s history.
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