“The Nebraska Legislature has been broken,” says the Journal Star editorial on May 19. Sure looks like it.
The 2023 session has been uncivil and nearly uncivilized. It has been raucous and nasty and confrontational. The conflict over social issues has resulted in passage of several bills that are destined to wind up in court or as subjects of initiatives or referenda. And it’s resulted in neglect of the basic legislating that deals with government services and how to pay for them: schools, roads, water and more.
Often, when something goes this wrong, it is the system that needs to be fixed. It is the institution that needs reforming. That’s not true here.
Nebraska’s unique one-house, nonpartisan legislature has served the state well for almost 90 years. It still does. As someone who has studied and written about the Unicameral, I feel confident that this year’s legislative circus would have been even worse if we had a traditional legislature where overt party discipline and conference committees and buck passing are built in.
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In our case, it’s not the institution that needs fixing. It’s the senators living in it. Were more of them to respect and follow the institution’s norms and rules and procedures as has been done for decades, the ill-will and confrontations would have been far more manageable and far less repulsive to regular Nebraskans.
Many, if not most, of the senators already realize this. In fact, Sen. Danielle Conrad said as much on the legislative floor last week. The only way to stop the divisiveness and toxicity, she said, “… is to stop it.”
The one institutional factor that does need fixing is term limits, which have had a devastating effect on institutional memory and collegiality and are gradually replacing statesmanship with raw political fervor. Extending term limits to at least three terms or getting rid of them altogether would be a huge institutional improvement.
But it’s the blind political and ideological fervor that has been most destructive in this year’s legislature. Giving in to that fervor is an individual decision, one that senators can decide to temper before next year’s session. If they want to.
Encourage them to do so. Demand – civilly and politely – that they do so. They need to know their constituents want them to make the best use of the unique institution they’ve been elected to. Next year just has to be better than this year.
Charlyne Berens, a retired University of Nebraska professor, is author of two books about the Unicameral.