Nebraska
Partisan fight continues over committee assignments in Nebraska Legislature • Nebraska Examiner
LINCOLN — The fate of some conservative priorities, such as changing how Nebraska allocates its votes for president or adding a “women’s bill of rights” to state law, could depend on whether Republicans succeed this week in making Democrats a minority on every legislative committee but one.
The leading point of contention Wednesday revolved around the makeup of the eight-member Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee. By the end of the first day of the session, Government was set to have five Democrats and three Republicans, including its chair.
The group deciding is the Legislature’s 13-member Committee on Committees, which includes a chair and four representatives each from three legislative “caucuses,” which roughly mirror the state’s three congressional districts to reflect statewide representation.
“Me personally, and I’m one vote, I’m not representing any caucus in this,” State Sen. Christy Armendariz of Omaha, the Committee on Committees chair, said. “I think that the committee assignments should be representative of the makeup of the entire state.”
‘They’ve chosen their party’
While the Legislature is officially nonpartisan, Armendariz, a first-time member of the committee, said all 13 members know what is going on: a fight over partisan balance, which impacts all Nebraskans.
The Committee on Committees consists of eight Republicans, four Democrats and one nonpartisan independent. There are 33 Republicans in the Legislature, 15 Democrats and one nonpartisan progressive.
“They’ve chosen their party,” Armendariz said of Nebraska voters. “I don’t think it’s fair to exclude anybody in the state from representation on the committee.”
First day of 2025 Nebraska Legislature underscores conservative stronghold
The Committee on Committees met after Republicans in the Legislature swept leadership positions for all but one committee. They left the Urban Affairs Committee in the hands of State Sen. Terrell McKinney of Omaha, a Democrat who chaired the committee the past two years.
Under a set of unofficial, tentative placements discussed Wednesday evening, Republicans would maintain membership leads on all but the Government Committee and Urban Affairs Committee, which would still become more conservative.
Conservatives would grow their numbers on the previously deadlocked Judiciary Committee as well as on the Business and Labor, Health and Human Services and Natural Resources Committees.
All other daily committees will be led by Republicans, as will the Rules Committee and Executive Board.
‘This was a fantasy’
Wednesday’s Committee on Committees meeting began with representatives from the 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts having already penciled in where the members of their caucuses should be placed on each of the daily committees. Those caucus representatives filled in names of where senators from the 2nd Congressional District might fall, which they defended as merely “placeholders.”
The 2nd District Caucus, which is led by three Democrats and one independent, immediately rejected that suggestion and said the other caucuses had overstepped.
State Sen. Megan Hunt of Omaha, the progressive independent who has served on the Committee on Committees before, described the behavior as unprecedented.
“This was a fantasy for y’all, but that’s not the reality that we were ever going to be working in,” she said.
State Sen. Mike Jacobson of North Platte responded: “We understand that. I think we just, truly, we’re just trying to figure out what we can live with, in terms of how we want to end up.”
Hunt told Republicans on the committee to ask themselves, “Have you won enough?” The question came after the 2nd District Caucus agreed to swap freshman Omaha State Sens. Dunixi Guereca, a Democrat, and Bob Andersen, a Republican, on the Government Committee.
If accepted, the committee then would be evenly split between progressives and conservatives, 4-4, which State Sen. Rita Sanders of Bellevue, the newly elected chair, said would be better. She did not return a call after the meeting requesting further comment.
A line in the sand
Other conservatives drew lines in the sand seeking to shift the Government Committee to leaning Republican 5-3, as they had in the framework put forward by senators from the 1st and 3rd District Caucuses.
Bills stuck in a deadlocked committee can still be moved to the full Legislature with 25 votes. If the Government Committee stayed 5-3 for Democrats, and the majority killed a bill they didn’t like, the introducer could still advance the bill to the floor with 30 votes from the full Legislature.
Such bills would likely be filibustered, meaning they would need 33 votes to pass, anyway.
“I don’t see any losers on this sheet,” Hunt said of the initial committee assignments. “If you take the Government [Committee] deal — I know you want a majority, that’s what this is about, but we’re not going to get there. And I don’t think that’s a loss.”
Hunt and the 2nd District Caucus moved to advance the report with the 4-4 Government Committee. The motion failed 7-6.
Sanders voted with the 2nd District Caucus and Democratic State Sen. Eliot Bostar of Lincoln to accept the evenly balanced committee and advance the amended report.
‘An attack on the nonpartisan Unicameral’
Part of the contention comes two days after the 2nd District Caucus met in Omaha and progressives secured all four spots on the Committee on Committees, as well as two coveted spots on the Executive Board, which manages the day-to-day operations of the legislative branch. (The full 2nd District Caucus consists of eight Democrats, eight Republicans and one progressive independent.)
That meant kicking off Republican State Sens. Brad von Gillern of Omaha from the Committee on Committees and Merv Riepe of Ralston from the Executive Board.
Von Gillern called the move “the most intentionally partisan thing I’ve experienced since I was sworn in two years ago” and “an attack on the nonpartisan Unicameral Legislature by those who typically wave that flag harder than anyone else.”
He said the decision doesn’t set a “constructive tone” ahead of conversations like winner-take-all when progressives make “such a partisan act.”
“Votes on important issues often fall on party line, but this was not issue-driven and did nothing to improve their vote count on the overall Committee on Committees,” von Gillern said in a text. “There will still be a Republican majority there. There is no discernible strategy that I can see.”
State Sen. John Fredrickson of Omaha, who got a spot on both the Executive Board and Committee on Committees, said: “That’s where the votes landed.”
A cautionary tale
At one point, Jacobson suggested that a path forward might include the 2nd District senators accepting the pre-slated committee assignments from the 1st and 3rd District Caucuses.
Clerk of the Legislature Brandon Metzler cautioned that if the committee chose to cross that threshold, “you’re not coming back.”
“I think that’s dangerous for not only CD 2, but I think it’s dangerous for CD 3, from an urban-rural split,” Metzler said. “The caucus system is inherently political. We have never had a choice made for a caucus that they were not, as a caucus, on board with. But that’s the determination of this committee to decide.”
Factors in committee assignments
State Sen. Mike Moser of Columbus said there are multiple factors to crafting committee assignments, such as:
- Incumbency — Not kicking senators off of committees they most recently served on.
- Senator preference — Lawmakers typically provide first and second choice for assignments.
- Caucus balance — The Committee on Committees usually weighs this by giving each caucus a set number of seats on a committee, based on who the chair is and proceeding through the caucuses in order after (such as 1-2-3).
Moser said there is another important consideration: partisan balance.
Hunt asked him: “Should all committees be 2:1, Republican to Democrat?”
“That’s what the average of — since there’s 66% Republicans and 33% Democrats — that’s about what it should reflect on all the committees,” Moser responded.
A path forward?
Lawmakers said if the Omaha-area lawmakers wouldn’t budge, they could find other solutions, which Jacobson and Moser said would require more deliberation.
“If the Second District is locked in where they’re at, then there may be some actions in response that other caucuses make,” Moser said. “Maybe they’re not going to be pleasant, but we’re going to think about that overnight, talk about it a little bit and come back tomorrow.”
Asked whether that meant some 1st or 3rd District Caucus members might lose committee positions they previously held, or not get their top preferences, Armendariz said that’s up to the districts.
“They get to make their own decisions,” Armendariz said. “I would never want to get in the middle of that, if that’s what they choose to do.”
Committee assignments will ultimately be kicked out to the full Legislature in a preliminary report. The Legislature would then vote to accept, or reject, the placements after the Committee on Committees advances a final report.
However, preliminary reports often become final committee placements.
The Committee on Committees reconvenes shortly after 10 a.m. on Thursday.
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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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