Only 14 legislative days remain
Following the Legislature’s adjournment today, lawmakers will have only 14 working days left in the current legislative session to address priority legislation. The session’s final day is scheduled for May 31. Among the Unicameral’s high-profile bills still awaiting final approval are the two-year budget bill, the tax cut package, the Omaha-areas school boundaries bill, and the Class One Schools legislation. Speaker Mike Flood has designated a dozen workdays as late evening sessions, when lawmakers should be prepared to work as late as 11:59 p.m. to complete their daily agendas. Two of the first late evening sessions were held last week. The Nebraska Hospital Association will continue its weekly legislative updates throughout the remainder of the 2007 session.
For Legislature, there is still much to be done
The Nebraska Legislature will be working overtime in order to adjourn on May 31.
When the 90-day legislative session began in January, Gov. Dave Heineman and other observers had four big projects topping the Legislature's to-do list:
- Passing a state budget that limited spending growth.
- Crafting a tax cut of about $235 million per year.
- Bringing Nebraska closer to compliance in its water agreement with Kansas over the Republican River.
- Solving school organization and financing disputes in the Omaha metropolitan area.
As of May 1, only one of those issues could be checked off as completed, with Gov. Heineman signing into law the Republican River measure (LB 701). Later in the day, lawmakers began their first pass through the two-year, $6.77 billion budget, voting to advance the main budget bills to the second round of debate.
Read the full Omaha World Herald Article.
— Leslie Reed, Omaha World Herald, May 2, 2007.
Senators give first-round OK to budget bill
Senators quickly advanced a two-year $6.8 billion state spending package May 1 to second reading, hitting only two temporary speed bumps in the process. The only discussions that slowed them down were on the Health and Human Services System (HHS) and University of Nebraska appropriations.
Sen. Gwen Howard (Omaha) made an emotional plea for restoring $2 million each year for the administration appropriation for the Department of Health and Human Services. Removing that amount from Gov. Dave Heineman’s budget proposal for the department would adversely affect the lives of children and adults served by the system, she said.
Howard said that without the money, or clear guidelines on where the shortfall would be made up, front-line positions including case managers in the foster care program — would remain vacant and other desperately needed workers would disappear.
Read the full Lincoln Journal Star Article.
— JoAnne Young, Lincoln Journal Star, May 1, 2007.
Bill requires smokes to be self-extinguishing
While the Legislature has spent hours this year debating a bill intended to save lives by banning smoking in public buildings and workplaces, another bill aimed at preventing cigarette deaths remains stuck in the Health and Human Services (HHS) Committee.
LB 584 would require all cigarettes sold in Nebraska to extinguish themselves when not being actively smoked.
Twelve states and Canada have laws requiring such "reduced-ignition" cigarettes. The most common type of reduced-ignition cigarette has two or three bands of thicker paper that act as speed bumps that cause the cigarette to stop burning if the smoker drops it or puts it down. New York was first with a law that took effect in June 2004. Iowa’s Legislature became the latest to pass a related bill, giving final approval to the measure May 1. If signed by the governor, the law would take effect in 2009.
The number of such laws has more than doubled since the national Coalition for Fire-Safe Cigarettes launched a state-by-state campaign last year.
Read the full Omaha World Herald Article.
— Martha Stoddard, Omaha World Herald, May 1, 2007.
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