Cindy Gonzalez
LINCOLN — Faced with rising state health care expenses and an end to “bushel baskets” of federal pandemic dollars, Gov. Jim Pillen said he resorted to shaking the “pillowcases” to balance his recommended state budget — and slashing some programs he signed into law just last year.
In a move several lawmakers called atypical, Pillen targeted nearly 50 programs approved over the past five years by both the governor and the Legislature.
Those cost-cutting measures range from clawing back nearly $23 million set aside for the next fiscal year to encourage workers and businesses to relocate to Nebraska to slicing $60,000 earmarked for tax exemptions on livestock twine.
On the cutting board as well are dozens of boards and commissions formed to provide citizen input into government affairs.
“To shrink government we must eliminate its obsolete parts and clean out its closets,” Pillen said Wednesday in his annual State of the State speech. “Especially at a time when we must tighten our belt … we must continually assess which parts of government are still of use to the people.”
Emotional moment
In a half-hour speech before lawmakers and friends in the Capitol, Pillen laid out his fiscal, philosophical and political roadmap for the year.
Not only did he tout his effort to shrink state spending, he promoted social and political goals — including a renewed push to change Nebraska’s unique way of assigning Electoral College votes for president to a “winner-take-all” system.
Perhaps the most emotional moments of the annual event — known also for pageantry, energy and bipartisan handshakes — was Pillen’s account of getting bucked off of a horse and landing in an operating room with injuries including seven broken ribs, fractured back vertebra and a lacerated spleen.
Choking up, Pillen said he was thankful for a “second shot at life” and the “renewed commitment” to fighting for Nebraskans. He got a standing ovation before pivoting to his talking points with the quip: “OK, no more horsing around.”
State Sen. Danielle Conrad of Lincoln called the governor’s recovery a highlight of the day. She said the Legislature and friends were excited to see Pillen doing well.
Conrad said she was disappointed but not surprised that the governor went on to spend so much attention on “divisive social issues.”
Conrad cited, for example, Pillen’s promotion in his speech of the Stand With Women Act by State Sen. Kathleen Kauth of Omaha, which aims to define “male” and “female” in state law. Pointing to his granddaughters in the audience, Pillen said that he found it hard to understand how some think it is acceptable to allow “biological boys” to share bathrooms and playing fields with girls.
“This is unfair, unconscionable and a recipe for predatory behavior,” the governor said, causing Republicans on the legislative floor to clap and some Democrats to squirm.
Cutting out the ‘blue dot’
State Sen. Margo Juarez said later that she would be among those opposing the Pillen-endorsed Kauth effort, and she also bristled at the governor’s pledge to fight for a winner-take-all system.
A bill requested by Pillen and led by State Sen. Loren Lippincott of Central City seeks to do away with allocating three of Nebraska’s five Electoral College votes by the winner in each congressional district. Nebraska and Maine are the only states that parcel out some of their electoral votes by district. The approach, adopted in Nebraska in 1991, has led to Democrats claiming a single electoral vote from the Omaha-based 2nd District three times since 2008 and, in this past election cycle, stoking the “blue dot” momentum.
“I find it fascinating that the governor recognizes the importance of everyone having a voice yet he wants to cut out certain voices, including the ‘blue dot’ voices,” said the freshman lawmaker representing South Omaha.
To be sure, there was plenty of applause by the Republican majority in the officially nonpartisan Legislature when Pillen promoted his priorities that have or will be introduced as bills by various senators, including: a bill to ban lab-grown meat and “beef up” consumer protections and false labeling, as well as legislative proposals seeking to outlaw youths’ access to social media unless they have parental consent and to restrict student use of cell phones on school property and school functions.
“Very good speech,” said State Sen. Myron Dorn of Adams, a member of the nine-member Appropriations Committee that will balance Pillen’s recommendations and lawmakers’ proposals and present a new proposal this spring. “Now we get down to work.”
Pillen, whose family owns a hog operation based in Columbus, also pushed for the consolidation of two Nebraska state agencies, the Departments of Environment and Energy and of Natural Resources, saying: “It will save costs, eliminate duplicative overhead, and streamline the mission of stewarding and protecting our natural resources and environment.”
Bipartisan support flowed for certain proposals, including Pillen’s announcement of an expert commission tasked with recommending fixes to Nebraska’s 30-year formula for school funding that the governor said was broken and burdensome to taxpayers in districts with limited resources. State Sen. Jana Hughes of Seward is helping to lead that and other school financing reform efforts.
“I applaud the governor for focusing on that,” said Conrad, a Democrat.
Said Hughes: “This is a really good path forward. I’m thrilled.”
‘Reckless financial decision-making’
However, Conrad was critical of the Pillen administration’s role in reaching today’s budgetary circumstance, a projected two-year budget gap of $432 million.
Pillen said the projected shortfall is exacerbated by a drop in annual funding from the federal government for mandated Medicaid and health service costs. The state’s annual share of those costs are expected to rise, the governor said, by about $200 million in the next fiscal year and about $352 million over the biennium.
He said the state no longer has available to it the millions of dollars of pandemic relief funds that flowed when he first took office two years ago.
Conrad says the projected shortfall has more to do with the governor and some in the Legislature promoting income and corporate tax cuts that Conrad said benefitted the wealthiest Nebraskans and corporations. She called it “reckless financial decision-making and leadership.”
Looking for cost savings, Pillen said he examined the “unprecedented” number of laws passed in the last five years that included expansion of state incentives and “Christmas tree bills” that sometimes “crammed” up to 30 bills into one package, along with related funding.
Such piling up of bills has got to stop, Pillen said. But he acknowledged to reporters that he had signed the bills into law and that in some cases made a mistake.
“Maybe the most disappointing thing I have experienced since being governor is all these Christmas bills,” he said.
Conrad, who is the current Legislature’s most seasoned senator, took issue with the so-called “legislative bill reductions” — which the governor’s office said would reverse about $120 million a year in appropriated funds and recently passed changes that had cut revenue — as an unfamiliar term in the budget process that she said sounds like “buyer’s remorse or going back on your words.”
State Sen. Terrell McKinney of North Omaha said the slate of reversals is something he’s not seen during his tenure. They include small business assistance grant dollars, an Internet Access Tower exemption, sports arena financing, reverse osmosis tax credits and more.
“My questions are: ‘Why did you sign the bills? Why did you make these commitments?”