Scuffle
Committees of the Legislature are still grinding through all-day hearings on every one of those 684 legislative concoctions. The Judiciary and Revenue Committees are always the busiest.
Tuesday morning, Speaker Hilgers will interrupt committee hearings for a few hours. He scheduled General File debate for bills that have escaped advanced from their respective committees.
General File is the first round of floor debate. Select File is the second round, followed by Final Reading. If a bill passes “Final,” it makes a beeline to Governor.
All committee hearings, but for Judiciary, wrap-up by March 4. The Judiciary Committee will finish their hearings on March 12. All-day floor debate begins March 15.
If you plan to stream the floor debate Tuesday morning, don’t expect anyone to cry or even stir-up a minor scuffle. Banking, Commerce, and Insurance cornered much of the morning with bills about insurance, annuities, property appraisers, public funds, trusts, etc.
Circling back to March 12 and a scuffle. If hours of hostile testimony pique your interest, you might want to catch the Judiciary Committee’s 9:30 am hearing. Senator Hunt’s LB 276 is the last bill of the last day of hearings. Why would that be? Just spitballing here, but perhaps a bill allowing medical abortions to be conducted via telemedicine is a tad bit more than casually divisive.
Bill Tracker
- LB52 (Lathrop) MONITOR – Hearing 2/18 – Provides immunity for injury or death resulting from COVID-19 exposure.
- LB79 (Briese) MONITOR – Hearing 2/10 – Changes the minimum amount of relief provided under the Property Tax Credit Act.
- LB84 (Bostelman) MONITOR – Hearing 2/26 – Changes provisions relating to tax incentive performance audits and redefines a term under the ImagiNE Nebraska Act
- LB90 (Halloran) MONITOR – GENERAL FILE – Amends the Nebraska Pesticide Act by reallocating the distribution of the pesticide registration fee. It further amends the Nebraska Commercial Fertilizer and Soil Conditioner Act by allowing the Director to adjust the inspection fee each July 1.
- LB91 (Brandt) MONITOR – GENERAL FILE – Expands the date after germination or viability testing that native flower and grass seeds may continue to be sold or offered for sale without retesting and to allow a seed viability test in lieu of germination rate testing for certain seeds.
- LB133 (Erdman) MONITOR – Adopts a consumption tax and eliminate other taxes.
- LB139 (Briese) MONITOR – Hearing 2/18 – LB139 would provide general safe harbor and premises liability protections on potential COVID-19 lawsuits.
- LB177 (Lindstrom) SUPPORT GENERAL FILE – Changes provisions relating to liens under the Uniform Commercial Code.
- LB239 (Hilkemann) MONITOR – Restricts phone use to hands-free while driving.
- LB290 (M. Cavanaugh) OPPOSE – Adopts the Paid Family & Medical Leave Insurance Act.
- LB329 (Wayne) MONITOR – The minimum average wholesale price of gasoline to be used to calculate the state gas tax shall be $2.44.
- LB422 (Briese) MONITOR – Reduce state sales tax from 5.5 cents to 5 cents and eliminate some sales tax exemptions.
- LB430 (Revenue) MONITOR – Shell bill.
- LB432 (Revenue) MONITOR – Shell bill.
- LB433 (Revenue) MONITOR – Shell bill.
- LB483 (J Cavanaugh) MONITOR – Hearing 2/11 – Creates a climate change study and plan.
- LB543 (Brandt) MONITOR – Hearing 2/25 – would adopt the Agricultural Equipment Right-To-Repair Act which would allow farmers to fix their own machinery.
- LB622 (Friesen) MONITOR – Hearing 2/17 – Limits the growth of real property valuations and provides for adjustments to assessed values.
- LB625 (Vargas) MONITOR – Hearing 2/25 – Imposes a surtax on certain taxable income and uses the tax proceeds for early childhood education.
- LB634 (J. Cavanaugh) OPPOSE – Hearing 3/10 – Provides a cause of action for unsafe disposal of treated seed.
- LB644 (B. Hansen) MONITOR – Hearing 2/10 – Property Tax Request Act to increase transparency for impacted political subdivisions to raise their property tax levies.
- LB672 (Murman) SUPPORT – Hearing 2/24 – Changes the sales and use tax exemption on agricultural machinery and equipment.
- LR5 (Graegert) MONITOR – Healthy Soils Task Force recommendations.
- LR11CA (Erdman) MONITOR – Constitutional Amendment to create a consumption tax and eliminate other taxes.