State senators react to Pillen's upbeat picture in State of State speech

Nebraska is in good shape, Gov. Jim Pillen said in his State of the State speech Thursday. He said his proposals will make it better, but some senators disagreed with his approach.

For months, state government observers have wondered how Gov. Jim Pillen would handle a projected $472 million shortfall in the state budget. Thursday, he assured people everything will be fine.

“Our economy is incredibly broad, led by agriculture, banking, manufacturing, healthcare, construction and insurance," he said. "We in Nebraska -- our economy remains recession proof. We can bet the farm that Nebraska is primed to grow."

Pillen criticized some unnamed “Debbie Downers” for looking on the dark side, saying his budget proposal will deal with the shortfall.

“The result of this budget will mean a $500 million improvement to the state's bottom line in this biennium. For those doing the math, take note, the proposal eliminates the make-believe budget crisis that so many critics have imagined over the last few months,” he said.

Sen. Danielle Conrad criticized the governor’s characterization.

“It's unhelpful when the governor says ‘There's nothing to see here. We don't have a budget crisis.’ Because that just does not -- it's not grounded in the reality of the dollars and cents of it,” Conrad said.

Pillen proposes to balance the budget through a combination of spending cuts, fund transfers, and as-yet unspecified tax changes.

Some of the biggest proposed cuts, including to services for the ranging from funding for aged and disabled programs to Medicaid, would be in the Department of Health and Human Services.

Sen. Brian Hardin, chair of the legislative committee that oversees that department, acknowledged the budget cutting would hurt.

“Of course it's going to hurt. I was expecting it to hurt even more, and that's just because, when you take a look at the overall map of how the budget is laid out and the chunk that HHS receives, we would definitely say it's going to be a painful experience,” he said.

Hardin said it’s too early to comment on the specifics of the proposal.

In his speech, Pillen also proposed changing the state’s public power laws, to allow private companies to build their own electrical generating capacity, to maintain the state’s electrical power.

“One major way is to remove the red tape and obstacles for large power users like artificial intelligence, aviation fuel or bioeconomy plants, to build their own power plant and sell excess electricity to our grid,” he said.

Sen. Barry DeKay, who will introduce the legislation for Pillen, said it wouldn’t allow sales of extra electricity to the grid, but details of the legislation are still being worked out. DeKay said the idea of making an exception to having the state rely solely on public power to generate electricity makes sense.

“Right now, public power -- they give power to everybody in the state," he said. "What this would help with possibly, like a big data center, or possibly Offutt is, they could build that facility on or right near their facility, if …ice storms, tornadoes, whatever it takes down the power source they can don't have to rely on power companies coming out and getting our lines back up to get the electricity back on. The power source’s encapsulated right there."

Pillen also proposed giving free university tuition and housing to all Nebraska students who score 33 or higher on the ACT test. He advocated returning Nebraska to the winner-take-all system of allocating its Electoral College votes. He endorsed Sen. Kathleen Kauth’s proposal to restrict people to using bathrooms corresponding to their sex at birth. And he said he wants to repeal a prohibition on schools suspending students in kindergarten through second grade.

Sen. Terrell McKinney, who got that proposal passed, said schools should be using alternatives to suspension. McKinney criticized Pillen’s proposal.

“I just think it's a shame. I think it's also failing to recognize that there was a huge disproportionate amount of suspensions pertaining to black kids and other minority kids in our state, and we're going back to that,” McKinney said.

Pillen also vowed that his budget would ensure the University would not spend money on efforts to promote programs like diversity, equity and inclusion.

“Last time I checked we are Nebraska, not a woke ivory tower on the coast. How destructive would it be if our great University of Nebraska followed the same path that so called “elite” coastal schools have, embracing pronoun culture, DEI discrimination, anti semitism and radical critical race theory invasion into their curriculum? To these misguided students and families who actually want that for their money, other places work,” he said.

But while Pillen closed with an appeal for unity and a can-do attitude from lawmakers, Conrad suggested his speech missed the mark.

“It seemed to be really, really light on specific policy proposals that were grounded in the most pressing needs of Nebraska and Nebraska families. It seemed rather to be kind of a free-for-all buffet of right wing radical talking points and divisive culture war issues,” she said.

Now the Legislature begins the work of deciding which of the governor’s budget and policy proposals to accept, or reject.

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