State Sen. Loren Lippincott of Central City, left, joins Gov. Jim Pillen for a ceremonial bill signing for a measure aimed at Nebraska National Guard recruitment and retention. Dec. 10, 2024. (Zach Wendling/Nebraska Examiner)
People are also reading…
LINCOLN — It’s not quite “Schoolhouse Rock,” but after Nebraska’s governor last year missed a step in filing his line-item budget reduction vetoes to the right state office, some of the officials involved clarified how a bill becomes a law.
The office of Secretary of State Bob Evnen made a two-page memo, dated Dec. 9, which details the steps a governor must take following legislative action. The memo was shared with Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen’s office, Speaker John Arch of La Vista and the office of the Clerk of the Legislature. A spokesperson for Evnen provided the Nebraska Examiner a requested copy on Friday.
Laura Strimple, a spokesperson for Pillen, shared the same memo. Clerk of the Legislature Brandon Metzler said his office had no new guidance.
“The process is clarified,” Arch said Thursday, a day after the Legislature approved its 2026 budget adjustments in Legislative Bills 1071 and 1072.
Under the Nebraska Constitution, the governor must sign or veto legislation within five days of receiving it. If the Legislature is still in session, the governor can choose to not sign, and the bill will become law without his signature.
For this year’s budget adjustment bills, Pillen’s deadline is midnight Tuesday. Strimple did not respond last week when asked if Pillen expected to veto any spending from line items in the budget.
Last year, Pillen tried to veto $32.5 million from the state budget, about $14.5 million of which was from general fund spending:
- $18 million for recreational upgrades around Lake McConaughy.
- $11.9 million from the Nebraska Supreme Court.
- $2 million from public health departments.
- $511,972 from the State Fire Marshal for salary and health insurance premium increases.
Pillen’s team delivered the official copies of LB 261 and LB 264, last year’s budget bills, to Evnen’s office, rather than the Clerk of the Legislature’s Office, by midnight May 21.
It was the first time, many lawmakers and legislative staff said, that any veto had been blundered in this way.
Rather than launching an interbranch lawsuit — which would have gone to the Nebraska Judicial Branch, whose budget Pillen wanted to cut by nearly $12 million — Pillen, Evnen and Arch agreed to meet “to avoid a similar future dispute.”
“All parties have agreed to meet during the interim to clarify and confirm procedures that meet the constitutional requirements for transmittal of budget vetoes, and ensure they are maintained in a clear written guidance for future implementation by all offices,” the officials said last May.
The Examiner last May requested public records about the 2025 budget vetoes, which painted a partial timeline of what happened.
Addressing the line-item veto situation after the 2025 legislative session, Pillen told the Examiner that the veto process includes “human beings” and accepted responsibility. He said the mistake on May 21 was “a miscommunication on where it was supposed to go.” Pillen, whose reelection bid has been endorsed by President Donald Trump, was at the White House the following day attending a “Make America Healthy Again” event.
“Bottom line: We made a mistake,” Pillen said at the time. “I’d have thought, because we all work together, that a flag would have been thrown and said, ‘Hey, let’s do X,’ but there wasn’t. And then the glass of milk was spilled the next morning.”
Evnen and his office have repeatedly said it was not their duty to throw a flag on the vetoes. The clarification memo makes this clear, too: “We do not act as a courier for the governor or Legislature in delivering bills between the two branches of government.”
How the 2025 line-item vetoes compare to 2026 budget adjustment bills
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen last year said budget adjustments would be a priority in 2026 and that some suggestions might be reconsidered this year.
Funding for the budget sections Pillen tried to veto — the Supreme Court, State Fire Marshal, the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services and the state’s Water Recreation Enhancement Fund — are slated to decrease in the latest budget bills, but to the tune of $4 million, not $32.5 million.
Only the State Fire Marshal’s budget decreased more than the line-item vetoes would have cut, a reduction of $591,944 compared to $511,972 in the vetoes. An estimated increase in federal funding helped backfill the larger state cuts.
DHHS would see an $800,000 decrease to public health aid. This consists of $650,000 less each year for minority public health services in counties with minority populations of 5% or more outside of Douglas and Saunders Counties, and parts of Sarpy County. But it provides $500,000 more for expanded health care access for seven community health centers. Last year, Pillen’s veto would have cut $2 million from public health departments in the public health aid budget.
The targeted Supreme Court sections are slated to decrease $1.61 million, across operations, probation, state specialized court operations, the Office of Public Guardian and juvenile justice. Some of the general fund spending is replaced with cash fund authorizations. Chief Justice Jeffrey Funke met with lawmakers and Pillen’s team for a path forward without deeper cuts, which might soon mean increased court fees.Lastly, Pillen signed a program statement promising $16 million in appropriations for road surfacing projects on the south side of Lake McConaughy in Ogallala in mid-February. LB 1072 claws back $8.52 million from the Water Recreation Enhancement Fund but replaces $7.52 million of that with funds from the Nebraska Environmental Trust. The budget states the supplanted funding must be used to further the Trust’s statutory mission to preserve, restore or enhance Nebraska’s environment.
— Nebraska Examiner reporter Zach Wendling
This story is provided by States Newsroom, a nonprofit state news network and Blox Digital content partner.
