Luncheon with the Legislature: budget shortfalls, school choice, and unicameral theatrics on the menu
The Greater Omaha Pachyderm Luncheon Group hosted another panel of state senators on Monday, this time bringing Lou Ann Linehan, Tony Sorrentino, Rita Sanders, and Brad von Gillern to the table.
Linehan, who has been termed out after representing District 39 for eight years, will be succeeded by Sorrentino. Von Gillern is entering the second half of his first term representing District 4. Rita Sanders, the former two-term Mayor of Bellevue, just won a reelection bid to that she was pulled into to represent District 45.
“I thought I was done, but you guys didn’t,” Sanders said. Next year, she plans to introduce a bill on “no cell phones in the classroom.” She is also on the Hydrogen Nuclear Committee, which is looking into the enrichment process of nuclear spent fuel in Fort Calhoun, 90% of which can be used for energy.
Budget Shortfalls and Tax Cuts
At the top of the mind for several guests was the $432 million budget shortfall projected by Nebraska’s Tax Rate Review Committee, which could endanger some recently-passed tax cuts in the legislature. Linehan was skeptical that the projected shortfall would materialize.
“The last time we were in a deficit was in 2017, when I got elected,” Linehan said. “We were also told that we were way down, and it turned out the forecast was off by $700 million. So, we’re skeptical, and I’m especially skeptical that we have 17 new senators coming in, and all of a sudden they’re getting told there’s no money.”
Von Gillern said that defending the income tax cuts that passed two years ago would be his number one priority. “Rolling them back or ending those income tax cuts, I think that would be a crucial mistake,” he said. "Based on all of the data that I've seen from other states that have been successful, financially and economically, the ones that have been able to reduce their tax rates — corporate income or corporate and personal income tax rates — are the ones that are succeeding.”
Sorrentino similarly agreed, wanting to push further cuts to property taxes. “We need to get those cuts made,” he said. “It’s an impediment to economic growth. And if they provide more people or more businesses that we can attract to our state, the same load is a lot lighter than beforehand.”
Sanders specifically cited spending bills with fiscal notes as a problem to reign in. “We don’t need any more bills coming in that are large and have a large fiscal note,” she said. “And so, I think most people know where I stand right now — that we want to continue on the tax cuts.”
Education & School Choice
Much of the discussion was about education, particularly school choice. Last year, the education lobby spent $7 million to repeal Linehan’s modest appropriation of $10 million for opportunity scholarships in Nebraska — half of which came from out of state.
Linehan said that she was still angry about the result. “We knew we were going to lose, because the supporters that I had to go to try and raise money were like, ‘We’re going to raise $10 million to save $10 million?’” she said. “But here’s what nobody’s talking about — guess which legislative district’s people voted for it by a large amount? [Terrell] McKinney’s district (LD11), the poorest legislative district in the state, with not even any argument about some of the poorest schools that have failed kids for generations. They voted by large margins for school choice. We also won, if not by as wide of a margin, Columbus, North Platte, Scottsbluff, Alliance, and Lexington. Any place where you have a lot of low-income parents who are trying really hard to succeed, they want a different option than their school that failed their kids.”
Sorrentino was somewhat optimistic, noting that the same education lobby failed to defeat several school choice candidates in the last election. “They heavily supported nine candidates against people like myself who would favor school choice,” Sorrentino said. “Of the nine they supported, only two of them won. So I think there is indeed a future for school choice.”
One guest asked how failing schools can be pushed to improve when they continue to receive disproportionally large amounts of funding regardless of their performance. Von Gillern acknowledged the problem with the TEOSSA formula, which he described as a “desperate situation.”
“Many of you saw the recent scores that came out and the ACT scores and the rankings,” Von Gillern said. “We are just in an abysmal position dealing with many of our public schools about how kids are being educated, with less than 50% of the targeted scores being an acceptable amount.”
Linehan saw potential to create change through the State Board of Education, even with a four-four split instead of a conservative majority.
“It’s my understanding that not in a hundred years has the Department of Ed ever decertified a school,” she said. “If we automatically certified every school regardless of the outcome, what difference does it make? So, I think … if was just one or two voted not to recertify a school, because you need five votes to be certified, if you don’t certify a school, it will wake a lot of people up.”
Theatrics vs. Getting Things Done
One guest lamented Democrats controlling the “narrative” in the legislature and questioned whether Republicans could push back against it.
“The folks that are getting stuff done quite often are not on the front page,” Von Gillern said. “While they [Democrats] are just going off on the world, ranting and raving and reading out of a recipe book and whatever they had to do to prolong the filibuster, we were getting stuff done in the back hallways.”
“When you take the microphone, and you’re not even talking about the subject being debated, I’m like, ‘why would they do that?'” asked Sanders. “Well, they want TV time, right? They’re going to be running for another office.”
Linehan defended the record of the last slate of state senators, particularly in 2023 with the successful passage of tax cuts and restrictions on abortion and transgender treatments for minors in the Let Them Grow Act. And though a new limit of 20 bills that can be introduced by each senator suggested that the next session might run more smoothly, Linehan did not see any chance of amending the filibuster.
While continuing to hold a supermajority in the unicameral, the incoming freshman class has yet to be tested in the heat of legislative battle. Only time will tell what they can accomplish before sine die in 2025.