The Legislature started its budget-cutting special session Wednesday with one new senator and seven bills designed to deal with a $334 million shortfall in the $6.9 billion, two-year state budget.
The session marks the introduction to state lawmaking for Sen. Robert Krist, appointed by Gov. Dave Heineman to represent northwest Omaha’s District 10. He takes the place of Mike Friend, who resigned in August to become director of the new Nebraska Office of Violence Prevention.
Krist is not the only senator new to this special session, though. Because of term limits, 47 of the state’s 49 senators have never been through a budget-cutting session. Sixteen have been through just one regular session.
All bills introduced this week and next will get a public hearing, said Speaker Mike Flood, even the ones that do not fall within the governor’s parameters of what the Legislature should consider in this session.
And a few of those are expected.
Four bills were introduced Wednesday by Flood on behalf of the governor regarding changes to the state’s 2009-11 budget and allotting money to pay for the special session, estimated to be about $10,000 a day.
Three of them will get public hearings before the Appropriations Committee today at 1:30 in Room 1524 at the Capitol.
Heineman has proposed saving money in the next year and a half through agency savings, general fund transfers, specific cuts and across-the board
reductions that could
possibly mean employee layoffs or furloughs. Agriculture commodity boards and some senators have expressed displeasure that his proposal would take some of the needed reduction from some 30 agencies supported solely by fees. That would include money raised from point-of-sale fees on agricultural production that have always gone to research and promotion of those same products.
One of Wednesday’s bills — LB5, introduced by Education Committee Chairman Greg Adams — would slow the growth of spending on schools yet again. It would reduce calculations in the complex school aid formula that could produce a savings to the state of $47 million.
The proposed changes deal in part with extra money given to schools for adding instructional time and having more teachers with master’s and doctoral degrees. The instructional time allowance has been the most controversial among districts, Adams said.
“It’s not a bad allowance, but mechanically, it’s a mess,” he said.
The changes aren’t expected to produce big winners and losers, he said. The state Department of Education is running calculations to see how individual districts would be affected.
Sen. Tom Carlson of Holdrege introduced a couple of bills that would produce some small savings.
One of them could be distasteful to those who crusade against puppy mills. LB6 would eliminate a state requirement to inspect commercial dog and cat breeder facilities at least once every two years.
Inspections would be done only upon complaint, Carlson said, which would reduce the number of inspectors and save $180,000 through June 30, 2011.
Another deals with pesticide registration and renewal fees and would save the state about $30,000.
The bills don’t amount to a lot of savings, Carlson said, but if every senator would find something the state could do without, it would add up.
Senators will check in this morning at 10 for more bill introductions.
The Appropriations Committee will begin hearing from state agencies, including the Department of Correctional Services, Nebraska State Patrol and Nebraska Supreme Court at 1:30 p.m.
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Look at some of the junk on the roads today, important things like headlights and tail lights. Not to mention those with parts hanging off them.