As members of the Nebraska Legislature pack their bags for next month’s annual government gathering at the Capitol, each surely will have a to-do list in tow: bills or brainstorms or big ideas they hope the other 48 souls in the chamber will find palatable. More important, however, is whether said lists solve problems and enhance the quality of life for Nebraskans.

Finding traction in the Legislature can be a Sisyphean slog these days, with a hill at every stop in process. If recent years provide a road map, it’s dotted with ditches where some good ideas end up. That’s because some inside the chamber prefer to perpetuate the culture wars, those inflated set-tos designed to ratchet up the drama in the Unicameral but which, alas, have very little real meaning in the lives and times of Nebraskans.

Senators will also need to convince the governor, whose signature completes the process by which the Legislature chooses what’s important. The hope for the rest of us is that what the senators draft, debate and eventually forward to the governor’s desk for passage is also what is top of mind for us constituents, too.

Which brings us to the oft-cited but difficult to define “values,” a fuzzy term attached to politics to produce — among other indeterminate phraseology — something called a “values voter.” To which wags, wits and unreconstructed wiseacres might ask, “Is there any other kind?”

Values made Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen’s own laundry list, his roster of wants for the first session of the 109th Legislature scheduled to begin Jan. 8. He told the Nebraska Examiner he was focusing on “kids, taxes, agriculture and values” in the upcoming session. One translation reads more like the red meat selections on a conservative menu, including kindling for culture throw downs, not a list of solutions to overwhelming problems … unless one includes a potential impending budget deficit to which one cannot disconnect the subject of taxes.

His focus, according to the list, includes gender issues, high school locker rooms, burger building and design, the price tag of an educated populace and the process by which Nebraskans choose the president. You can throw in some help for ag producers, and his more recent pledge to be onboard with the president-elect’s plan to mass deport immigrants, despite, as economists have warned, the hit it would have on the state’s economy.

The intertwining of property taxes and public school funding remains a conundrum, despite a special session last summer, which produced a nearly imperceptible ripple, and multiple bills every regular session, which usually end up in the aforementioned ditches. Meanwhile, school districts have difficulty planning because of the ebbs and flows of the formula by which schools receive state aid, a calculus that can produce dramatic swings. School financing must include fairness and equitability, but attempts to hamstring schools to achieve some artificial “balance” should remain nonstarters.

The winner-take-all in presidential races will show up on the docket this session. Like Maine, Nebraska splits its Electoral College votes. But winner-take-all is a structural solution to the political problem of one party’s inability to win the hearts, minds and votes of a majority of what most refer to as Nebraska’s Blue Dot, its 2nd Congressional District. Rather than coming up with better ideas (being like other states is not one of them), winner-take-all simply changes the rules.

Not making the governor’s cut, the hope is that housing is atop the lists of some individual senators. The lack of affordable housing has replaced jobs as the number one reason for outmigration, according to the Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. A July 2024 report by the state’s own Legislative Research Office indicated that finding adequate and affordable housing, especially for those below the median wage marker, has become increasingly difficult in the last five years. Yes, we can spend time and energy debating high school locker rooms where a policy is already in place and seems to be working or whether that double cheeseburger had parents. But while we do, one more best and brightest mind may leave the state because affordable housing is scarce.

The list could go on, including affordable quality child care and what guardrails are in place — or should be built — to handle a possible budget deficit.

If you’re keeping score at home (and you should be), watching how the Legislature decides to spend its time and, eventually, taxpayers’ money, says a lot about who we are and what we think is important. You know, what we value.

This story was published by Nebraska Examiner, an editorially independent newsroom providing a hard-hitting, daily flow of news. Read the original article: https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2024/12/23/getting-ready-for-value-added-thinking/

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