Months before Gov. Jim Pillen recommended her for a $2.5 million no-bid consulting contract that Nebraska’s auditor later said “smacks of favoritism,” Julie Bushell was lobbying state officials for another deal.

She seemed poised to get it, despite skepticism from the state’s top environmental administrator. In emails obtained by the Flatwater Free Press, he called the technology she was selling “developing and aspiring at best.”

That warning, sent to Pillen’s chief of staff, wasn’t shared with the lawmaker advocating for the money.

Within months, the state had set aside $1 million to fund the kind of technology Bushell’s company was selling. She had also been installed in regular meetings at Nebraska’s Department of Environment and Energy, where a deputy director appeared to be working with Bushell on a plan to spend the taxpayer dollars with her company, emails show.

“We didn’t know what her role was, who was paying her … or what her goal was,” said Kara Valentine, the department’s former interim director. “She was pretty close-lipped about that. It was clear to us that she knew what direction the governor wanted to go on things, especially when (Pillen’s policy adviser) didn’t.”

Valentine’s account and dozens of emails obtained by Flatwater through public records requests raise questions about Bushell’s role and influence inside state government before and after Pillen recommended her for the $208,333-a-month, no-bid contract.

In May 2024, the state signed the contract with Bushell, a lobbyist who had traveled overseas with Pillen as part of a state delegation. It drew scrutiny earlier this year when State Auditor Mike Foley said the state had broken the law by not identifying what emergency justified the no-bid contract.

Lincoln police have been investigating the contract since March. A spokeswoman told Flatwater that the investigation is ongoing. Lawmakers in April changed state law to strengthen oversight of no-bid contracts.

Months before her no-bid contract was awarded, Bushell lobbied lawmakers to set aside money for real-time nitrate sensors like the ones manufactured by her Lincoln-based tech company Ethos Connected.

The promise of the sensors was twofold: If farmers knew the nitrate level in their irrigation water, they could reduce the amount of nitrogen fertilizer applied to their crops and save money while also decreasing the amount of the harmful contaminant that can seep into drinking water.

But state scientists weren’t sold. Jim Macy, then director of Nebraska’s Department of Environment and Energy, sent Pillen’s chief of staff a memo as lawmakers considered earmarking funds for the sensors. The memo raised concerns that “some in the industry are providing hopeful Information rather than proven fact.”

“None of my scientific team can point to any proven current technology that meets a basic benchmark,” Macy wrote in the January 2024 memo.

The lawmaker advocating for the money says no one from the Pillen administration ever shared it with him. “I have no recollection of it,” said Sen. Eliot Bostar of Lincoln, a Democrat.

By June, the state had set aside money for real-time nitrate sensors in wells statewide. Macy had resigned from Pillen’s cabinet. And a deputy director who remained at the department was scheduling a meeting with Bushell about “what could work with the program dollars,” emails obtained by Flatwater show.

By September, Valentine was questioning why Bushell had a standing invitation to department meetings on the rollout of a $307 million federal grant. Pillen’s office later said she helped secure it from the Environmental Protection Agency.

But Valentine, who oversaw the grant application, said it was never clear to her what Bushell had done to help the state secure the money. The application for the grant was submitted a month before Bushell signed her contract with the state.

A policy adviser to Pillen did make one thing clear, Valentine recalled: Bushell spoke for the governor.

“But then Julie disappeared just as quickly as she arrived,” she said.

The state ended Bushell’s contract early in February 2025, a month after the auditor’s office launched its probe into the deal. Pillen’s office told the Nebraska Examiner that President Donald Trump’s return meant that Pillen had a direct relationship with the White House and no longer needed Bushell’s firm. She sold her Lincoln home in July.

Bushell declined to be interviewed or answer emailed questions. In a statement, she noted that the tech company ultimately didn’t receive the state funds for nitrate sensors. And, in fact, the state never spent the money earmarked to purchase nitrate sensors. 

Bushell said she delivered for the state a return on investment that “dwarfed other state contracts” and said the “suggestion that I used my position to direct public funding to a separate company, Ethos Connected, is false.” 

“Nebraska cannot build an innovation economy by attacking the very people who innovate,” she said. “Those who reward contribution with suspicion and repay risk-taking with reputational attacks do not simply punish one person. Instead, they send a warning signal to every talented leader considering whether to invest their energy here.”

Pillen’s office declined to make the governor available for an interview or answer specific questions. In a statement, Pillen’s spokeswoman said: “It’s political silly season, so this latest angle is no surprise.

“Now even on the nitrates issue — which everyone agrees is a problem and required all options on the table to address — you are second-guessing the Legislature’s passage of one of three bills to address the nitrate issue, which zero money was even granted out,” the spokeswoman, Laura Strimple, said. “The premises of your questions cherry-pick quotes from disgruntled bureaucrats while ignoring subject-matter experts’ contrary opinions.”

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Bushell’s company started 2024 with momentum. It had a new name, Ethos Connected. It had a new “state-of-the-art sensor production facility” in Lincoln’s Haymarket, unveiled in January.

It had a lobbyist working to get taxpayer dollars set aside for its technology.

And it appeared to have an ally in the Governor’s Mansion. Pillen spoke at the facility’s opening.

Early that year, Bostar introduced a bill seeking to address the problem of nitrate contamination. The bill would help rural Nebraskans with nitrate-laced drinking water to pay for water filtration systems. And it set aside up to $10 million to install real-time nitrate sensors in monitoring wells statewide.

The lobbying group Husch Blackwell Strategies had put the proposal in his hands, Bostar said in an interview this year. State reports show Bushell’s company paid the firm $39,000 to lobby in 2024, including on the real-time sensor bill.

The technology would save farmers money and help keep Nebraska’s groundwater clean, Bostar said at the bill’s public hearing.

But in public documents, state scientists harbored doubts. The bill’s fiscal note – a state agency memo estimating the cost of the law – mentioned that the Department of Environment and Energy was “not aware of current technology to obtain real-time quality data.”

Bushell testified at the February 2024 hearing and pushed back. “That is false,” she said. “Our company makes nitrogen sensors right here in Lincoln, Nebraska.” Ethos already had one client, the Twin Platte Natural Resource District, piloting its nitrate sensors. The district’s general manager told state groundwater experts that the real-time data gathered by the company’s sensors seemed accurate in early testing. He hoped to install the probes across the district.

At the state level, the effort to sell officials on the sensors reached the environmental agency’s headquarters in Lincoln, records show.

Four days after Macy sent his memo casting doubt on the sensors to Pillen’s office, a deputy director at the Department of Natural Resources sent Macy a copy of the specifications for Ethos Connected’s nitrate sensor “in case you guys have an interest.” In another email weeks later, one state groundwater specialist told another there were “documents on desk from Ethos for you to review.”

Macy, who left Pillen’s cabinet in April 2024 and joined the EPA in February 2025, declined to comment for this story.

The month he left his state environmental post, lawmakers set aside $1 million for the sensors. The new bill’s fiscal note – rewritten by state agency leaders and approved by Pillen’s policy adviser, emails show – no longer referenced doubts about the technology.

Pillen mentioned the nitrate sensor funding in his farewell address to lawmakers that month. Weeks later, an NDEE deputy director emailed Bushell, initiating plans to spend the funds. The deputy, Andrew Dunkley, invited Bushell to meet Macy’s interim replacement, Thad Fineran, in a May 2024 email obtained by Flawater.

“This is absolutely incredible! Did you read my mind?!” Bushell wrote back. “I JUST said I needed to reach out and see if there was any chance Thad would be available for a quick meet tomorrow.”

Dunkley suggested they meet in Ogallala in the coming weeks if his schedule permitted. “Regardless, we’d love to chat on the sensors and what could work with the program dollars,” Dunkley wrote.

The next day, in a separate email to Fineran, Dunkley suggested Fineran talk to Dave Lopez, Pillen’s chief of staff, about the money earmarked for nitrate sensors.

Dunkley said the governor’s policy adviser “mentioned the need to probably go through a bid process for the real-time nitrate sensors project.” And he suggested the governor himself was directing the funds.

“We’ll want to discuss strategic direction with (the Governor’s Office) throughout the process as we receive direction from the Governor,” Dunkley wrote.

Dunkley, who was laid off by the state last summer, declined to comment. Fineran, who served as the interim agency director for six months in 2024, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

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By August 2024, Bushell, now a high-paid state contractor, was installed in biweekly meetings on the $307 million EPA grant “to help inform the team on BioEconomic efforts, how (the grant) plays into it, and how we stay aligned with the Governor’s intent,” Dunkley wrote in an email to Valentine.

Pillen’s office later called Bushell “instrumental” in securing it and other federal grants “through extensive engagement with federal officials.” Bushell’s invoices to the state listed only three actions tied to the EPA grant, including a pair of meetings with a deputy EPA administrator in June and July 2024, the Examiner reported.

The emails obtained by Flatwater show that, independent of Bushell, EPA leaders reached out to the Governor’s Office, contacting Chief of Staff Lopez to initiate a July call and “provide an update to the governor in follow up to their previous conversation.”

Bushell was added to the call list at Lopez’s request, according to the emails. Pillen participated in both calls.

Pillen’s office did not answer questions about whether Bushell had prior meetings with the EPA. Strimple, the governor’s spokeswoman, said Pillen’s office saw “no need to engage” with Flatwater’s questions given “the critical flaws in your main questions regarding this nitrate management initiative.”

“The success of that $307 million initiative may not fit your narrative, but it is nevertheless quite real and will help real Nebraska communities.”

As she became a frequent visitor to the state’s Fallbrook office building as a consultant through one of her firms, Bushell lobbied environmental agency officials on behalf of the other, the emails show.

In August, she emailed Dunkley, offering to bring a sensor and an Ethos engineer in for a visit. Dunkley declined, telling her the state was still considering seeking competitive bids for the dollars, “so we are not meeting with any companies yet.”

“But if we get to a point where we can start those types of discussions, I will let you know!” Dunkley wrote.

The state never sought bids for the program.

Instead, Dunkley sent Pillen’s policy adviser a memo in October indicating the department would allow “area specific bids where existing infrastructure is in place” in a plan that appeared to favor the Twin Platte NRD, where Ethos equipment had already been installed, according to emails.

In the end, the state never spent the money – with Ethos Connected or anyone else, according to the Legislature’s Fiscal Office.

That was news to Bostar, the lawmaker who ushered the money from proposal to law.

“I’m disappointed it wasn’t spent,” he said. “The purpose of those provisions, I believe, was important.”

Statement From Governor’s Spokeswoman

Here is the full statement from Laura Strimple, Gov. Jim Pillen’s spokeswoman, in response to questions sent to the Governor’s Office for this story:

“It’s political silly season, so this latest angle is no surprise. Now even on the nitrates issue — which everyone agrees is a problem and required all options on the table to address — you are second-guessing the Legislature’s passage of one of three bills to address the nitrate issue, which zero money was even granted out. The premises of your questions cherry-pick quotes from disgruntled bureaucrats while ignoring subject-matter experts’ contrary opinions. 

“Given the critical flaws in your main questions regarding this nitrate management initiative, we see no need to engage on your other questions, most of which the Governor has already addressed on record extensively. To be sure, the impact of the $307 million EPA grant to Nebraska overwhelmingly speaks for itself, as evidenced by the investment of those resources into Nebraska communities and water infrastructure right now. Just today, the Governor rolled out more than half of those investments while at Husker Harvest Days in Grand Island, will be in Norfolk next week announcing a major sub-grant into that community’s water system, with much more to come to protect and enhance Nebraska’s vital water resources. 

“The success of that $307 million initiative may not fit your narrative, but it is nevertheless quite real and will help real Nebraska communities.”

This story was originally published by Flatwater Free Press, an independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories in Nebraska that matter. Read the article at: https://flatwaterfreepress.org/records-raise-more-questions-about-influence-of-pillens-hand-picked-no-bid-contractor/