If anybody can come up with a better name for this weekly update, leave a suggestion in the comments. I’m going to try to put this on Saturdays, since that allows me to cover the whole week. All the unicameral news from this week, including Governor Heineman’s plan to gut the University of Nebraska, after the flip.

The big news this week was Dave Heineman’s “State of the State” address. In his speech, Heineman proposed nearly half a billion dollars in tax cuts, but only a 1% increase in the budget for the University of Nebraska. What does this mean for all of us? Well, University President J.B. Milliken criticized the plan, saying that it would lead to program cuts and tuition hikes. Our growth in this state is absolutely dependent on offering a quality, affordable college education. If you hinder the university system’s growth, you hinder the state’s long-term future. But more dangerous than his budget proposal, is this question from Dave Heineman:

“Is the day coming when the NU Foundation – which has assets of more than $1 billion – will have to be used for university operations?”

Clearly, Heineman can’t be that ignorant. The NU Foundation uses the vast majority of its assets on scholarships and construction projects. If you require those funds to be diverted to paying teacher salaries, or university programs, you will not only see a rise in tuition, but also a drop in the number of scholarships offered. Which is all a way of saying, it’s going to cost even more to go to the University of Nebraska if Dave Heineman has his way. As many of us here can attest to, it’s already quite a hefty cost.

Heineman seems well prepared to sacrifice the University system in this state so that he can push through his tax cut package. This ignores the real tax burden on Nebraskans, property taxes, in favor of a politically simple income tax cut. Good politics, however, does not always make for good policy. And ignoring the very real future and present problems facing this state for these tax cuts is bad policy. Heineman could compromise, make the tax cuts slightly smaller, and still fund the University system the way it should be funded. But given his history of opposition to sound education policy, this seems unlikely.

The sales tax exemption for college textbooks picked up a few cosponsors this week, including Sens. Gwen Howard, DiAnna Schimek, and Kent Rogert. Our friends at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln helped to bring this issue to the attention of the legislature and Sen. Nantkes. Last week, to help bring publicity for the bill, the Student Union displayed over 400 packages of Ramen noodles, the amount that the average college student could purchase with the tax savings from this bill.
Some of the bills introduced this week:

- LB 366 introduced by Ray Janssen, would provide for a $12,000 homestead exemption and state funding of community colleges. LB 367, also introduced by Janssen, would reduce the state sales tax.

- LB 198 introduced by DiAnna Schimek, would place restrictions on automatic campaign “robocalls,” limiting campaign calls to once per day, between the hours of 8 a.m. and 9 p.m.

- LB 310 introduced by Ray Aguilar, would, among other things, require a person requesting an absentee ballot to pay postage, and move the deadline for such requests to one week earlier. In other words, make it more difficult to vote. A real populist, that Ray Aguilar.

Stay warm, folks.