Zach Wendling
LINCOLN — A legislative proposal to let an independent, nonpartisan commission set the compensation of future Nebraska state senators is now “on pause” and will fall to the bottom of legislative priorities in 2025.
State Sen. Ben Hansen of Blair, the sponsor of Legislative Resolution 25CA, announced the decision Monday after multiple senators spoke against the proposal during its first two hours of debate on Friday. Hansen said much of the opposition focused on issues that didn’t pertain to the proposal itself, and he wanted to move forward.
“In the good nature of not holding up the session for I don’t know how many more hours, I think we have some other work that needs to get done,” Hansen said.
Hansen said he still hopes to address the proposal later this year, or early next year, which if passed would send the final decision to voters at the November 2026 general election.
The intent of the commission is to remove lawmakers’ annual $12,000 salary from the Nebraska Constitution. Because it is in the Constitution, pay increases, or decreases, can’t happen without a statewide vote, unlike other state officials. The commission could also consider health care benefits, per diems or reimbursement rates.
Any compensation changes could occur no earlier than 2029, after lawmakers’ current terms.
Lawmakers ultimately would need to appropriate funds to cover any pay increases, Speaker John Arch of La Vista and Hansen said during debate. State Sen. John Fredrickson of Omaha suggested tightening the commission’s authority to make it a requirement.
Voters last approved a salary increase in 1988, bumping salaries up from $400 each month ($3,600 annually) to $1,000 each month ($12,000 annually).
“It’s not dead by any means,” Hansen said of his LR 25CA. “Just want to bring it up later and get the people’s work done first.”
‘We are not doing our jobs’
During Friday’s debate, State Sens. Machaela Cavanaugh of Omaha, Danielle Conrad of Lincoln and Megan Hunt of Omaha said lawmakers didn’t deserve raises if they wouldn’t support working families.
Cavanaugh said “we are not doing our jobs,” and she graded the Legislature’s work an “F.”
“We are nickel and diming people of Nebraska on everything,” Cavanaugh said. “I don’t feel that, in good conscience, I can support something to raise our own salary, as measly as our salary is, so long as we can’t also raise resources we give to people who are 50% of the poverty level, who make less than $12,000 a year.”
The progressive lawmakers pointed to proposals that they said could hurt workers or weaken protections for minimum wage, child care, affordable housing, transportation, food or education.
“They think that legislators deserve more than everyday working families, and I disagree,” Conrad said.
Conrad and Hunt said supporters speaking about reinforcing institutional strength and integrity were hypocritical, with Conrad saying they were only doing so “when it has an opportunity to benefit yourself, personally, financially, individually.”
Hunt said strength comes from lawmakers with the personal integrity to stand up for the legislative branch and their constituents, “not from a paycheck.”
“Pay raises are not going to make any lawmakers fight executive overreach,” Hunt said. “That takes leadership and courage.”
‘You get what you pay for’
State Sen. Myron Dorn of Adams, whose LR 7CA would increase legislative salaries up to $30,000, said he worked with Hansen on the commission idea. Dorn and Hansen will be term-limited in January 2027.
Dorn said lawmakers work an hourly wage of about $5.67 during the session and devote two to three days each week full time later in the year. He and others said it very much limits who even considers running for office.
In the lead-up to the debate, Dorn said emails echoed the comments from Cavanaugh, stating: “You’re not doing a good job, you’re not worth the pay that you have now.”
Dorn said he turned that around in his replies based on a philosophy his dad taught him, that “you get what you pay for.”
“When we’re answering those emails, I’m telling those people that if you’re complaining about the senators and low quality of people we have up here, just remember, you get what you pay for, and that happens quite often in life,” Dorn said.
Devoting ‘100%’ to the job
State Sen. Christy Armendariz of Omaha said that when she was considering running for office for the 2022 election, she approached her predecessor, former State Sen. Brett Lindstrom, and told him she needed to keep her full-time job.
Lindstrom hesitated, she said, but told her he thought she could pull it off. And she did for her first two years, working 6:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. during the week and working weekends.
But this year, she said she realized that wasn’t a sustainable path and that she wasn’t giving “100%” to either her constituents or her full-time position. So, she quit.
“It just isn’t my nature to do anything part way,” Armendariz said.
Armendariz said she would still run again, knowing it is a volunteer position, but “we’re really, really far away from getting super valuable people on the floor, unless they are self-funded in some other way.”
“I do think it is fair, since the people are the ones that are the recipients of what is done on this floor, the people should be the ones to make a decision whether they want to expand that pool of people that can be elected,” Armendariz said.
State Sens. Terrell McKinney and Ashlei Spivey, both of Omaha, as well as Cavanaugh and Hunt said the Legislature needs more diversity in its membership.
Similar to Armendariz, Spivey said she puts in 18 hours of work each day into her legislative duties and paid work outside the Capitol, while still needing to be a mother and wife. She said LR 25CA was a “weird dichotomy” between what lawmakers say versus what they do.
“I would love to have more women in the body that are parents, more folks of color, working people that can really bring perspectives and advocate for Nebraskans in a way in which I think that doesn’t always happen currently, or in our history,” Spivey said.
McKinney said something needs to change, which could help people “who care” decide to run.
‘Another political trap’
State Sen. Rob Dover of Norfolk said the proposal was a good idea but was “probably the right bill at a wrong time.”
He pointed to the state’s $457 million projected budget shortfall for the next two years, prior to any legislative action. Dover asked why the proposal was coming up while the state is considering cutting dollars for public health, the University of Nebraska, cancer research, dual credit reimbursement and affordable housing.
“It makes no sense to me whatsoever,” Dover said.
Dover, who will be term-limited in January 2029, warned his colleagues running for future office that if they voted for the proposal, it was a matter of when, not if, they’d have a mailer attacking them for doing so.
Conrad agreed and pointed to former State Sen. Tony Vargas of Omaha who was blasted for a similar 2018 proposal. Conrad said LR 25CA was “nothing more than another political trap.”
“It’s not a good faith effort to strengthen the institution,” she said. “It’s an effort to force Nebraska legislators to continually vote on their own pay raise and to use it against them at election time.”
Hansen said that if lawmakers do a “crappy job,” which he said he feels has happened in some years, the commission could decide to cut compensation.
“They could actually lower our pay, that’s what I love about this,” Hansen said. “The onus is on us, as representatives of the people of Nebraska to do a good job, to listen, to do the people’s work. And if we don’t, we could be SOL.”
It will ultimately be up to Speaker Arch whether he reschedules the measure. The proposal has about six hours left on first-round debate and would face two more debates, if advanced. At least 30 lawmakers would need to approve the bill on final reading.