Lawmakers face logjam of bills

LINCOLN (AP) - Imagine hundreds of planes - wide bodies, corporate jets and single engine Piper Cubs - all low on fuel and in holding patterns waiting to land.

Only one runway is open and a gathering storm is threatening to shut down the airport, yet the folks in the control tower are only allowing only the Piper Cubs to land.

If you can grasp the urgency of that situation, you'll have a good idea of what the Legislature has done - and has yet to do - in the 2004 session.

Monday marks the halfway point of the 60-day session, yet lawmakers have passed just five bills.

And they have only 30 days left to solve a $211 million budget shortfall and try to deal with scores of important bills, including measures that would change the state's method of execution, overhaul the mental health system, allow Nebraskans to carry concealed weapons, force the smallest school districts to merge with larger ones, ask voters to approve casino gambling; fund the Nebraska State Fair with lottery money and pay for higher-than-expected incentives to groups building ethanol plants.

"It's like an engraver doing detail work on the perfect stamp while the house is burning - and not moving," said Sen. Dave Landis of Lincoln, a 24-year veteran lawmaker.

Senators have managed to advance the casino gambling measure (LB14CA) to the second of three rounds of debate. But after several tries to reach a consensus on the issue, they seem no further than when the session began.

They disagree on how many casinos to ask voters to approve, where the casinos should be located, and on what should be done with the revenue they generate.

Lawmakers also are bogged down over a proposed ban on human cloning.

The bill's sponsor, Sen. Adrian Smith of Gering, failed to end a filibuster against the measure (LB602), which appears to be finished for the session.

"We're talking about big, contentious issues, but we're talking about them as if we had been dropped into a vat of molasses," Landis said.

And lawmakers are getting hung up on seemingly minor things.

They spent the better part of two days debating a bill (LB227) that would ban people from riding in the cargo area of a truck.

They have been high-centered on a measure (LB906) that would require tattoo and body piercing artists to obtain a state license. They argued for hours on a bill (LB32) on how to pay for storm water improvements required by the federal government.

"The less important issues have been talked about endlessly," Landis said.

Unforeseen turbulence also slowed the process.

Sen. Mike Foley of Lincoln dragged out debate on a bill (LB270) meant to bolster Nebraska's hate-crimes law by introducing an amendment that would add the phrase "unborn child" to the measure.

Speaker Curt Bromm of Wahoo said one reason that so many contentious issues are in holding patterns is because lawmakers have spent most of their time over the past few years dealing with the state's continuing budget woes.

"We have accumulated some major hot-button topics," he said.

Bromm said there have been similar logjams in the past.

What ultimately gets done this session, he said, largely will depend on two things: Next week's economic forecast, which could deepen the budget gap; and how lawmakers decide to deal with a $151 million court judgment that Nebraska has been ordered to pay in a lawsuit that accused the state of blocking plans to build a nuclear waste dump.

"Those things will affect how much else we are able to do," the speaker said. "But when it comes right down to it, we will do what we have to do."