LINCOLN —  Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, in his end of session speech to state lawmakers, called the state budget “historically conservative.”

Pillen portrayed the session as “positive,” highlighting the passage of some of his priorities this session, including limiting high school and college sports participation to sex at birth, banning lab-grown meat, prohibiting cell phones in schools and a merger of the state’s agencies in charge of overseeing water quality and quantity. He also praised a budget with a two-year average general fund spending growth of 1% a year.

“I believe we are setting the Cornhusker State up for success, and when we commit to strong fiscal conservatism and reduce the tax burden for Nebraska families, the potential of this place for generations to come is beyond our understanding,” Pillen said.

Pillen said he and state lawmakers worked together to pass a “budget package that said no when we needed to say no” and put the state’s “idle pillowcase money to work.”

Nebraska lawmakers balanced the budget mostly by using the state “rainy day” cash reserve fund and a series of cash transfers and spending cuts to fill budget holes. Democratic lawmakers have compared the budget to “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” a fairy tale where the ruler is naked but his subjects pretend he has extravagant clothing. Pillen tried and then withdrew his intended $14.5 million in general fund line-item vetoes to the budget.

Property tax relief, a top Pillen priority, was dealt a blow when the Legislature’s last shot at meeting his pledge to keep property taxes flat this year fell short last month, Nebraska’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” that would have shifted sales taxes toward property tax relief.

That bill became the third property tax package in the past year to propose and lack support for broadening the sales tax base to lower property taxes. Pillen’s push for “Winner-Take-All” failed, as grabbing too few votes to overcome a filibuster.

The governor, whose family owns a major hog operation based in Columbus, alluded to addressing property taxes in future sessions.

“We can decrease spending and actually fix our tax system — and we have to fix it because it is badly broken,” he said.

Pillen achieved some of his culture war-related goal issues, including the school sports law, a law against foreign agents, age verification for future social media accounts and the ban on lab-grown meat.

Pillen didn’t directly address some of the session’s controversies, among them several heated debates as the GOP-majority Legislature pushed back against a handful of ballot measures passed by Nebraska voters, including new laws requiring paid sick leave, raising the minimum wage, repealing school vouchers, and legalizing medical marijuana.

He said he would continue to work with lawmakers to serve the people of Nebraska — and this time made no mention of a possible special session.

“I’m really proud to have partnered with you all on many of these initiatives,” Pillen said, “So good news in just seven or so months, we all get to do it over again.”

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/2025/06/02/nebraska-governor-brags-about-hi...