LINCOLN — Gov. Jim Pillen’s administration, facing scrutiny for a no-bid emergency contract with a lobbyist to whom he steered more than $2 million in state money, has again changed its story about how and why the contract was awarded.

A governor’s spokeswoman tells the Examiner that agricultural tech CEO Julie Bushell had already been helping the state, free of charge, boost a federal grant application in the waning days of the Biden administration, so it made sense to award the formal contract to her once lawmakers approved the funding for it.

But that is at least the third different story the Pillen administration has told about the contract, which has been probed by State Auditor Mike Foley, who argues it smacked of possible “favoritism.”

First, Pillen touted Bushell’s connections for helping Nebraska nab an announced cornstalk ethanol plant project in Phelps County. Foley and others have questioned whether it will ever be built. Bushell has said it will.

Second, Pillen’s staff argued that lawmakers left the Nebraska Department of Economic Development too little time to complete a required legislative report by a state deadline DED missed anyway. It wrote the report after Foley asked for a copy.

This week, Pillen’s team, under questioning by the Examiner, offered a new explanation for the need to access federal funds near the end of the Biden administration, altering the order of events from what state leaders had told Foley. 

At issue is whether the state’s shifting explanations line up with the timeline the Governor’s Office now acknowledges. 

Records show that the major federal grant applications the administration later cited as key reasons it had to hire Bushell were submitted before the governor recommended her and before the no-bid contract was executed, raising questions about what emergency justified bypassing the state’s competitive bidding process.

Administration officials now argue that Bushell was already working without pay for months to help the state secure grant funds before the Legislature passed a law funding the work or DED offered her the contract at Pillen’s urging.

Foley, however, cast doubt on the new story.

“I have never heard anyone claim that she was working pro bono for the state,” Foley said Wednesday.

The story changed after the Examiner sought specifics from the Governor’s Office about how and when Bushell helped secure the $307 million Environmental Protection Agency grant from the Biden administration the state used to justify choosing her.

Questions arose because the predecessor agency of the Nebraska Department of Water, Energy and Environment, in seeking the $307 million grant, had already applied for the grant on April 1, 2024, the same day Legislative Bill 1412 was signed into law, according to the department’s own documents and Foley’s audit letters. The law took effect the next day.

LB 1412 included the bioeconomy funding that Economic Development used to award the emergency no-bid contract to Bushell’s Global Sustainability Developers, skipping the typically required step of going out for bids.

All the Biden-era federal grant applications submitted by state economic development and water agencies had been completed by the state agencies before the start of Bushell’s contract as the state’s bioeconomy consultant in May 2024.

Pillen spokeswoman Laura Strimple, in response to Examiner questions about how Bushell helped, said the most “critical time to maximize Nebraska’s [grant] award was between the application submission and the award” on July 18, 2024. Her contract began in early May 2024.

Strimple repeated the administration’s prior argument that Nebraska had received more per capita in federal funding than most similarly sized states would expect, an assertion Foley has said overlooks complicated formulas for federal grants.

Strimple also touted the return on investment of $2.5 million for the bioeconomy contract versus up to $550 million in federal funding the Governor’s Office says the state received. She said the state “invested in” Bushell for results, “and she delivered.”

“This consultant was instrumental in achieving that through extensive engagement with federal officials to tell Nebraska’s story throughout 2024, both before and after the application submission,” Strimple said.

Some people in and around the Nebraska Department of Economic Development previously acknowledged seeing Bushell in some grant-related talks before LB 1412 or her contract, which complicates the state’s legal reasoning for seeking no bids.

Bushell has not responded to calls or messages seeking comment since the initial Examiner story about the contract, nor did she respond to a text this week asking what work she did to help the state secure the $307 million EPA grant.

But her invoices to DED list three actions tied to the EPA grant process after the water agency’s application was filed. One noted a June 2024 meeting with EPA Deputy Administrator Janet McCabe, a month before the grant was approved. 

The other two noted the grant approval in July and an October follow-up discussion on grant implementation.

The Governor’s Office had argued DED had no choice but to seek the emergency no-bid contract because of the urgency of getting the work done before a change in presidential administrations. Pillen’s team now says the work was already being done for free.

If that’s the case, Foley said, it is harder to argue that DED and the Governor’s Office had a legal justification for using an emergency no-bid contract, because the work was already being done for free by the governor’s favored contractor.

“None of that qualifies as an emergency,” Foley said. “They’ve been claiming that they knew there was money out there, and we need to get someone out there right away.” 

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/2026/02/05/pillen-team-offers-new-explanation-for-timing-of-2-5-million-no-bid-emergency-contract/