Governor Pillen is back in the Governor’s Mansion slowly healing from the terrible spill he took on his horse shortly before Christmas. He has recently done a series of media interviews to show that he is OK and getting back to work.

Please make no mistake the Governor took an awful spill, and I believe that he is probably in more pain and worse shape than he’s letting on in these interviews. But you have to respect that. He is doing his best to be ready for the 2025 session of the Unicameral.

This session promises to be a doozy. The 2025 Unicameral session promises to be one where some major decisions need to be made to solve the complex problems facing the good life state.

Governor Pillen theoretically has more power than he did in his previous two sessions. After the last election, the Nebraska Republicans now really do control the Senate. The supposedly nonpartisan body can provide a filibuster-proof setting to promote the Governor’s agenda.

What will that agenda be? Will he focus on partisan political issues like winner-take-all and what bathrooms transgender students can use? Or will he focus on the real problems that affect the majority of the state?

For instance, how do we fix the 432-million-dollar budget shortfall while providing property tax relief at the same time? Where do you make the cuts? On Education? Prisons? Highways? Does the state make cuts in child welfare programs? Medicaid? Where do you make the cuts?

Or is the answer increasing the revenue?

If you cut property taxes, where do you make it up? The new money coming in from the casinos should help, as should the revenue that came in from political campaigns concerned about the blue dot. It probably won’t be enough to offset the needs of the state. Cuts in programs or taxing previously untaxed goods and services are the only solutions that I can see.

The Governor didn’t have a very workable plan to reduce property taxes during the special session, does he have a better plan this time?

During my talk radio career, I would sometimes ask my callers where they would like to see cuts made in the federal or state budgets, but there was a catch. They could only mention cuts in programs that benefitted the caller. In other words, you couldn’t say you supported cuts in Medicaid if you weren’t on Medicaid. You couldn’t request cuts in farm subsidies if you weren’t a farmer, and so on and so on.

Nobody could do it. They always supported things like getting rid of food stamps even though none of them were on food stamps. They never supported cuts in programs that affected them.

It remains to be seen though if the Governor is going to be more of a stateman or a politician this session. In some of his media interviews, it looks like he’s more worried about being a politician. After all, there’s a good chance that he’ll be primaried by Charles Herbster in the next election. Herbster is a MAGA Republican with deep pockets who barely lost to Pillen two years ago, so Pillen has got to please the far right.

In one of his interviews, Pillen addressed the non-issue of high school transgender athletes. He said he didn’t want his granddaughters showering with boys. That made me laugh. I have no doubt his granddaughters have showered with lesbians after gym class. If showering with a transgender person (which probably will never happen) was such a concern, why isn’t showering with a lesbian?

The obvious reason is that there is no political gain in that. Boys and girls have been showering with gays and lesbians forever with no problems whatsoever. If Jim Pillen’s granddaughters were to ever shower with a transgender person, I’d be willing to bet it would bother Grandpa more than it would bother them.

So as Governor Pillen gets back on his horse and rides into the 109th session of the Unicameral, I wonder if the time will be spent on fixing real problems that affect everyone in the state, or the emotional political ones that motivate a far-right voting block and get a lot of talk on social media.

So, Giddy up. The Unicameral is in session. It’s going to be an interesting ride.

Tom Becka is a long time Nebraska broadcaster who for over 30 years has been covering Omaha and Midwest issues on both radio and TV. He has been a guest on numerous national cable and news shows, filled in for nationally syndicated talk radio programs and Talkers Magazine has recognized him as one of the Top 100 talk show hosts in the country 10 times. Never afraid to ruffle some feathers, his ‘Becka’s Beat’ commentaries can be found online on Youtube and other digital platforms.

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