Nebraska Legislative History

Compiling a legislative history for legislation during the bicameral era (from 1855 to 1935) is more difficult than compiling a legislative history for legislation during the unicameral era. The materials are older and verbatim transcripts were not produced. In any event, there are several sources of information for compiling a legislative history for bicameral era legislation: the House Journals, the Senate Journals, and the records of the bicameral legislatures.

Legislative history for the bicameral legislature is almost entirely contained in the published House Journals and the Senate Journals. Testimony before legislative committees and floor debates was not recorded. The House Journal and the Senate Journal contain the text of resolutions and memorials, committee reports on bills or particular matters referred to them, action on bills including the text of amendments, votes, messages from the governor, and complete indices.

For this period, the committee records are found on microfilm and are organized alphabetically by committee. Neither committee hearings nor floor debates were recorded during this period. Whatever each committee retained was preserved on film. At most, this would include committee minutes of hearings, committee statements, and exhibits. All one can do is to see what is available, and know that whatever is on the film is all there is available.

Committee records for this period are organized alphabetically by committee, then by minute and bill books. The bill books include each bill considered by the committee, so this is a good source for the text of the introduced bills. But be aware that not every bill is referred to a committee. If the "Chronology of Bills" section in the Legislative Journal indicates that a bill was "Placed on General File" after "Read First Time," this shows that the bill was never referred to a committee. Floor debate is the only legislative history available for these bills.

The minute books contain the hearing transcripts. There is a schedule of hearings at the beginning of the minute book. This is a table of all the bills heard by the committee, the hearing dates, and whether or not the bill was advanced to General File. The "Introducer’s Statement of Intent" generally follows the days hearings. The "Committee Statement" was placed in the bill book prior to 1982, rather than being in the minute book. Also, look at the "Executive Session Notes." All of these documents (other than the verbatim hearing records) are short, under one page.

Committee records for this period are not filmed in separate bill and minute books. Rather, each day’s hearing record has the bills heard that day, the hearing, exhibits, and other material.

The order is:

• Introduced Bill
• Introducer's Statement of Intent
• Hearing Transcript
• Executive Session Notes
• Committee Report with any Amendments
• Committee Statement (Only for bills voted out of committee)
• Exhibits

These records are only available online at the Nebraska Legislature website. Some materials such as the Legislative Journal go back farther.

Floor debate is filmed separately from committee records. Unfortunately, the recorder was not kept on consistently until 1973, so debate may not be available for each day the legislature was in session. There may be missing pages or pages that are indexed incorrectly. The index to the debate is by bill number, not subject, and is located at the beginning of the first roll of each debate film series. Page number references the debate. There are over 10,000 pages of floor debate for each legislature. The index is merely a notation of what page(s) a bill was the subject of debate or some other action.

A proposed Nebraska constitutional amendment may or may not have a legislative history, depending on how it originated. Articles III and XVI of the Nebraska Constitution set out the two ways of amending the Nebraska Constitution. Article III covers the initiative method of amending the Nebraska Constitution. There is no legislative role in the initiative process; therefore there will be no legislative history. Article XVI permits the Legislature to propose amendments. These bills are styled CA rather than LB. Just like LB’s, CA’s may or may not be referred to a committee for a hearing. CA’s are indexed in the subject indexes of the Legislative Journal and the Laws of Nebraska. CA’s are listed in the "Chronology of Constitutional Amendment Resolutions" in the Legislative Journal following the "Chronology of Bills."

There are source notes following each constitutional provision indicating the date amended. If a hearing was held, it generally would have been held in the previous year. If a constitutional amendment was approved by the Legislature, it normally would be placed on the general election ballot of the following year.

If you look up a bill in the chronology of bills, find the hearing your need to search to find the legislative history for that bill, and then discover that your hearing has nothing to do with the bill you searched, then the bill you searched for was gutted and another bill was substituted for the original.