{"id":17374,"date":"2015-05-07T15:38:05","date_gmt":"2015-05-07T21:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=17374"},"modified":"2017-04-06T12:42:58","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T18:42:58","slug":"hansen-learns-the-ropes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=17374","title":{"rendered":"Hansen learns the ropes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Above: Sen. Hansen hiked in the Rocky Mountains last spring.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sen. Matt Hansen is the Legislature\u2019s youngest senator, having graduated from Lincoln Southwest High School in 2006. He continued on to the University of Nebraska\u2014Lincoln, where he earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in psychology and political science. Later as a law student there, he specialized in alternative dispute resolution\u2014not knowing how quickly the skill would serve him as a state senator.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you had asked me even five years ago, I don\u2019t know if I would have predicted this office,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Getting involved in his northeast Lincoln neighborhood of University Place, he saw how issues affected the people in his community. This inspired him to run for office.<\/p>\n

After his election, he learned that his status as the youngest senator in the body by tradition deems him chairperson of the Legislature\u2019s smallest committee\u2014the Enrollment and Review Committee.<\/p>\n

A committee of one, legislative rules indicate that the E&R chairperson is to: report bills which have been engrossed, correct the spelling of words and the erroneous division and hyphenation of words, capitalize or decapitalize words, convert masculine or feminine referents to neutral gender when appropriate and change numbers from words to figures or from figures to words in legislation.<\/p>\n

Good thing\u00a0Hansen likes details. As his tenure continues, he looks forward to applying his mediation experience to good use with his legislative colleagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always been interested in problem solving,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m a details guy. I like getting down to the nitty gritty of an issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before his new role as a senator, that attention to detail drew Hansen to the theater. He takes special pleasure in working backstage for Lincoln Community Playhouse productions. He operated the light board for their 2013 run of \u201cLittle Women<\/em>\u201d and again for \u201cMiss Nelson is Missing<\/em>\u201d this spring.<\/p>\n

But don\u2019t expect to see this soft-spoken senator commanding center stage any time soon. He much prefers to work behind-the-scenes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI resent people who think the technical side of theater is for actors who didn\u2019t get cast,\u201d he said with a grin.<\/p>\n

Like all new senators, Hansen is tasked with learning about a number of diverse issues in a very short time period. Luckily, he\u2019s been able to lean on his colleagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a strange experience to go from candidate to full-blown senator overnight,\u201d he said. \u201cI really appreciated the orientation process and having the opportunity to soak up as much knowledge as possible from current and former senators.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sen. Matt Hansen is the Legislature\u2019s youngest senator, having graduated from Lincoln Southwest High School in 2006. He continued on to the University of Nebraska\u2014Lincoln, where he earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in psychology and political science. Later as a law student there, he specialized in alternative dispute resolution\u2014not knowing how quickly the skill would serve him as a state senator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21299,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[167,18],"tags":[198],"class_list":["post-17374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-senator-features","tag-sen-hansen-hiked"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/MeetHansen_blog2017.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17374"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21659,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17374\/revisions\/21659"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}