{"id":38672,"date":"2025-04-25T17:22:40","date_gmt":"2025-04-25T23:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=38672"},"modified":"2025-04-25T17:22:40","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T23:22:40","slug":"potential-third-term-for-legislators-clears-first-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=38672","title":{"rendered":"Potential third term for legislators clears first round"},"content":{"rendered":"

A proposal that would extend term limits for members of the Nebraska Legislature was amended and advanced to select file April 25.<\/p>\n

\"Sen.
Sen. Robert Dover<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LR19CA, introduced by Norfolk Sen. Robert Dover, would extend the current limit of two consecutive four-year terms for state senators to three consecutive four-year terms.<\/p>\n

As introduced, the proposal would be placed on the November 2026 general election ballot. If approved by voters, the measure would take effect in 2028.<\/p>\n

An Executive Board amendment, adopted 30-7, instead would move the ballot question to a special election that would coincide with the May 2026 primary election. Under the Nebraska Constitution, the Legislature may call a special state election with approval of four-fifths of elected members, or 40 votes.<\/p>\n

Dover said the state\u2019s unicameral system means that term-limited senators don\u2019t have an option to continue serving their constituents in a new role.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn all other states in the U.S. there are two chambers so that when a representative is termed out, they go to the other chamber and serve \u2014 taking their eight years of experience with them to continue to serve their state,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Speaker John Arch of La Vista supported the measure, saying the current two-term limit creates a host of challenges, including requiring relatively inexperienced members to take on leadership roles while they are still learning how to navigate the Legislature.<\/p>\n

For example, he said, in the 2025 session, nearly one-third of current senators are in their first year of service and 11 of 15 committee chairpersons are new to their roles.<\/p>\n

New senators \u201cdesperately\u201d need the perspective and institutional knowledge of experienced members in order to be effective and to create quality legislation, Arch said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI recognize that there\u2019s also downsides to offering another term \u2026 but on the whole, I think it\u2019s the right thing for the Legislature,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Central City Sen. Loren Lippincott offered an amendment that would place a lifetime limit of three terms on members of the Legislature. Service prior to Jan. 1, 2023, would not be counted for purposes of calculating terms served under the amendment.<\/p>\n

Lippincott said 12 years is a reasonable amount of time for a state senator to serve and that a lifetime cap would guard against the kind of \u201ccareer politicians\u201d that Nebraskans voted against when they enacted term limits nearly 20 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis change \u2026 is the best way, in my opinion, to balance experienced leadership, democratic renewal and fairness in our Unicameral Legislature,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Sen. Merv Riepe of Ralston opposed Lippincott\u2019s amendment, saying it would hinder the ability of young people to return to the Capitol and serve again after taking a break to raise families or focus on careers.<\/p>\n

The Lippincott amendment failed on a 13-22 vote. Twenty-five votes were needed.<\/p>\n

Following the 30-7 adoption of the committee amendment, senators voted 32-7 to advance LR19CA to the second round of debate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A proposal that would extend term limits for members of the Nebraska Legislature was amended and advanced to select file April 25.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38653,"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":false,"_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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[277],"class_list":["post-38672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-executive-board","tag-sen-robert-dover"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/LR19Dover4-25-25a.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38672","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=38672"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38674,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38672\/revisions\/38674"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}