{"id":5876,"date":"2012-01-26T12:59:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-26T18:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=5876"},"modified":"2013-09-16T10:42:24","modified_gmt":"2013-09-16T16:42:24","slug":"measure-would-expand-impeachable-offense-timeline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=5876","title":{"rendered":"Measure would expand impeachable offense timeline"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Senators gave first-round approval Jan. 26 to a proposed change to the Nebraska Constitution regarding impeachment of civil officers.<\/p>\n<p>LR19CA, introduced by Lincoln Sen. Bill Avery, would place a proposed constitutional amendment on the November 2012 general election ballot that would add a misdemeanor related to the election by which a civil officer was elected to office as an impeachable offense.<\/p>\n<p>Currently, the constitution states that a civil officer may be impeached for any misdemeanor committed while in office.<\/p>\n<p>Avery said the change is necessary to cover criminal activity undertaken by a candidate in order to win an office, including election fraud or signing false statements.<\/p>\n<p>Holdrege Sen. Tom Carlson expressed concern that the bill does not specify what would constitute an impeachable offense related to the pursuit of elected office.<\/p>\n<p>Avery said the Nebraska Supreme Court has specified through case law three crimes that would rise to the level of an impeachable offense:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>a simple neglect of duty committed for a corrupt purpose;<\/li>\n<li>an act that violates a statute, constitutional provision or oath and is related to the officer\u2019s duties; or<\/li>\n<li>a neglect or disregard of duty that is so gross or flagrant that the officer\u2019s willful and corrupt intent may be inferred.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re talking about standards that have been in place in this state for over 100 years,\u201d Avery said.<\/p>\n<p>Omaha Sen. Steve Lathrop spoke in favor of the bill, saying the word \u201cmisdemeanor\u201d has a different meaning when used in the constitution than it does in criminal law. \u201cIt\u2019s a term of art,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Lathrop said an individual who commits a crime to gain an office should be subject to impeachment if that same crime is an impeachable offense when committed while in office.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow can we argue with that principle?\u201d he said. \u201cThat just makes perfect sense.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Following adoption of a technical amendment offered by the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee on a 33-0 vote, senators advanced LR19CA to select file 34-0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Senators gave first-round approval Jan. 26 to a proposed change to the Nebraska Constitution regarding impeachment of civil officers. LR19CA,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[90],"class_list":["post-5876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-military-and-veterans-affairs","tag-sen-bill-avery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5876","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=5876"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13493,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5876\/revisions\/13493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}