Transcript Prepared By the Clerk of the Legislature Transcriber's Office Business and Labor Committee February 07, 2011 [LB397 LB482 LB555 LB564 LB619 LB623 LB624 LB664 LR29CA] The Committee on Business and Labor met at 1:30 p.m. on Monday, February 7, 2011, in Room 1524 of the State Capitol, Lincoln, Nebraska, for the purpose of conducting a public hearing on LB397, LB482, LB555, LB564, LB623, LB624, LB619, LB664, and LR29CA. Senators present: Steve Lathrop, Chairperson; Tanya Cook, Vice Chairperson; Brad Ashford; Tom Carlson; Burke Harr; Jim Smith; and Norm Wallman. Senators absent: None. SENATOR LATHROP: Good afternoon. My name is Steve Lathrop. I'm the Chair of the Business and Labor Committee, and we're here today to hear a series of bills and they generally relate to the subject matter of the Commission on Industrial Relations. We're still waiting on two members to get here and so I'll take this opportunity to tell you a few of the ground rules that they're very familiar with. And hopefully by the time I get done with this, they'll be here and then I can introduce everyone before we start. As the Chair of the committee, I have a number of responsibilities, and one of them, and it's very basic and fundamental, is to keep the hearing moving to make sure that the information that we're getting is new from one testifier to the next and that we're not caught up in a great deal of repetition; the other is to make sure that we're out of here at a decent hour and to make sure that those senators who are going to introduce bills today do not have to wait until 11:00 tonight to do that. So in order to move the process along, I'd like to kind of cover some of the ground rules. And to explain to those of you who have not participated in a hearing in the Legislature before, I'll start with some pretty basic stuff. When we have a bill that's up, we'll take them in the order that they are listed outside on the sheet, which would be to begin with LB397, which is my bill. We'll take these bills in order, and the process is the introducer, the state senator, will introduce the bill; then we will hear from the proponents or those people that favor the measure; we'll hear from opponents; and then we will hear from those who are to testify in a neutral capacity. That's the process. Then the state senator that's introduced the bill is permitted an opportunity to close, which means they get the last word and can have some final remarks. It's also important that we maintain a level of decorum through these proceedings and so I want to talk to you about that as well. If you have a cell phone, I'll ask you to turn it off or at least to turn it to the vibrate mode. It's also important and I don't know if anybody intends to do this but there's no signs. You don't hold up signs or express your approval by applauding or cheering or your disapproval by booing or anything of the sort. It's important that we maintain decorum through these proceedings. If you are testifying on a bill, I will ask you to fill out a sign-in sheet and they are on the back table. It's important that the record properly reflect who was here, so to get your spelling right and make sure we know where you're from and that sort of thing, fill out the sheet. Put it into the wood basket here so that my committee clerk can begin the process of making a good record. We have a light system here, and you can look around the room. I will tell you we have a room, an overflow room, with a good number of people that also have an interest in the bills today, so when that happens it's not 1 Transcript Prepared By the Clerk of the Legislature Transcriber's Office Business and Labor Committee February 07, 2011 uncommon and it's certainly the practice in the Business and Labor Committee to use the light system. Let me tell you what that means. On the table there is a panel with three lights. When you sit down we will begin the stopwatch, or Kate does that--I don't do that but Kate does. She'll begin the stopwatch. You get three minutes to testify. Please understand that's not some bit of disrespectfulness on our part to put you on a timer but only to make sure that the hearing moves along. Our experience is to give everybody an opportunity to testify we have to limit you. You will get a green light. After you're down to one minute, you'll get a yellow light. That should be your indication to yourself to start wrapping up or to summarize what you have left of testimony. When the red light comes on, please stop. Okay? Now I've had people that ignore the red light and sometimes we kind of allow some latitude. Today we simply have too many people here for folks to speak through the red light, and so please don't make me interrupt you and ask you to stop. As I indicated before, we have a good number of people here and it is my intention to limit the testimony, at least initially, on each one of the bills, if it becomes repetitive especially. And by that I mean, we may take, for example, on LB482, Senator Utter's bill, we may hear testimony for an hour, a half hour each side, and then basically say after an hour we're going on to the next bill. If you want to stay around, when we are done with Nelson's LR29CA, we will have essentially an open mike (laugh), and that's a little unusual, but what we'll do is afford you an opportunity, if you did not have an opportunity to testify on a bill, to come up and say, you know, my name is Joe Smith and I want to talk about my opposition to LB623, for example. And so you'll all have an opportunity to be heard. The one thing I will ask is that if someone has already expressed your point of view, that you not come up and repeat it. All right? You are welcome to, if you are uncomfortable testifying or if someone has already expressed your point of view, then you can fill out one of the sheets and turn it in to Kate and we will note your opposition or support of a particular bill. It is...I know there's a lot of rules but I want this to run smoothly and so it takes a little bit at the front end. There are nine bills today. Not everybody is going to be able to come up on every bill, okay, and not every bill probably deals with what you're concerned with. So please, the first bill that we'll actually hear testimony on is Senator Utter's LB482. If you have something to say about Senator Utter's bill, for or against, please come up and we'll try to take care of you. If you want to see the CIR eliminated, that is Senator Nelson's bill. Please wait until that bill so that we are not interfering with the opportunity that people that have something to say about Senator Utter's bill, for example, so that they're afforded the opportunity to be heard on that bill and we don't clog up the system with people testifying about something that really doesn't have that much to do with a particular bill. I think I'm getting near the end of the rules. I think that's it. Let me introduce my colleagues that are here today. I'm going to sit down, I think, at this point. To my right is Senator Carlson, who's from Holdrege; then we have Senator Burke Harr from Omaha; as well as Senator Ashford; my committee clerk, Molly Burton--pardon me, committee counsel. Sorry. Molly has done a great deal of work on these issues and so I apologize for that mistake. We have my committee clerk, Kate Wolfe, at the other far end; Senator Smith from Papillion; Norm Wallman; and Senator Tanya Cook from 2 Transcript Prepared By the Clerk of the Legislature Transcriber's Office Business and Labor Committee February 07, 2011 Omaha. And my name, again, is Steve Lathrop. And with that, I think that brings us to LB397, which is my own bill. SENATOR LATHROP: (Exhibits 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5) Good afternoon, members of the Business and Labor Committee. My name is Steve Lathrop, L-a-t-h-r-o-p. I am the state senator from District 12 in Omaha and Ralston. I'm here today to introduce LB397. And as the members of the committee understand, LB397 is essentially a shell bill, and by that we mean that the bill has been introduced as a vehicle for an amendment and we expect to amend into LB397 the solution that we reach as a committee to the issues that will be expressed in the nine bills that we'll hear today.