Lincolnite

About the only downside I can think of is that having a record of EVERY vote will increase the number of half-true “gotcha!” claims in future campaigns against incumbents. Expect the following:

“My opponent voted NO three times during debate on LB 29a, a bill that thought of the children by providing free puppies and rainbows!” while omitting the all-important “these no votes occurred for obvious procedural or amendment-based reasons” portion.

While this is nice to know, I don’t see what this has to with the Platte Institute’s stated mission beyond “Please make it easier for us to determine which legislative campaigns to throw money/influence at”.

If I had an unusual amount of influence within the Platte Institute, I’d love to see a comparison of tax revenue/spending in Nebraska to that of other states that a) normalizes by per capita income AND by net federal funding; b) examines if any correlation exists with number of taxing subdivisions and by number of state and/or with the number of state and local agencies; c) attempts to model a (plausible) population size that, given the area and known economic resources of a state, creates a minimal tax burden.

It wouldn’t have any bearing on my vote. I vote for the person I would want to have a beer with. 😉

That would be incredibly helpful to know. I’ve often wondered how our population, geographic area, etc… influences the state budget. It might not be fair to say Kansas or Iowa has lower taxes than Nebraska when you figure the population, per capita income, etc… of Nebraska. But I don’t know that for a fact.

And if it turns out we are incredibly inefficient, then that’s good to know.

Every vote by a state senator is tracked in committee and on the floor of the legislature. The floor votes are recorded in the Legislative Journal. The following link will take you to the Legislative Journal Page. Just an FYI.

 
http://www.nebraskalegislature.gov/web/public/lj

I knew those votes had to be recorded somewhere. So is the distinction here simply a matter of recording votes in a daily journal versus recording votes in a specific bill’s record? It seems like a pretty simple improvement to record those votes in both places.

You are correct. The point here is that with a Unicameral system, where the citizens are the “second body” the citizens need to have access to how their senators are voting at each step of the process. While all votes are tracked in the process, in many cases how each individual senator voted is not. There simply is a tally of the yes and no votes. In order for the “second body” of the Unicameral to function as it was intended, citizens need full transparency of votes in order to fulfill their role. And, that information should be available to citizens at the same time it is available to those inside the capitol.

You make very fine points. Please allow me to address some of your questions/statements.
How this relates to our mission is simple. In our first report, authored by Dr. Ernie Goss of Creighton University, one of his recommendations for lowering the overall tax burden in our state was “Taxes and tax policy must become more transparent.” Transparency plays a huge role in what our mission is and full transparency of voting records is part of that as is what Shane Osborn as done with NebraskaSpending.com.
Also, you in fact do have influence with us. We do not claim to have the market cornered on ideas and welcome any that you have. We enjoy it when individuals reach out to us with their thoughts. In fact, I will tell you that a study on revenue/spending in Nebraska compared to other states is in the works - so I think we’re on similar trails. I would also welcome you to sign-up at our web site http://www.platteinstitute.org and get all the information which we release on a near weekly basis. We have touched on some of your other concerns, but it just takes time to do deep-meaning research on several topics.
I greatly appreciate your passion and knowledge.

So why don’t they just call the clerk of the legislature if they want to know? There’s a legislative hotline for all of that stuff, right?

And just because voting transparency was requested on some votes (5% apparently) but not others, does that necessarily mean that it wasn’t wanted on the other votes?

Thanks for responding so promptly and directly! I sometimes forget that people can read and respond to my snarky comments. 😛

Since we’re on the topic (WARNING! SELF-PROMOTION FOLLOWS) I did a woefully brief analysis of this topic two years ago. The numbers will have changed slightly since then, but the commentary still holds.

Sometime last year, I calculated (but sadly, failed to post) what tax burdens in Nebraska and surrounding states would look like if normalized for federal government transfers; the most interesting thing that popped up was that a large portion of the tax differential between Nebraska and South Dakota vanished.

In my humble opinion, I think a lot of this debate can be summed up by the following: “Local control, low taxes, or an acceptable level of government services: you can only have, at most, two of these three.”

So how would you prioritize those three options? Again, we don’t have all the answers - our main goal is to facilitate debate. If we get more people talking about issues this way, then I think we will be getting somewhere.

Good information you had. “On a $30,000 income, this is a mere $240/year in additional taxes than the national average.” This is an excellent point. Is it worth the extra money to live in Nebraska? If you can live just across the border and save that money, what would stop you? There was a study done not too long ago about farm equipment distributors being taxed a little higher here than in bordering states. Those businesses then relocated to counties that border us in other states, allowing them to keep their client base and save some money. The points you made and these points are things we need more discussion on.

Please, feel free to exchange ideas with us. Healthy debate = a healthy state. Our email addresses are on our website.