Every session of the Nebraska Legislature features what promises to be a real clunker of a bill. This year’s prizewinner – so far – is a proposal to change from a unicameral to a twohouse Legislature.
Even the sponsor of the measure (LR2CA) admits that the proposed Constitutional Amendment probably won’t get out of committee. Senator Steve Erdman of Bayard says it will be because of those “people living in the east.” The Nebraska Republican Party included in its platform a plank calling for a “return to a bicameral legislature whereby the upper house has fewer members but larger territorial areas to include a more diverse set of interests in the legislative process.”
Not only is such apportionment constitutionally suspect, but the measure is also a bad idea, party support or not. Let’s take a legislative body that has worked well since 1937 and make it more like Congress, because we know how well that’s working out.
