The 2024 Nebraska legislative session is underway. Hundreds of new bills have already been introduced, and many more are in the pipeline. One of the bills that I am carrying this year relates to school security. Nebraska law currently limits our options for armed security at schools to current law enforcement who are either on-duty or off-duty and contracted by the school to provide security.

Sorry You’re Hungry Kids, the Governor Doesn’t Believe in Welfare The hole keeps getting deeper. Remember when I suggested someone should give the governor a shovel so he could dig a deeper hole for himself? That was when he had refused to read a published report on high levels of nitrates on his pig farms because it was written by “someone from Communist China.” He subsequently refused to apologize to the reporter with a Chinese surname who is a graduate of an American university and has been working for news organizations in the United States for several years.

The Nebraska Rural Response Hotline, together with the Nebraska Department of Agriculture Beginning Farm Tax Credit and Negotiations Programs, and the Farm & Ranch Project of Legal Aid of Nebraska, are sponsoring free 3 - 4 hour workshops for farm and ranch families. These workshops will cover basic estate and succession planning (tools, considerations and decisions); the use of business entities in farm and ranch succession; finance and management issues in succession planning; transfer, death, and other tax issues, including the portability election; and options, buysell agreements, leases and preemptive rights. The aim of the program is educational: to provide reliable information that may assist farm and ranch families in putting together business succession plans, or in reviewing their existing plans.

Al Anon Mtgs. - 2nd Tuesday of Month Al Anon will meet at 8:00 p.m.

“Cards Make A Good Pass Time” Growing up on the farm south of Pilger, NE, I found learning to play card games when the winter weather struck was a good way to get through the storms. Of course, we would have to help dig out the place, help dad with the chores, scoop the sidewalks and when that was done, we hit the sleigh riding hills, built snow forts and snowmen.

The 2024 mountain lion hunting season in Nebraska’s Niobrara Unit closed January 7th when the harvest sublimit of one female was met. A 6-year-old collared female lion was shot north of Long Pine.