Before Jim Pillen recommended lobbyist Julie Bushell for a $208,333-a-month no-bid contract, she was pushing lawmakers to fund her company's nitrate sensors. The state's top environmental official warned Pillen's chief of staff the technology was unproven. The lawmaker carrying the bill says he never saw the warning.
Six weeks before the forecast that will shape his next budget, Pillen replaced a third of Nebraska's independent revenue-forecasting board — the first governor to do that in its 40-year history — installing Lou Ann Linehan and Tom Briese, who championed the income tax cuts that have contributed to a third straight budget hole of at least $200 million. Linehan says she doesn't think there is a problem.
A Flatwater Free Press and New York Times investigation found at least 20 Pillen Family Farms operations employed undocumented workers, and at least 12 Pillen workers were charged with using fake or stolen IDs. The company joined E-Verify the day Pillen launched his campaign for governor.
Nebraskans used ballot initiatives to win paid sick leave and medical cannabis. Pillen signed a bill narrowing the sick leave law and helped kill the cannabis bill. Now, citing a fraud case his own election officials caught, he wants to restrict the petition process itself.
The 2025 budget law cut SNAP by $187 billion — about 20%, the largest cut the program has ever taken. Six of these eight Republicans voted for it. Between them they co-chaired the hunger caucus, chaired the nutrition subcommittee, told the public a food bank was on their side, and turned down $18 million meant to feed kids.
Pillen converted Nebraska's rehabilitation-focused Work Ethic Camp into a 300-bed ICE jail. Local Republicans learned about it from a national newscast. Now the state is adding isolation rooms at DHS's request.
59% of Nebraska voters tied the minimum wage to the cost of living in 2022. Lawmakers replaced that with a flat 1.75% and created a $13.50 teen wage that stays below today's $15 until 2065. Now the attorney general is suing Omaha and Lincoln for trying to opt out.
Records obtained by Nebraska Public Media show what Pillen's 5% squeeze looks like on the ground: a DeafBlind support program discontinued, museum admission raised on kids, and a proposal to make low-income seniors and disabled Nebraskans start paying property tax.
Pillen turned down federal summer grocery money for Nebraska's low-income kids in December 2023. He reversed two months later — after a petition and after sitting down with children who were living it. The program he blocked delivered nearly $24 million in its first summer.
Sixteen of the Pillen family's monitored hog operations recorded nitrate above 50 parts per million. The federal drinking-water limit is 10. Nebraska's governor said he hadn't read the story and wouldn't — then attacked the reporter's nationality.
On the same telephone town hall where Pillen used an ableist slur three times, he waved off Nebraska's $471.5 million budget hole, saying the press 'tries to say that we're broke,' said the state has 'bushel baskets' of money, and promised he won't support any candidate who won't back a six-week abortion ban.
