Official video archive of Nebraska Legislature to begin with 2025 session

Lawmakers gather on the last day of the 2024 legislative session. Not pictured: State Sens. Joni Albrecht, Ben Hansen, John Lowe and Tony Vargas. April 18, 2024. (Zach Wendling/Nebraska Examiner)

LINCOLN — A new state-run video archive of Nebraska legislative floor debates and committee hearings will be up and running Jan. 8, when lawmakers reconvene for the 2025 session.

Lawmakers passed Legislative Bill 254 in 2023, sponsored by State Sen. Tom Brewer of north-central Nebraska, to create the digital archive. He was one of many senators to sponsor a similar proposal over a number of years. Brewer said the change would help Nebraska “live up” to the ideals of George Norris, whose idea of the Unicameral was to promote transparency in government.

“Norris said to get good government and to retain it, it is necessary that the liberty-loving, educated, intelligent people should be forever watchful to carefully guard and protect those rights and liberties,” Brewer said in April 2023.

State Sen. Tom Brewer of north-central Nebraska. Dec. 10, 2024. (Zach Wendling/Nebraska Examiner)

The archive had to be set up by the start of the 2025 session on Jan. 8, per LB 254.

At that time, there will be a new “all-encompassing video portal” accessible through the Legislature’s home page at nebraskalegislature.gov, according to Brandon Metzler, the clerk of the Legislature, whose office will maintain the digital archive.

“We really want to allow people to stay connected to the Legislature as it’s happening,” Metzler told the Nebraska Examiner.

‘The world is video’

Nebraska Public Media already livestreams floor debates and committee hearings but does not maintain a public archive.

Metzler said the Legislature had an internal policy to review videos for transcripts or for committee hearings that lawmakers might have missed.

Brandon Metzler, clerk of the Nebraska Legislature. Dec. 8, 2023. (Zach Wendling/Nebraska Examiner)

Nebraska was one of about four states without an in-house, public archive of legislative proceedings before Brewer’s bill passed last year, according to the National Council on State Legislatures. The other states are Alabama, Illinois and Pennsylvania. 

State Sen. John Arch of La Vista, the speaker of the Legislature, said the archive will be a “great benefit” to Nebraskans. Arch noted videos can help discern body language, tone and intent that can’t be as easily captured in the Legislature’s written transcripts.

“The world is video,” Arch said. “The world’s not printed anything much anymore.”

A major benefit of the archive is that videos will be available almost immediately. Written transcripts, which will continue to serve as the Legislature’s official record, can take months to be available.

The video archive policy

The Legislature’s top committee, the Executive Board, voted unanimously Oct. 28 to approve the archive policy, which requires videos to be posted online and watermarked with the legislative seal within two business days.

Speaker John Arch of La Vista addresses state lawmakers during a legislative retreat at Nebraska Innovation Campus on Dec. 7, 2023, in Lincoln. (Zach Wendling/Nebraska Examiner)

The repository is intended solely for educational and informational purposes. The policy prohibits using archived videos for political or commercial purposes.

Archived videos will be maintained online for eight years after posting, which Metzler said is subject to change and is more of a safety precaution for storage and usage costs. 

The Legislature will retain the right to not publish a video for any reason, which Metzler and State Sen. Julie Slama of Dunbar, an Executive Board member, said would be exercised only in extreme situations, such as in the case of a medical emergency.

“It’s not a censoring mechanism,” Metzler said. “It’s not a, somebody said something that would make the Legislature look bad or make that senator look bad. It’s not anything in that capacity.”

Slama, who declined to seek reelection this year, said parts of the policy might be clarified in the future. She said she anticipated there will be more cost-efficient ways to store video within the next eight years.

Lawmakers also adopted an amendment, proposed by State Sen. Megan Hunt of Omaha, to ensure the closed captioning is available in both English and Spanish.

Metzler said users will be able to see what is streaming live and what has been archived. Videos will be searchable by bill number and committee.

‘A really important resource’

Arch noted that some organizations have tried to record legislative proceedings before, but this will be the first archive maintained through the Legislature.

For example, the Nebraska Progressive Legislative Study Group created an archive of most committee hearings and floor debates that took place during the 108th Legislature in 2023-24, including the summer special session on property taxes.

Cindy Maxwell-Ostdiek of Omaha. (Photo courtesy of Cindy Maxwell-Ostdiek, by Glenda Niksick)

Cindy Maxwell-Ostdiek, a 2022 legislative candidate and co-founder of the study group, said a core group of about 10 volunteers began livestreaming and housing recorded legislative proceedings on the study group’s YouTube page in 2022.

The group could only livestream one event at a time, however, which sometimes meant choosing between hearings.

In Nebraska, every bill or policy resolution gets a hearing, and there are 14 standing committees in addition to the Executive Board or other special committees that consider legislation.

“We feel strongly that it’s every Nebraskan’s right and responsibility to be an active member of the ‘second house,’” Maxwell-Ostdiek said. “The service is going to be a really important resource for that education and advocacy.”

The Nebraska Progressive Legislative Study Group does not intend to continue livestreaming at this time and looks forward to the rollout of the new program, she said.

Accountability and transparency

Maxwell-Ostdiek said she still has concerns about the eight-year shelf life of videos and the fact  that the policy only addresses 2025 proceedings onward. Brewer’s bill opened up the possibility of adding archival footage from past legislative sessions, as broadcast by Nebraska Public Media and collected by the Clerk’s Office.

“That’s the intent of the legislation,” Maxwell-Ostdiek said, referring to preserving historical videos. “I think that the Executive Board will, hopefully, go back and rectify that.”

State Sens. Julie Slama of Dunbar and Mike McDonnell of Omaha. Aug. 8, 2024. (Zach Wendling/Nebraska Examiner)

Metzler said the plan right now is to archive proceedings moving forward, but the Executive Board could devote time and resources to add past archives that need to be processed and have multilingual closed captioning added.

Slama described the archive as an “overdue win” for taxpayers.

“I’m really hopeful that people in Nebraska will use it and hold their elected officials accountable for their conduct that gets captured on video,” Slama said.

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