The leader of a team of behind-the-scenes investigators picked up a pen two years ago and sparked a probe into a prison system plagued with overcrowding and deficiencies.Â
Nebraska Ombudsman Marshall Lux and his team were known for operating quietly out of the public's view. But the report he wrote and released in January 2014 commanded attention from the governor and members of the Legislature's Judiciary Committee.
He drafted that report, detailing the tragedies surrounding Nikko Jenkins, when he felt the circumstances were so compelling he couldn't resist the moral obligation to write about them.
He has written those detailed reports several times in recent years. But it was the Jenkins report that boosted the profile of Lux and his independent group that handles citizen complaints about the actions of state agencies.
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Jenkins, then 27, killed four people in Omaha over a 10-day span in 2013, shortly after his July 30 release from prison. Â
Lux pointed out in his 62-page report Jenkins' need for, but lack of, mental health treatment, and the prison system's negligence in not heeding the many warnings from not only Jenkins, but his family, psychiatrists, a Parole Board administrator and others, that the inmate had disturbing problems. He wrote about the dangers in releasing offenders, especially one so deeply troubled, straight from solitary confinement to walking free among the public.Â
Sadly, Lux concluded, he could give no comfort to the families of Jenkins' four murder victims, or even give them a rationale for why their loved ones were lost.Â
The truly big questions about fate and bad fortune, the unpredictability of life, grief, loss, gratuitous violence and the shadowy depths of the human psyche were beyond the ombudsman's reach and scope, he wrote.Â
"In the end, all we really have to offer is the truth, at least as truth is reflected in the records of Mr. Jenkins' adult incarceration."Â
Then-Gov. Dave Heineman didn't like what Lux had to say.Â
He hurled accusations that Lux was soft on crime. He argued the ombudsman cared more about criminals than victims and their families.Â
But the report was a wake-up call for senators, who saw it as a case study in all that was going awry with the prisons. They followed up by creating the Department of Correctional Services Special Investigative Committee.
"That would have been the match that lit the fuse that became the committee," said former Sen. Steve Lathrop, who chaired it.
Senators subpoenaed Corrections officials and Heineman to testify, and recommended changes and the firing of certain administrators.Â
Since then, Marshall Lux has become the Legislature's E.F. Hutton. When he talks, senators listen.Â
He knows when to sound the alarm and say something's really wrong, Lathrop said, and then distill and articulate the problems.Â
* * *Â
In Lux's eighth-floor office in the Capitol tower is a framed 1956 Lincoln Evening Journal clipping with a picture of his dad, a Roca town clerk also named Marshall Lux.
The photo shows six men sitting in a coal-heated grain elevator office discussing hometown business.Â
"What you're not seeing in this picture is that way over here in the corner, I'm sitting, probably," Lux said, "because I used to go to these things."
Those meetings were his first exposure to government, and he loved to listen and learn as the adults talked, argued and resolved town business. Â
Lux grew up an only child in that mostly untroubled community of 120 then, 14 miles south of Lincoln. Â
"It was good. I kind of felt like I was living the last classic American childhood," he said.
That peace-filled life framed a lot of who Lux became.
His father owned Lux's Tavern in Roca. In the 1950s and '60s, Lincoln was dry on Sundays, and people would travel to county taverns on Sunday afternoons for a beer.Â
"I spent many hours there just sitting, watching them play pitch and listening to them talking about sports, hunting and all that you hear in places like that," Lux said. "Every so often I'd steal a Pepsi and a sack of Kitty Clover potato chips so that I didn't starve to death."
He thinks he may have grown up a little sooner in that atmosphere.
Lux's classmates in elementary and middle school numbered about 30. In his teen years, he moved on to a bigger venue: Lincoln High School.Â
"That was kind of a shock."
After that, he entered the University of Nebraska, majoring in political science, and came out the other end in 1973 with a law degree.Â
A clerkship with Nebraska Supreme Court judges gave Lux his first exposure to life at the Capitol.Â
By the late '70s, he was working for the state Parole Administration as a hearing officer. Then a job opened at the state Ombudsman's office, which at the time was four full-time people working on cases, and two office staff.
Ombudsman Murrell McNeil, who Lux described as a conscientious, careful person, retired a couple of years later, and Lux was appointed to succeed him in 1981, becoming only the second ombudsman in its then 10-year history.
Lux is in his 36th year now, with a staff of 18 and an annual budget of $1.5 million. And the job, he said, is more interesting than ever.
* * *
Those who have worked closely with Lux describe him as confident, but never a showboat. Serious, straightforward. A man of intellect who believes in practical solutions.Â
Besides giving his views on the Nikko Jenkins fiasco, Lux has registered how he and his staff saw last year's Tecumseh Mother's Day riot. And in the early 2000s, he wrote about inmates' medical care concerns.Â
"That was such a mess, obviously screwed up and no one in the department wanted to do anything about it," he said. "If you've got any conscious at all, you've got to do something about it." Â
Lux is a good leader for the men and women who are the problem-solvers for people involved with Nebraska's state agencies, said Jerall Moreland, deputy ombudsman for institutions. He allows the expertise of the team to shine through.Â
"He has a very strong sense of humanity," Moreland said.Â
In dealing with inmates, Lux said he tries to ignore the facts that got them there.Â
"The issue for us is, what happens now? So in that respect, we just see them as people. And everyone's an individual," Lux said.Â
He also has a good sense of what citizens need in navigating bureaucracies, Moreland said.Â
In the office, Lux forges an environment of trust, said Julie Rogers, state inspector general for child welfare.
"And it is very exciting to work in an environment like that," she said.Â
His concern extends to the Legislature, which he sternly supports and watches over.Â
Lathrop said the ombudsman's job became more important during the Heineman administration, as the governor cut the budget, and shaved spending at Corrections and the Department of Health and Human Services. The consequences of that cutting, and the mismanagement and various scandals that ensued, were first investigated by Lux's office.Â
"That makes his role maybe more important than it's ever been because the Legislature was being told, 'Everything's fine. We're able to manage with what we've got.' And in reality, things were turning into a big mess," Lathrop said.Â
But Lux was drilling down and telling the Legislature that what they were hearing from the agencies was not the whole story.
* * *
When he's not working, Lux and his wife, Janet, have season tickets to Nebraska baseball games. And he has not missed a Husker home football game since 1969, when he was a senior in college.Â
"I'm pretty proud of that," he said. "There's been some times lately when it's been hard to go. But I enjoyed this last season."Â
Always the political thinker, he said when the team has leadership he doesn't agree with, "I am not above wishing that they might lose a game or two, if you know what I mean."Â
Bo Pelini, one would suppose, wasn't exactly the thinking man's coach.Â
"I had some hard years there."
But he believes Mike Riley is smart, personable, and not going to embarrass the program.Â
* * *
Lux hasn't read a novel in some time. But he's a history buff, and has read seemingly every book written about the Titanic.
"It's almost as if it were the creation myth of our modern society, except that it's not a myth," Lux said.Â
In the twilight of the gilded age, many people living lavish lives were on that ship, he said, suffering from a terminal case of overconfidence in how their world worked.
They did not understand the vulnerabilities of their society and their technology, and their ability to control events. And they had tremendous misplaced confidence in their captain, he said.Â
The lessons: You have to be careful where you place your confidence. You have to expect that people are going to make mistakes, Lux said.
He used the story as an analogy in his report on the Tecumseh riot, and he sees its parallels to the bureaucracy he has been observing the past 35 years.
Government and its complement of administrators, bureaucrats, police, firefighters and teachers must be relied on to make society work. But those administrators and agencies are mistake-prone and have inherent weaknesses, including protecting their own interests, even if they're not the same as the public's interests, he said.
"They're not terribly creative," he said. "There's a prejudice against change. ... Ideas don't flow up from below very well."Â
Lux is keeping an eye on the changes in Gov. Pete Ricketts' two key departments: Health and Human Services and Corrections.Â
"With Corrections, we'll see how it goes," he said. "It still has a long way to go."Â
* * *
Lux's appointment as Ombudsman must be renewed every six years -- recommended by the Executive Board and voted on by the Legislature -- and this year is the last of his current term.Â
He just turned 68 and has not decided how long he plans to continue in the role.
Executive Board Chairman Bob Krist has asked Lux to stay on another term, and to consider in that time who he would recommend to replace him, and then to mentor that person.Â
The office is key for the Legislature.
"Anybody who has issues, problems, brings it to their senators, and we know we're not the experts, and we go to where the experts are," Krist said.
The preponderance of that capability and experience is in the Ombudsman's office, he said.
"His individual leadership style is going to be very difficult to replace."
Reach the writer at 402-473-7228 or jyoung@journalstar.com. On Twitter .
"If you've got any conscience at all, you've got to do something about it."
-- Marshall Lux