It has fundamentally changed, Sen. Steve Lathrop says, so he'll be moving on.
The Legislature has "slipped more and more into partisanship," Lathrop says, and "it's clearly been more controlled by the governor in recent years."
It's not the nonpartisan and more independent legislative body that he served in during his first eight years as a senator from 2007 to 2015 before he was term-limited out of office, the Omaha senator said during an interview in his Capitol office as the clock ticked down on his final 15 days as a member of the Legislature.
Lathrop returned to resume his legislative work once again after the four-year restriction was fulfilled, winning the District 12 seat in 2018.
But he didn't seek reelection to a second term this time.
It's not the same place he had previously left, Lathrop said. It's less independent, more partisan.Â
"When I got here in the first class of term-limit replacements, there were a lot of folks still here with years of experience," he said, and they mentored the newcomers about Nebraska's legislative culture, including "the importance of preserving its nonpartisan traditions."
"Some issues were partisan, but not very many," Lathrop said. "It was not about stopping somebody's legislation then. I could walk over and talk to everybody then, except perhaps a couple of knuckleheads.
"I could work on an issue with anybody. Relations were always important here and that allowed for people to get things accomplished regardless of party."
Now, Lathrop said, "it's less about solving problems and more driven by partisanship."
An important function of the Legislature is to provide oversight of the executive branch, he said, and "we haven't seen much of that going on" lately.
The recent legislative investigation into the failed low-bid state contract with Saint Francis Ministries to manage child welfare cases in the Omaha area "never got to the question of how did this happen," Lathrop said.
"It was a monumental screwup," he said.
The Legislature's action ultimately blocking a carefully constructed package of prison, programming and sentencing reform that grew out of a Crime and Justice Institute study of Nebraska's needs was "a very important consideration" in leading to his decision not to seek reelection, Lathrop acknowledged.
"That failure was purely political," he said.
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"We put two years into that and no one offered a different solution. The study was generated by an outside group we all agreed to rely upon.
"Now we will continue to release people (from prison) with no rehabilitation and no follow-up."
And continue to build more prisons, Lathrop said.
Those were key challenges that had been addressed by the legislation.
Lathrop, an Omaha attorney and chairman of the Legislature's Judiciary Committee, led the effort to push the reform package across the floor, but it was trapped essentially by disagreements over proposed sentencing reforms that could have substantially reduced the future growth rate of the state's prison population.
That brought an abrupt end to what had been an exhaustive cooperative effort by senators, the governor's office and the state's court system to reach agreement on substantial prison reform.
Serving in the Legislature is "a grind, especially if it includes a 100-mile round trip every day," the Omaha senator said. However, Lathrop said, he was "happy to do it," especially when there was more collaborative effort and less political or partisan consideration in play.
Lathrop said he still intends to be engaged in the public sector, "but I don't know what form that may take."
It won't be "the lobbying thing," he said.
"At the end of the day, this was a rewarding job and a real privilege," Lathrop said. "Nebraska's notion of a citizen legislator is still important; it's a volunteer position.
"It's important to have a cross-section of people and if we raise the salary we probably could have some other voices that need to be heard."
Senators are paid $12,000 a year; an increased salary would require a vote of the people to amend the state constitution.
Sen. Steve Lathrop (from left) of Omaha speaks next to Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks of Lincoln and Sen. John McCollister of Omaha on the last day of the Legislature in April. Pansing Brooks and McCollister won't return to the Legislature because of term limits, but Lathrop chose not to run for a second term because of the Legislature's increasingly partisan nature.Â