Nebraska has a board whose whole job is to be boring. The Nebraska Economic Forecasting Advisory Board looks at the numbers and predicts how much tax money the state will collect. Lawmakers have to write the budget to that number, because the state constitution says the budget has to balance.

The board was built in 1984 to keep politicians' hands off that number. Now Jim Pillen has put his hands on it.

As the Flatwater Free Press first reported on September 16, Pillen replaced three of the board's nine members at once. Two of his picks are former Republican state senators: Lou Ann Linehan and Tom Briese — the same two lawmakers who championed the income tax cuts that have contributed to Nebraska's budget shortfalls. The third is Omaha accountant Tim Wilson.

State records show no governor has replaced a third of the board at once in its 40-year history. And he did it right before the October forecast that, if he is re-elected, Pillen will use to write the budget he hands lawmakers in January.

Why the board exists

Before 1984, forecasts came from the Department of Revenue — which answers to the governor — and a board of elected officials, the governor among them, set Nebraska's tax rates. The forecasts were doubted as politically influenced.

Tom Bergquist, who worked in the Legislature's budget office back then, told the Flatwater Free Press that when those officials didn't like one forecast, "they were told to shred it and come up with a different report." They inflated the number and created, in his words, a "big fiscal mess."

So lawmakers built a board of mostly business people to take the politics out. The Legislature appoints five members. The governor appoints four.

"The whole thing was kind of created to take the politics out of it," Bergquist said. "And, unfortunately, I don't know if it's starting to seep back in."

Who Pillen put on it

Look at the photo at the top of this post. That's Pillen signing the 2023 tax cut bills into law, with Linehan and Briese on either side of him. They each sponsored those bills.

• Lou Ann Linehan chaired the Legislature's Revenue Committee for six years and was, as the Free Press put it, "the chief architect" of the state's income tax cuts. The Reader reports she carried big tax and spending bills for Pillen in 2023 and 2024, including a massive package that combined more than two dozen separate tax bills.
• Tom Briese sat on the Revenue Committee and championed the same cuts — until Pillen appointed him state treasurer in 2023.

Both told reporters that Pillen's office called and asked them to apply.

Pillen's spokeswoman said none of the three members being pushed out had applied to be reappointed. One of them tells it differently. John Kuehn, a former Republican state senator, said he was "surprised" to be replaced, had gotten no signal from Pillen's office that he wouldn't be reappointed, and had no indication he needed to reapply. Also out: Leslie Andersen, a banker who had served on the board since 2002 — its longest-serving member — and Kearney businessman Thomas Henning, on the board since 2014.

The tax cuts behind the hole

The cuts Linehan and Briese pushed are dropping Nebraska's top income tax rate — and its corporate rate — to 3.99% by next year. In 2022, the top rate was 6.84% for people and 7.5% for corporations.

Pillen signed LB754, the income tax cut bill, in 2023, and his own office brags that he "has consistently opposed efforts to slow or pause" the cuts.

Here is where the budget stands:

• State income tax revenue was $703 million lower last year than in 2022.
• Nebraska is projected to face a $208 million deficit in 2027 — the third straight year of a budget hole of at least $200 million.
• In February, the forecasting board cut expected revenue by another $175 million, pushing that year's projected deficit back up to about $301 million. The biggest drop was in corporate income taxes.

Lawmakers patched the gap in each of the past two years with cuts and by pulling money out of state cash funds and the rainy day fund. This summer, we covered what his agencies proposed after his budget-cut memo: discontinuing a program for DeafBlind Nebraskans, raising museum prices for kids, and a proposal to make low-income seniors and disabled homeowners start paying property tax.

He blamed the forecasters

This isn't the first time Pillen has gone after the board.

On his statewide radio call-in show in July, he told listeners, "The forecasting board undershot how much refunds Nebraskans are getting by over $300 million."

According to the Free Press, he went further on that show — telling listeners Nebraska's revenue had gone up and its spending had gone down over the past year, and that "we have this thing called the forecasting board," whose predictions change "the perception of what's going on."

None of that holds up:

• The state's revenue didn't go up and spending didn't go down. State records show Nebraska's total revenue fell nearly 14% last year, and spending has gone up every year for at least a decade.
• The board doesn't forecast refunds, according to Kuehn, who called Pillen's comments "objectively inaccurate" and his targeting of the board "a departure from prior governors."

The board's record cuts both ways. Over 30 years, it has on average underestimated state revenue by 3% a year. But it has guessed too high 17 times since 1984 — including each of the last two fiscal years.

"I don't think we have a problem"

The biggest warning sign came from one of the new members herself.

Linehan told the Free Press that in her eight years as a lawmaker, the forecasters got it right only once. On the shortfall the board will size up next month, she said she isn't convinced there is one:

"I don't think we have a problem. I will believe we have a problem if the forecast comes true. I don't waste any time worrying about something that's a guess."

She is now one of the nine people who make that guess.

Former Gov. Bob Kerrey, a Democrat who helped create the board, said the burden is on Pillen "to prove that this isn't a political move, to get the number that he wants."

"You don't like the number they produce, so you get rid of the board, put a board in there that's going to give you the number you want," Kerrey said. "That's politics."

State Sen. George Dungan, a Democrat from Lincoln who sits on the Revenue Committee, warned that "partisan actors on the forecasting board who are encouraging the adoption of a forecast that makes it easier to keep certain policies in place" is "really problematic."

Linehan and Briese both say they will be objective. Briese said he can "be true to the facts and to the data." Linehan said she is "not beholden to the governor."

Why the timing matters

The new board meets October 30 — days before Pillen faces voters in November. The Reader notes the appointments came one day after the state collected more tax money than forecast in August, only the second time that has happened this year.

Critics worry the shakeup is designed to deliver a rosy outlook in October. A rosier forecast would shrink the hole on paper and take pressure off the tax cuts Pillen has opposed pausing. And a forecast that guesses too high is exactly how the old system created a "big fiscal mess" — the bill shows up later, in cuts.

Earlier this year, Pillen told Nebraskans that "the press tries to say that we're broke," and that the state had "bushel baskets and bushel baskets of money." Now the number that says otherwise will be set in part by the two senators who sponsored his tax cuts.

What the record shows

Jim Pillen replaced three of the nine members of Nebraska's independent revenue-forecasting board at once — a first in its 40-year history — and two of his picks are the former senators who championed the income tax cuts he signed and has consistently opposed pausing. State income tax revenue is now $703 million below 2022, and Nebraska faces a third straight budget hole of at least $200 million. Pillen had already blamed the board on the radio with claims a board member he removed called "objectively inaccurate," and one of his new appointees says she doesn't think the state has a problem.

Source

• Flatwater Free Press, "As shortfall looms, Pillen installs allies on board originally designed to keep politics out of budget forecast" by Andrew Wegley and Sara Gentzler (September 16, 2026), also published by the Nebraska Examiner. Photo: Linehan and Briese with Pillen at the 2023 tax cut bill signing, courtesy of the Governor's Office, via Flatwater Free Press.