LINCOLN- Just three weeks after the Nebraska Legislature approved a mid-session rules change in an attempt to stop the ongoing, Democrat-led filibuster, Senator Steve Erdman, chairman of the Rules Committee, said he would consider further changes to the rules this year. "In fact," said Erdman, "we may start at page one and rewrite the whole book. There will be rule changes and they will be significant."

Speaker of the Legislature John Arch said it's very unlikely that he'll set aside time to change the rules this year, since there a very few days remaining in the 90-day legislative session, but expressed interest in discussing the changes during the interim period. Despite this, Erdman said the committee would consider rules proposals "that try to apply common sense."

Erdman also called out State Sens. Machaela Cavanaugh and Megan Hunt, who have led the months-long filibuster, saying that their willingness to bring the Legislature to a crawl may scare off those who intended to run for the Legislature in the future. On day fifty-one of the Legislature, and because of frustrations at the lack of progress the Legislature had made up to that point, the body adopted a rules change that limited the number of motions that could be offered during each round of debate. Similar changes are expected to be considered going into the interim period.

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