LINCOLN — More than a year after Nebraska’s executive branch shunned legislative oversight of the state’s troubled prison and child welfare systems in a violation of state law, the Legislature moved Wednesday to establish a permanent oversight committee meant to resolve constitutional concerns that led to the lockout.

Lawmakers voted 39-3 to give first-round approval Wednesday to a bill that would rewrite Nebraska’s legislative oversight laws and establish an obvious chain-of-command from lawmakers to watchdogs tasked with keeping an eye on the Departments of Correctional Services and Health and Human Services. The bill is meant to address concerns that Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers raised in a legal opinion in 2023, in which he suggested that lawmakers had delegated their oversight authority to those “unsupervised” watchdogs, known as the inspectors general, in a move Hilgers claimed was unconstitutional. Though Hilgers’ opinion was nonbinding, the prison and child welfare systems — both arms of the executive branch — almost immediately shut off access the inspectors general had to agency facilities and records, leaving the Legislature without meaningful oversight of the agencies for six months.

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