(Picture credit State of Nebraska)
Attorney General Mike Hilgers filed a lawsuit on Thursday evening with the Nebraska Supreme Court to force the city of Lincoln to put several charter amendments on the November ballot. The lawsuit was filed after the city signaled it would wait to put the amendments up for a vote until the May 2027 ballot.
“For an issue to be included on the November general election ballot, the City Council must pass a resolution authorizing the ballot issue and provide it to the Election Commissioner by September 1st,” City Attorney Yohance Christie said in a Thursday statement.
Christie claimed several processes needed to be followed in addition to the petition getting verified, including the consideration of alternative amendments, a resolution by the City Council, providing public notice regarding the amendments, and holding public meetings.
“The City Council is under no obligation to bypass their processes for placing petitions on the ballot because of a missed deadline,” Christie said. “The City Council will place the Charter amendments on the next general election ballot (May 2027) pursuant to state law.”
Hilgers’ lawsuit argues the city has a constitutional duty to submit amendments for the next election once a petition has successfully had its signatures verified.
“The local officials’ unprecedented neglect of their ministerial and constitutional duty to submit timely filed petitions to amend the city charter for a vote at the next general election warrants this Court’s immediate and plenary review,” the lawsuit states.
Hilgers’ lawsuit comes after he issued a Monday opinion saying the city of Lincoln had a constitutional obligation to place the amendments on the November ballot. On Wednesday, Hilgers held a press conference where he said it was an “open secret” that the Lincoln City Council and Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird were working to “violate” the state Constitution by pushing the charter amendment approval past the ballot certification deadline.
“They can fight them all they want. That’s how this process works,” he said. “But what they cannot do is try to play games with the state constitutional requirement, that is designed to defend the people, their citizens, right to be heard on the ballot.”
“The city has a non-negotiable, non-discretionary requirement here,” he added.
Lincoln Officials Plan to Fight
The legal fight comes as Good Government Lincoln is seeking to put three charter amendments on the ballot, including term limits for city council members, allowing eligible residents in the city’s three-mile extraterritorial zoning jurisdiction (ETJ) to vote in most municipal elections, and moving Lincoln city elections to even-numbered years.
Both the term limits amendment and the amendment to move elections have been verified by Lancaster County Election Commissioner Todd Wiltgen.
Gaylor Baird and her allies in city government have signaled publicly and privately that they plan to use significant resources to fight the charter amendments. Lincoln public officials see the amendments as an existential threat to their positions with Gaylor Baird calling the amendment to move elections a “scheme” to get her out of office early.
Gaylor Baird has opposed all three amendments calling them “straight out of the Donald Trump playbook,” and says she will use her campaign funds to fight the amendments.
While the city of Lincoln publicly has blamed Good Government Lincoln for having fraud on its first round of petitions and needing to redo the effort as being the reason it will not make the November ballot, people with knowledge of the process said they expect the city would have tried to delay the certification of the amendments regardless.
Supporters of the three charter amendments believe the process resistance from the city is because all three charter amendment are likely to pass. In 2018, a charter amendment to limit the mayor from running for more than three terms passed with 53% of the vote.
While September 1 is usually the last day for a city charter amendment to be certified for the ballot, Hilgers said on Wednesday that the Supreme Court could extend the deadline further out if needed.
— John Gage is the executive editor of The Plains Sentinel.
The mayor and the city council are playing dirty in their desire to retain political power. The old saying "power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely" comes to mind. It is simply amazing when political figures are involved in fraudulent activities, they feel compelled to dis President Trump, as if he had some type of mystical power over them. I doubt the majority of the mayor's campaign donors are too pleased with her using their donations to fight justice. We can only hope the NE Supreme Court does the right thing and puts the amendments on the November ballot, when the majority of citizens vote. Few ballots are cast in May, which theoretically improves the odds of the amendments being defeated.