Testifying at committee hearings

Advocacy > State initiatives > Share your story > Testifying at committee hearings

Image courtesy Nebraska Association of Public Employees

Testifying is a powerful method of having an early impact on a bill.

Public testimony is accepted at the committee hearings of most bills within the Nebraska legislature. These hearings take place early on in the session, and can have a large impact on the future of a bill.

Benefits

Impactful

Attending and testifying at a committee hearing is a strong way to impact the future of a bill.

Community

Listening to others testifying at hearings provides a great opportunity to meet others with similar views on the issue in question.

Bigger picture

Though individual actions are great, state-level laws and regulations are the best way to implement genuine change within Nebraska.

More information

What does it mean to testify in-person?

There are a number of different ways to get involved with Nebraska’s state legislature, throughout the legislative process. Testifying in-person means that you attend an in-person committee hearing in the legislature, and give a short speech on why you support or oppose the bill.

Committee hearings happen early on in the legislative session, and committees have the ability to ‘kill’ bills by indefinitely postponing them or taking no action at all. This is why it is so important to get involved early in the lawmaking progress – a single testimony has the ability to make or break a bill with so few senators involved.

Testifying process

You will testify at the public hearing of a bill within its committee of the legislature; committees have between 7 and 9 members, and hearings for a week are scheduled on the last day of the legislative session in the prior week (usually on Fridays). The hearing schedule is linked below.

Each committee’s room is on the first floor of the Capitol. A map with the relevant rooms is linked below, within the “Testifying 101” PDF.
When you get to the appropriate room, you will sign in on the sheet provided. You will then take a seat in the audience section of the hearing room.
As the hearing begins, the committee chair will call forward testifiers based on their support of the bill – typically first calling up proponents, then opponents, and then any neutral testifiers.
As the hearing proceeds, you will go forward to testify. Speaking into the microphone (as everything is transcribed), you will say your name (spelling your last name), and state which (if any) organizations you are representing.
You will then give your testimony, limiting it to 3-5 minutes. More details are available on the PDF below if you would like to hand out copies of your testimony.
After you are finished, committee members may ask you questions; however, you cannot ask questions of the committee members.
Audience members are asked not to address, applaud, or comment on testimonies given in the hearing room.

Notification of hearing

It can be easy to accidentally miss the hearing of a bill that you’re invested in. Visit the “Staying updated on unicameral news” page of SustainLNK to learn more about getting notifications when an action is taken on a particular bill.