Daily Minute: County hiring freeze; CO2 pipeline on track; DOGE lawsuit

County hiring freeze

The Lancaster County Board decided on Thursday to institute a hiring freeze for the remainder of the fiscal year in an effort to reduce a $3.4 million mid-year budget shortfall.

This year, for a combination of reasons, the $2.5 million set aside in a contingency fund is not sufficient to cover the estimated amount of those extra expenses, which totals nearly $3.4 million.

The freeze is intended to be temporary. It’s unclear how many departments it could affect, Budget Officer Dennis Meyer said. There are currently about 35 unfilled positions, though it’s unknown how many of those would be filled before the end of the fiscal year without a hiring freeze. And other employees could decide to resign or retire.

CO2 pipeline on track

The developer of a carbon pipeline seeking to inject the greenhouse gas deep under eastern Wyoming said it’s on track to start operations later this year.

Tallgrass Energy, which operates the 392-mile Trailblazer Pipeline, said it has secured 100% of the right of way needed to connect 10 ethanol plants to the main stem pipeline, which formerly carried natural gas from eastern Colorado as far east as Beatrice.

The project has brought together strange bedfellows: environmentalists who said carbon capture and sequestration is unproven and ultimately ignores the root cause of climate change, and landowners who oppose what they described as strong-arm tactics by a private company. Tallgrass Energy said it plans to start operations in the third quarter of 2025.

DOGE lawsuit

An Omaha man is the first in Nebraska to file a federal lawsuit challenging the legality of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency.

In the form lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court of Nebraska in Omaha, Sean M. Hill III named DOGE, Elon Musk, who is running it, and Vivek Ramaswamy, the former co-chair, as well as President Donald Trump and the directors of the Offices of Management and Budget and Personnel Management.

Hill, who is representing himself and asked the court to waive the filing fee, said he has "significant interest in the integrity and legitimacy of" DOGE, and in preventing "the proposal or enactment of any policies that would adversely affect government accountability or transparency."

That’s it for Monday, Feb. 17. Stay in the know with Lincoln’s longest-standing news source at JournalStar.com and we will see you back here tomorrow.