Greetings from your State Capitol. The end of the current legislative session marks the last session of my eight years serving the people of Dawson and Custer Counties and the northern portion of Buffalo County in the Nebraska Legislature. It has been an absolute honor to represent the folks in our area in the Legislature, and I am forever grateful for having been given this opportunity.

As I reflect on the past eight years, I would like to share some of our accomplishments. I am particularly proud of the Rural Workforce Housing Investment Act that we passed, which created a highly successful matching grant program designed for communities to address the housing shortages in rural areas. These shortages stand in the way of employers’ ability to attract employees to fill thousands of jobs in rural Nebraska. This program has been so successful that we were able to extend the program for another five years through legislation passed this year. During my time in the Legislature, I worked on various other economic development and workforce measures that have proven successful.

In addition, over the past eight years, we also managed to pass bills every session that continually lowered the tax burden for the people of Nebraska. I voted for multiple rounds of property tax relief bills, bills that lowered income taxes, and bills that eliminated taxes on Social Security and military retirement. The passage this session of LB873, which I supported, is a major step forward for tax relief. While lowering taxes, we also managed to keep biennial budget increases to less than 3% annually and significantly increase our cash reserves. As a pro-life Senator, I’ve been happy to support and vote to protect the unborn during my tenure. I’ve also been pleased to support many gun owners’ rights issues while continuing to support law enforcement.

Local control is an important issue to Nebraskans. I was pleased to support legislation to maintain local control for our cities, counties, and schools in rural Nebraska. I was also proud to support legislation to help our K-12 schools, including maintaining funding. I also supported maintaining funding for our University, State Colleges, and Community Colleges.

I would once again like to thank the constituents of my legislative district for the confidence, trust, and support you have given me during the past eight years. I look forward to the next chapter of my service to the State of Nebraska and as always, feel free to contact me anytime at (402) 471-2642 or mwilliams@leg.ne.gov.

-Matt