Slama welcomes unified Nebraska City to legislative district

 NEBRASKA CITY – The Nebraska Legislature’s new maps for political districts mean big changes for Otoe County.

All of Otoe County is now in District 1 for the state Legislature. In the past, Nebraska City was split between Sen. Julie Slama’s District 1  and Sen. Robert Clements in District 2.

District 1 has 15,912 citizens in Otoe County, 7,871 in Richardson;  7,074 in Nemaha; 5,290 in Johnson and 2,544 in Pawnee counties.

Sen. Slama offered her welcome of new Nebraska City constituents to District 1.

 Slama: “I’m so happy to have you. I’ve considered Sen. Clements and myself jointly representing Nebraska City, so there really wasn’t a period of time that I didn’t work to represent you. And I’m pretty sure that during this last campaign cycle, I know Sen. Clements did during his last campaign cycle as well, I ended up knocking on doors in his district and he knocked doors in mine.

 

“So there was definitely a lot of crossover before we even united Nebraska City with legislative district, so I’m so happy to have you in District 1 and I look forward to serving you.”

She said it was difficult for the Unicameral to get new district maps because the  coronavirus pandemic delayed the release of census data.

Slama: “We were in the position where a nine-month-plus process was condensed into about three weeks, so there was talk that, if a compromise could not be reached -- which is wasn’t for a lack of wanting to compromise, obviously, because we were able to get there – it was just a sheer lack of time to come to a conclusion that everyone was comfortable with.”

She said there was an option to push the redistricting debate into  January,  but credits strong leadership of Sens. Lou Ann Linehan and Mike Hilger for getting the new maps across the finish line.

The new maps also cut Nebraska City from the second district of the U.S. House of Representatives, currently held by Jeff Fortenberry and adds Otoe County to the third district held by Congressman Adrian Smith.

Slama said Otoe County is a good fit with the rest of Southeast Nebraska and the rest of rural Nebraska in the congressional district.