Two Northeast Nebraska state parks are included with several other beneficiaries of the LB 1023-E, a bill Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts signed into law.
Ricketts’s signature allowed the marina expansion of the Lewis and Clark State Park near Ponca and the convention center and lodge construction of the Niobrara State Park.
Speaker Mike Hilgers of Lincoln, the bill sponsor, said the project took many people to collaborate for one goal, starting with the Statewide tourism and Recreational Water Access and Resource Sustainability (Star Wars) committee.
“It takes a big vision. I think it takes teamwork, and it takes people willing to dive into the grit of the legislative process, and we had all of that here,” Hilgers said.
He said that they had “a lot of different voices” to support the legislative process from the Democrats, Republicans, people from Lincoln and Omaha, and out of state, with the Star Wars committee having a fifth of the legislature.
We had a diversity of ideological perspectives when it came to how we best build off our water resources. That committee worked together over the course of a year. We jammed over a year’s worth of work into six months,” Hilgers said.
Hilgers said countless generations of future Nebraskans would benefit from the projects signed into law on Monday.
This article originally appeared on Norfolk Daily News.