by Dennis E. Bryers, FASLA, PLA
City of Omaha
Landscape Architect-Park & Recreation Planner

Centennial Mall in Lincoln, Nebraska | Photo courtesy of Clark Enerson Partners

After seven years and three different bills, Governor Pete Ricketts signed LB30 into law on February 12, 2020. This new law, LB30, updates the definition and scope of the profession of landscape architecture. Some of the major updates include allowing for online renewal of licensing, changing the renewal period from one year to two years, rearranging the sections to follow other professional licensing laws in the state, and more clearly defining the penalties for violating the law. The law will go into effect ninety days after the Governor signed it.

The next step is in this process is to update the Rules and Regulations to the Act. The Nebraska State Board of Landscape Architects (NSBLA) will hold a public hearing on the proposed Rules and Regulations later this year. Be on the watch for a date and time for the hearing! There are also a few state agencies that must review and approve them as well. Once those approvals are obtained, the revised Rules and Regulations will go into effect. The goal is to have everything in place before the end of the year so that we can start 2021 with the new law entirely in effect.

The process to update the current Act started back in 2013 when the NSBLA decided that it was time to overhaul the current Act. A Task Force was established to assist the Board in gathering information on what should be revised. The Task Force provided recommendations to the Board in 2014. In 2015 the Board had a draft bill written, but at the eleventh hour, the state senator who was considering sponsoring the bill decided not to. The Board was successful in getting a senator in 2016 to sponsor the bill, LB788, but it never made it out of committee.

In 2017, a second attempt was made with a new bill, LB364. The Great Plains Chapter and Chapter Trustee John Royster, FASLA applied for and received an Advocacy Grant from ASLA to hire a lobbyist. In addition, a number of local landscape architectural firms provided additional financial support towards hiring a chapter lobbyist. The bill had its public hearing in 2017, but the committee didn’t vote on it, and the bill was carried over to the 2018 session. While the bill did make it out of committee during the 2018 legislative session, it never made it to the floor of the legislature and died at the end of the 2018 session.

In 2019, a third attempt was made with LB30. It made it out of committee, but did not make it to the floor of the legislature and was carried over to the 2020 legislative session. With the charge being led by the lobbyist hired by the Chapter and Senator Kolterman, the sponsor of the bill, the legislature voted 48 to 0 on February 6, 2020 in favor of the bill and sent it on to the Governor for his signature.

There are a lot of people who participated in the new law over the past seven years. This includes the members of the Nebraska State Board of Landscape Architects (Dennis E. Bryers, Eileen Bergt, Gary Wells, Dave Ciaccio, Todd Maiellaro, Eric J. Casper, JoAnne Kissel and Gayle M. Malmquist), Jean Lais, Administrative Assistant to the Board, the Task Force (John Royster, Ken Backman, Dennis Sheer, Brad Swerczek, and Pat Slaven), the leadership of the Great Plains Chapter ASLA (now Nebraska/Dakotas Chapter ASLA), John Royster, Chapter Trustee, Nebraska State Senators Tanya Cook (LB788), Lynne Walz (LB364), and Mark Kolterman (LB30), and the chapter lobbyist Baird Holm, LLP (David Levy and Vanessa A. Silk).

Be sure to thank these individuals for their outstanding work in advocating for the profession of Landscape Architecture! Well done!