Nebraska’s governor doesn’t carry a state-issued phone. Critics call it an abuse of state disclosure laws.

For more than two years, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen did not make or take a single call on his cellphone while on the clock as the state’s chief executive — at least none that there is any record of, according to his office’s top attorney.

After the Flatwater Free Press filed a public records request for call logs from Pillen’s cellphone dating back to September 2023, the governor’s general counsel said no such records exist.

“Governor Pillen does not have a state-issued mobile phone,” the lawyer, Michael J. Donley, said in an email earlier this month — more than four months after Flatwater filed the request.

The revelation marks Pillen’s latest step to shield his communications from public view. He broke with more than 30 years of gubernatorial practice by not releasing a public schedule in March 2023, just two months into his first term. And in August of that year, his office refused to release four of his emails in response to a public records request, citing “executive privilege” — a justification that does not exist in Nebraska’s public records laws.

“I don’t email, I don’t text,” the first-term Republican governor said in response to criticism from Democratic lawmakers over his refusal to release the emails. “Texting when it’s for anything other than logistics, I don’t do.”

His decision not to carry a state-owned cellphone makes him the first governor in at least 20 years not to do so — and, advocates say, amounts to an attempt to circumvent state law.

“It’s absurd to think that simply moving his business to a private cellphone means that none of those records are available to the public,” said Gavin Geis, the director of Common Cause Nebraska, a transparency-in-government watchdog group. “That’s just an abuse of the whole public records process.”

Flatwater sought the records after the online news outlet the Nebraska Examiner reported in January that Pillen had steered the Nebraska Department of Economic Development to award a $2.5 million no-bid emergency contract to a lobbyist who had joined Pillen on state trips to South Korea and Japan.

Flatwater also requested emails between Pillen’s chief of staff, Dave Lopez, and former state economic development officials, including one who told the Examiner that Lopez had provided  input on the state’s contract with Julie Bushell, the lobbyist. That portion of Flatwater’s request, which covered an 11-day period last July, also yielded no records, according to the Governor’s Office.

Under Nebraska law, “all records and documents, regardless of physical form, of or belonging to this state” or local governments are a matter of public record — meaning Nebraskans have the right to examine them, with exceptions allowed for investigative police records, personal information, trade secrets and a host of other sensitive documents. The law does not explicitly say whether records from public officials’ personal devices or private email accounts are subject to the law, but prior attorneys general have held for decades that they are.

Pillen’s office repeatedly claimed that Flatwater’s request sought “a record which does not exist” but declined to elaborate. Laura Strimple, a spokeswoman for the governor, said Pillen’s office “is transparent, follows the law, and has diligently responded to the countless public records requests we receive, including several from your outlet.”

“If you choose to publish this non-story, your outlet will have demonstrated once again that it is more interested in political hits and sensationalism than news that matters to hardworking Nebraskans,” Strimple said in an email.

She did not respond to follow-up questions about whether the governor has ever used his phone for state business and whether his office would consider those calls a matter of public record.

Reporters often use the state’s public records law to find out who government officials are communicating with via phone, email and text.

In 2013, the Omaha World-Herald used call logs obtained under the law to reveal Nebraska’s then-lieutenant governor, Rick Sheehy, had made 2,300 phone calls on his state-issued phone to four women other than his wife, one of whom told the paper she had a four-year affair with Sheehy. He resigned a day after The World-Herald contacted him about its findings.

Such probes have historically not been limited to communications stored on state-owned devices.

In 1997, then-Attorney General Don Stenberg issued an opinion declaring that “public records need not be in the physical possession of an agency to be subject to disclosure under state records acts.”

Lawyers in then-Attorney General Jon Bruning’s office cited Stenberg’s opinion in 2012 when the office determined that members of the Gage County Board of Supervisors were obliged to turn over emails from their private accounts in response to a request from the Beatrice Daily Sun, which sought emails between the board and the county’s medical director, who had resigned. 

In 2015, lawyers in then-Attorney General Doug Peterson’s office directed Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert, a Republican, to turn over texts she had sent on her personal phone to City Council members. “It seems to us that the records at issue here are those pertaining solely to the City’s business,” Peterson’s office wrote. “There is no right of privacy for matters that are not private.”

The Nebraska Association of County Officials, a nonprofit that serves and lobbies for all 93 of the state’s counties, tells its members the same. A presentation from the organization’s 2025 annual conference warned that text messages dealing with the public’s business “will be considered a public record.”

A spokeswoman for Mike Hilgers, Nebraska’s current attorney general, declined to say how he advises state agencies on public records stored on private devices. Neither Bruning nor Peterson, both Republicans, returned phone calls seeking comment.

Max Kautsch, a Kansas-based First Amendment rights and open government attorney who also practices law in Nebraska, said Pillen “is gambling that there will be no political consequence from narrowly construing the law.”

“In Nebraska, there is a collective hunch that public officials cannot conduct the public’s business on private devices,” he said. “But the governor wants to push back on what the consensus is on the law. The Legislature should make his obligation clear.”

Courts and attorneys general in other states have largely agreed. A 2014 study from Oklahoma State University found that courts and attorneys general in 18 states had addressed access to public records on private devices. In 15 of those states, authorities held that such records were open to public inspection.

That interpretation isn’t universal. Kentucky’s Supreme Court recently zagged, ruling 4-2 in April that public officials don’t have to disclose records of government business conducted on their private phones.

David Cuillier, director of the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida, called the Kentucky case “an outlier,” not the start of a trend. “At least I hope not — because it’s ludicrous to say that government employees and officials can do government business secretly just by using their own laptop or cellphone or Gmail or Yahoo account,” he said. “That defeats the whole purpose of public records laws.”

In Nebraska, Pillen’s decision to eschew a state-issued phone marks a break with at least two decades of precedent. 

Former Republican Govs. Pete Ricketts, who preceded Pillen, and Dave Heineman, who served from 2005 to 2015, confirmed to Flatwater that they had state-owned mobile phones that they used for state business. Heineman, who served as lieutenant governor under Gov. Mike Johanns, said he believed Johanns had one, too. 

Johanns, who was governor from 1999 until 2005, did not return emails seeking confirmation. Nor did former Gov. Kay Orr, who served one term as governor starting in 1987.

Former Gov. Ben Nelson said he may have been Nebraska’s first governor to carry a mobile phone after his election in 1990. The technology was in its infancy, and mobile phones were so big that a state trooper carried it for him, he recalled.

The Democrat couldn’t remember ever receiving a public records request for his call logs, he said. He took more heat from reporters over his public appearance schedule — something for which Pillen was criticized in 2023 for not making available to the press, breaking with more than three decades of practice.

Nelson faced a different kind of criticism, he said. He recalled a reporter asking about the frequent weekend hunting trips detailed on his calendar.

“The people of Nebraska — they’re telling me they want less government, so I’ve been trying to give it to them,” Nelson recalled saying.

The room filled with laughter, and the reporter who had asked about the trips looked sheepish, Nelson said.

“But the point is,” he said, “she knew my whereabouts.”