By Erin Bamer | Nebraska Examiner
Maureen Larsen asked about tourism, DED downsizing at confirmation hearing
LINCOLN — Nebraska’s new Economic Development Director Maureen Larsen expressed support for consolidating the department with the Nebraska Tourism Commission at her confirmation hearing Tuesday.
Gov. Jim Pillen named Larsen the permanent Department of Economic Development director in November. She had served as interim director since July following former director K.C. Belitz’ resignation. Prior to her appointment, Larsen served as Pillen’s general counsel and deputy director of his Policy Research Office.
Larsen, speaking before the Nebraska Legislature’s Banking, Commerce and Insurance Committee, spoke on the possibility of a merger when she was asked about the state’s lagging tourism revenues. She noted that while national tourism levels had grown modestly over the last year, Nebraska remained relatively flat.
Larsen argued that consolidating the agencies would mean tourism initiatives would have a larger budget and more marketing resources to pull from, and DED has the capacity to utilize grant funding for tourism efforts. She noted that prior to 2012, the two agencies were one in the same.
“If you’re trying to recruit businesses, if you’re trying to recruit that talent to keep people in Nebraska, tourism is a giant component of that,” Larsen said.
Committee Chair State Sen. Mike Jacobson of North Platte, who introduced an interim study Tuesday to examine the potential impacts of merging the agencies, asked Larsen if she knew why the agencies split in 2012. Larsen, though she wasn’t in state government at the time, said it was her understanding that lawmakers didn’t believe DED was doing an effective job of handling tourism.
Larsen also was asked about downsizing at DED during Larsen’s leadership. Between September and November, at least 22 workers exited the department, and more high-ranking officials have left since then.
DED’s housing director resigned in December, and its deputy director Joe Fox plans to resign within the next two weeks, as confirmed by multiple sources.
When first asked by the Examiner in November, department spokesman Justin Pinkerman said in an email that “DED has had 0 layoffs/reductions in force.” He did note that the department “has had voluntary departures in that time” but did not specify how many.
Former DED deputy director of operations Joe Lauber, who was laid off over the summer, said there were signs of budget cuts impacting DED prior to his termination, like hiring freezes and directives to stop travel. He said during a management meeting he attended, then-interim director Larsen shared that it was the governor’s goal to reduce the size of DED through attrition.
Agencies often do this by not filling positions people vacate through retirements and having or encouraging people to leave on their own. Lauber said the state implemented strategies such as Pillen’s return-to-work order and enforcing a strict 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. work schedule in hopes of getting people to consider whether they wanted to keep working for the department. Lauber said employees were not allowed to end their days earlier than 4:30 p.m.
Larsen addressed the return-to-work policy at Tuesday’s hearing, saying that after she entered DED she realized that many employees were still working from home, and she enforced the policy to hold the staff accountable to the governor’s order so “everybody was on the same playing field.”
“I would never ask anyone else to work more than I do, or work in a place that I wouldn’t,” Larsen said.
Larsen said the downsizing can largely be attributed to high turnover, which she said is normal for DED, and an intentional winding down of pandemic-era programs. She said DED received an influx of cash during the COVID-19 pandemic — to the tune of about $900 million — which created several new programs that are now concluding.
Pinkerman shared data showing that between 2020 to 2023, the department’s full-time staff grew by about 10-15 people per year. It reached a peak of about 114 filled full-time positions on June 30, 2025, which dropped down to around 90 by the end of November.
“As DED winds down pandemic-era economic recovery programs and identifies greater operational efficiencies, not all positions that come open are being filled,” Pinkerman said in an email.