Jeff Fortenberry /

Jeffrey Lane "Jeff" Fortenberry, born December 27, 1960) is the U.S. Representative for Nebraska's 1st congressional district, serving since 2005. He is a member of the Republican Party. The district is based in Lincoln and includes most of the eastern third of the state outside the immediate Omaha area. Fortenberry was a U.S. Senate Subcommittee staffer working on a special project examining the decline of agriculture land values in the 1980s and its impact on local government revenues. He has previously worked as an economist, in local economic development, and as a publishing executive for Sandhills Publishing. He holds a master's degree in public policy from Georgetown University, a masters degree in theology from Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio, and a bachelors degree in economics from Louisiana State University. He graduated from Catholic High in Baton Rouge. Fortenberry was an at-large member of the Lincoln City Council from 1997 to 2001. His main commitments in this role were community revitalization and increasing public safety, but doing both without raising taxation. Among the economic development and community revitalization projects he worked on were the