The Legislature has a duty next session to help the trust by clearing up the uncertainty over the appropriate criteria for awarding grants. The latest round of fierce disagreement over grant selection - for the second time this year - shows the need for action by Nebraska lawmakers. The first controversy this year centered on ethanol promotion. The trust board voted to defund $1.8 million for a set of high-scoring habitat grants and award the money instead to a lower-scoring project to finance ethanol pumps. More recently, the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy has requested $3.7 million, which critics say would go toward regulatory action that falls outside the trust’s proper criteria.