Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen will be in Chadron, Alliance, and Valentine today as he continues his series of Town Hall Meetings to drum up support for a special session of the legislature passing his property tax reduction plan.
Pillen will be in Valentine at 10:00 CT at Mid-Plains Community College, then at Chadron State College at 1:00 in the Student Center, and finally in Alliance at the Westside Event Center at 4:30.
The stops are part of a 4-day, 9-city tour that will bring his Town Hall total to 26 with meetings in all parts of the state.
Pillen announced Tuesday that the special session will begin a month from now on Thursday, July 25, and that he would keep it going until lawmakers finally passed a property tax relief plan.
The governor began this year calling for cutting property taxes by 40% through a combination of hard caps and increased K-12 state aid by elimination of many sales tax exemptions, a 2-cent increase in the sales tax rate, and a handful of other tax hikes.
Strong opposition led to the sales tax increase being dropped, resulting in a final package estimated at reducing property taxes 28%, but even that failed to survive a filibuster. Pillen has not said what he’ll propose for the special session.
He recently said he wants the state to cover 100% of the costs of K-12 education, which accounts for about 60% of property taxes in Nebraska, but gave no indication of a possible timeline for such a move.
Chadron Mayor George Klein and other city council members are expected to attend the governor’s Town Hall, but will have to leave before it’s over because they had scheduled their first budget workshop for today at 2:00 before the visit was announced.
The budget workshop will focus on spending priorities and general categories and not detailed line-item reviews.