By Senator Tom Brewer
With the Independence Day holiday behind us, it will be back to work for the Legislature soon. Normally at this stage of the process, I would be a term-limited senator enjoying the effective end of eight regular sessions, although that does not officially happen until a new senator takes the oath in January of 2025.
As it is, the Governor has called a special session to reduce property taxes. On the 25th of June the Governor sent a letter to Senator Arch, the Speaker. In the letter he points out that in 2022, Nebraska surpassed $5 billion collected in property taxes in Nebraska. He has stated his goal for the special session is a bill that reduces property taxes by at least 40%. That means the bill in question must find about two billion dollars’ worth of either spending cuts, which I think are unlikely, or some new source of state-funded revenue that enable the local units of government to reduce their property taxes. The Special Session of the Nebraska Legislature begins Thursday, the 25th of July.
A number of bill ideas will be introduced for the special session. I sincerely hope the body can pass a bill that clearly states what the legislature believes the local unit of government (schools, counties, cities and towns) need to collect property taxes for in the first place. I think an important first step is making sure the authority for a local unit of government to collect a tax must have a clear and distinct purpose described by the legislature. I strongly believe if the legislature is going to place mandates on local units of government, we should fully fund it. Once the funding for something is placed in the state law however, the local unit of government’s authority to tax needs to be reduced accordingly.
I am looking forward to the legislature finally passing a bill that replaces the horribly broken Tax Equity Educational Opportunities Support Act. The TEEOSA formula is how we finance public schools in Nebraska, which account for almost two-thirds of property taxes. For my entire eight years in the body, many good bills from several good senators have fallen short by just a few votes. I am hopeful the body will finally correct this flawed formula. Meaningful reductions in property taxes will be very difficult without this reform.
I like the idea which proposes for “funding purposes” every K-12 teacher in Nebraska is considered a state employee. Each biannual budget the legislature passes an appropriation required by law to fund teacher’s salaries. What if all 244 school districts no longer needed the authority to levy, collect and spend property taxes because the legislature actually “provided for the free instruction in the common schools?”
The Nebraska Supreme Court once said; “What methods and what means should be adopted in order to furnish free instruction to the children of the state has been left by the constitution to the legislature.” (State ex rel. Shineman v. Board of Education, 1950) When the Special Session starts, I hope the legislature remembers this and acts like it.