The Nebraska Farmers Union said Wednesday that this year's legislative session should have had an opportunity to consider a broad property tax relief package that would have paid for that reduction with increased state revenue while providing more balanced funding for local schools.
A bill (LB1084), sponsored by Sen. Tom Briese of Albion, would have met that criteria but was not advanced to the floor by the Revenue Committee for a full airing, the 4,000-member farm organization stated.
Briese's bill was the work of a "unique and constructive working coalition," the Farmers Union said.
The proposal would have funded property tax relief with an increase in the state sales tax rate, along with a number of changes in sales and income tax provisions.
The focus of Gov. Pete Ricketts and Sen. Jim Smith of Papillion, chairman of the Revenue Committee, was on income tax reduction, not property tax reform, the organization stated.
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Their bill (LB947) would have provided for property tax reduction phased in over a decade to reach 20 percent while also reducing the corporate income tax rate over a five-year period.
"Governor Ricketts has fulfilled his promise to work for property tax relief every year, providing $840 million in property tax relief since taking office," Ricketts' campaign spokesman Matthew Trail said in reacting to the Farmers Union statement.
"These attacks are baseless," Trail said.Â
"It is not fiscally responsible to support income tax rate and revenue reductions when Nebraska's current revenues are not sufficient to meet the state budget funding obligations," the Farmers Union stated.Â
"Kansas tried that approach. It did not work.
"High property taxes are the direct result of an unfair, unbalanced state tax policy that fails to properly fund K-12 education," the Farmers Union stated.
"When 72 percent, or 178 out of 244, of Nebraska's school districts ... are forced to rely solely on property taxes, something is seriously and obviously wrong.
"High property taxes are primarily a funding problem, not a spending problem," the organization said.Â