BEATRICE — Applause filled the courthouse boardroom Wednesday after the Gage County Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution that will eliminate a half-cent sales tax at the end of this year.
The special sales tax was approved nearly three years ago and went into effect at the start of 2020 to generate funds to pay the $28.1 million Beatrice 6 judgment against Gage County.
Two payments are made each year toward the judgment. The next is scheduled for September, and the judgment should be fully paid following the next scheduled payment in May.
“It’s exciting to be able to say we’re at that point,” said board Chairman Erich Tiemann. “There was a lot of thought that went in, a lot of conversations from this board, former board members and people involved trying to figure out how to make things work. We made a stance as a board that we were going to continue the path, continue maintenance and operations and aggressively pay this off.”
County Clerk Dawn Hill said the additional sales tax has raised $4.7 million to date for the judgment, and Tiemann added much of that revenue was raised from people who live outside Gage County.
“The (state) Revenue Department estimates that approximately 40% of that sales tax brought in comes from outside of Gage County,” Tiemann said. “That’s actually a little bit of property tax relief on the citizens here in Gage County, as well.”
Board member Emily Haxby added she feels the county succeeded at continuing its regular business by completing several road projects while also dealing with the judgment.
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“There’s been continuing efforts to attract new businesses and encourage growth,” she said. “It was just so important that we continue to run the county as normal as possible so that when this payment is over, hopefully in May 2023, we’re in a good position to move forward, and that’s what we did.”
In addition to formally removing the sale tax, the board also discussed lowering the tax levy as it prepares to make the final Beatrice 6 payment.
The board voted in September 2018 to raise property taxes to the legal limit to generate revenue to pay the six people wrongfully convicted in the 1985 murder of Beatrice resident Helen Wilson.
It raised the levy to the maximum allowable 50 cents per $100 in valuation. For taxpayers, that increase has amounted to an additional $120 paid annually on property valued at $100,000.
The board will approve its budget next month, but is anticipating lowering the levy by about 5 cents.
Board members initially estimated it would take around nine years to pay off the judgment, though the number was significantly reduced thanks to the sales tax revenue, a nearly $6 million settlement with the county’s insurance carriers and a bill approved by the Nebraska Legislature in 2021.
Introduced by District 30 Sen. Myron Dorn of Adams, that bill provides $4 million in state funds over two years to cover federal judgments against counties. The bill applies to any Nebraska county that meets certain guidelines, but was driven by the Beatrice 6 case.
Dorn also spearheaded the sales tax increase that is now being removed.
The county was ordered to pay the judgment after losing the federal civil rights case filed by Joseph White, Ada JoAnn Taylor, James Dean, Thomas Winslow, Kathleen Gonzalez and Debra Shelden in 2009.
Following a 1989 cold case investigation into the rape and murder of Wilson in her downtown Beatrice apartment four years earlier, the six were convicted and spent a combined 75 years in prison.
DNA evidence later pointed to a seventh person — Bruce Allen Smith, who died in 1992 — as the actual perpetrator.
They were exonerated in 2008, and the next year sued Gage County for the reckless investigation that landed them in prison.