Property tax relief approved in state budget, some lawmakers question if its enough

It’s been shouted high and low throughout Nebraska: property taxes are too high.

In some cases, so high, the bills are forcing Nebraskans to leave the state.

“If you’d have asked me three years ago if I’d be sitting in Warrensburg, Missouri right now, I’d have said you were nuts,” Fritz Oltjenbruns, a farmer said.

Oltjenbruns and his family farmed in Ceresco for decades, before he said their property tax bills forced them to move.

“and it takes something profound for a farmer to leave the land he’s bled over,” Oltjenbruns said.

He said his property tax bills were that bad.

That’s what lawmakers aimed to fix this legislative session. How will their plans affect property owner’s bottom lines?

Governor Pete Ricketts said a measure passed in the state budget will save property owners an extra $20 per every $100,000 worth of property owned.

“We increased the property tax credit relief fund by $51 million, that’s a 23 percent increase,” Ricketts said. “That means if you’ve got $100,000 in home valuation, you’ll see your credit go up from $86 to $106, that’s basically the state paying $106 of your property tax bill.”

Ricketts said he proposed several other property tax bills that’d address land valuations and school funding, but all were filibustered. He’d like to revisit them next session, but is satisfied with the progress made so far.

Senator Lou Ann Linehan, from Elkhorn, is anything but satisfied.

“It’s not enough,” the chair of the revenue committee said. “We’ve got ag producers hurting, young people who can’t afford to buy a house, it’s not enough.”

Linehan proposed LB 289. It would offset property taxes by increasing sales taxes.

The new revenue from sales taxes would go to schools, which would reduce the amount of money property owners pay to schools by 20 percent.

Linehan said this is pretty significant considering 65 percent of the average property tax bill is made up of school funding.

LB 289 will go to the full legislature for the second time Wednesday.