Sen. Brian Hardin of Gering says he’s not convinced that any results from a special session on property tax relief will have the long-term impact Governor Jim Pillen is hoping for.
Hardin said he had a recent meeting with the Governor, and told him the scope of the legislation really should be much more comprehensive, otherwise it might not be as effective as Pillen may want.
“A lot of the things that are being done for the belt tightening to get us closer to a 50% tax savings this year truly is for this year. It’s a one-off type of thing, because we’re scraping a lot of things out of the budget that aren’t going to be there to scrape again next year,” said Hardin. “And so, that means that this is a temporary fix, and yet another tweak to the Nebraska broken tax system.”
Hardin predicts that even if something passes, lawmakers will end up needing to revisit the topic again sooner rather than later.
He says to truly fix the state’s tax system, lawmakers should take the time outside of a regular session to hammer out a complete package, perhaps using surrounding states as potential models that could help resolve the issue completely.
