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Neb. Farm Bureau: ‘Hold the line’ on local spending

Nebraska Farm Bureau is urging schools, counties and other political subdivisions funded through local property taxes to hold the line on spending.

Farm Bureau president Steve Nelson says those entities can help address the growing property tax burden on Nebraskans as they develop their budgets for the coming year.

“It’s never been more important than now, when we’ve seen increasing ag land values and increased spending—really from all of the subdivisions—that we involve ourselves in the process and say how important this is,” Nelson says. “and what this means to farmers and ranchers who pay the vast majority of the taxes in most school districts.”

Nelson says Nebraska needs to “get a handle on the property tax problem”—and he says addressing local spending has to be part of the solution.

“We’re not just looking at the spending side of it. And, certainly, we’re not looking to destroy schools or to destroy counties or anything like that,” he says. “Our members believe in the importance of education and we know that infrastructure is important in our counties. But we also know that we have a system that distributes the burden of paying for those services very inequitably.”

Over the last 10 years, Nelson says, statewide property taxes levied on agricultural land have increased 162 percent in comparison to a 51 percent increase in commercial real estate taxes and a 40 percent increase in residential real estate taxes. He says the growth in taxes on ag land in comparison to the other sectors means that farmers and ranchers have been tapped to pay a larger portion of funding for schools and local needs, which have continued to escalate.

Nelson says statewide spending on schools alone, increased 40 percent during roughly the same time period in which ag land taxes skyrocketed.

AUDIO: Steve Nelson