One of the bills that I will introduce next year is a damaged property bill. Although I introduced this bill during the last legislative session, the bill’s language got grafted into the Revenue Committee’s Christmas tree bill. This meant that those with destroyed properties during the first half of the year could now apply to have their properties reassessed for property tax purposes.

The language that was adopted by the Revenue Committee pertained to properties that were destroyed by fire or by a natural disaster. Damages initiated by the owner were not permitted. The passage of that language in the Christmas Tree bill was quite timely because that was the year of the spring floods, which destroyed thousands of acres of agricultural lands and homes all across Nebraska. As a result, many landowners were able to have their properties reassessed for property tax purposes, so long as the damages done to the property constituted twenty percent or more of the property’s value. However, there remained an unresolved problem with the language of that bill.

A problem later arose with the particular language that was used for this bill. LB 482 as well as the language that was grafted into the Revenue Committee’s Christmas tree bill made use of the words “destroyed property.” And these particular words would prove to become problematic for future implementations of the bill.

When the Black Lives Matter riots swept through the City of Lincoln during the summer of 2020, several buildings were torched along the Lincoln Mall and on H Street near the State Capitol Building. When some of those businessowners applied to have their properties reassessed for property tax purposes, they were denied on the grounds that their buildings had not been destroyed, but only damaged by the fires.

Indeed, this was the very problem with the bill which had been earlier identified by Doug Peterson, Nebraska’s Attorney General. In 2019 I wrote a letter to Doug Peterson, asking his opinion about the language of the bill. In his response, he said, “…the term ‘destroyed’ would likely be read to mean completely uninhabitable or unfit for customary use.” And that is exactly how the county commissioners and the courts interpreted the language of the bill.

By changing the language from “destroyed property” to “damaged property” this will correct the problem that was created two years ago. Although I tried to correct the language during the 107th Legislature with LB 165, that bill never became a law. The bill advanced out of committee and onto General File, but because the bill lacked a priority status, the Legislature never took the time to advance the bill any further. As a result, the bill died by being indefinitely postponed on April 20 of this year, which was the last day of the of the 107th Legislature.

Therefore, I will reintroduce this bill next year for the 108th Legislature. No one who has had the value of his or her property lessened by twenty percent or more during the first half of the calendar year because of a fire or some other natural disaster should ever have to pay property taxes on the assessed value of that property as it was on January 1 of that same year. Such a practice is unfair to the property owner, and it is time for the State of Nebraska to finally fix this problem.