One of Rush Limbaugh’s undeniable truths of life was that “words mean things.” Such is the case with words such as “destroyed property’ and ‘calamity’. According to Nebraska State Statute 77-1307, “Calamity means a disastrous event, including, but not limited to a fire, an earthquake, a flood, a tornado or other natural event which significantly affects the assessed value of real property.” This definition should not require a disastrous event to have a natural cause, but not everyone sees it this way. This definition is important because of how the word ‘calamity’ relates to a former piece of legislation of mine, which allows owners of damaged property to have their real property reassessed for property tax purposes.

Property owners should not be taxed on property that has been damaged. In 2019 I introduced a bill to allow owners of destroyed property to have their real estate reassessed for property tax purposes provided that the disastrous event occurs before July 1. In order to qualify for the re-evaluation, damage to the property has to exceed 20 percent of the property’s previously assessed value and the cause of the damage cannot be attributed to the owner of the property. The bill was amended into the Revenue Committee’s bill, LB 512, and became law shortly before the floods of 2019. As a result, many with flooded properties had their valuations reduced for tax purposes in 2019.

Arson should count as a kind of calamity. In the Spring of 2020 protestors associated with the Black Lives Matter movement marched throughout the City of Lincoln. On May 30 or 31 of that year they set fire to a building owned by the Inland Insurance Company. Damage done to the building was significant and should have qualified the owner of the property to have the building reassessed for property tax purposes. Indeed, the Inland Insurance Company filed a report of destroyed real property with the county assessor and the county clerk of Lancaster County.

Politicians can sometimes make words mean whatever they want them to mean. The Lancaster County Board of Equalization considered the damaged property report by the Inland Insurance Company but left the value of the building unchanged. So, Inland filed an appeal with the Tax Equalization and Review Commission, otherwise known as TERC. The TERC board held a hearing and then concluded that the building did not qualify as “destroyed real property” because the fire that caused the damage was not a calamity. The operative word here is the word caused. The TERC board had limited their definition of a calamity to only disasters caused by natural events.

Nebraska’s justice system still works. TERC was created in order to lessen the burden of the Nebraska Supreme Court, but the Nebraska Supreme Court still gets the final word on controversial matters. Inland filed an appeal with the Nebraska Supreme Court, which heard their case. The Nebraska Supreme Court overturned the ruling of TERC on March 8, 2024. This was a major victory for my original bill! The Nebraska Supreme Court decided that a natural event could be understood as the type as well as the cause of a natural event. Because the definition of a calamity in Nebraska State Statute 77-1307 lists “fire” separately from “other natural events” it should be viewed as another kind of natural event.

No new legislation is needed. Last year I had introduced a new bill to correct what had happened to the Inland Insurance Company. That bill is LB 29 and it currently sits on General File in the Legislature. That bill would change “destroyed property” to “damaged property” in order to better include situations such as arson, which are not always viewed as naturally caused events. However, the ruling of the Nebraska Supreme Court means that my original bill will now include instances of arson.