On July 30 a public hearing was held at the State Capitol in Lincoln on LB 16. LB 16 is the latest and most updated version of the EPIC Option Consumption Tax, which I introduced for the special session of the Legislature. According to the Governor’s proclamation only bills which focus on property tax relief may be considered for the special session.

The public hearing was outstanding for the EPIC Option Consumption Tax. One member of the Revenue Committee commented afterwards that nearly 100 private citizens had come out to testify in favor of the EPIC Option Consumption Tax, while only two paid lobbyists bothered to show up in person to testify in opposition to it.

The online comments that were submitted on LB 16 had similar results. There were 85 proponents of the EPIC Option Consumption Tax compared to only nine opponents.

I am overwhelmed by the tremendous amount of support that the EPIC Option Consumption Tax received from the public at the hearing. Some concerned citizens drove as much as eight hours to testify for only three minutes before the members of the Legislature’s Revenue Committee. By both big numbers and by telling their own personal stories, these citizens made a huge impact on the committee members. No one could have sat through that hearing without being moved by the stories of taxpayers who were struggling to pay their property taxes.

One particular woman who testified in person at the hearing struggled to hold back her tears as she told her own personal story of how she had to make the very difficult decision to sell the family ranch. The ranch had been homesteaded by her grandfather and willed to her by her father back in 1994. However, by 2011 she could no longer afford to pay the property taxes and had to sell it.

Another woman who submitted an online testimony wrote about how she and her husband pay more in property taxes each year on their farmland than what they originally paid for the land back in 1989.

A landlord, whose property taxes have doubled within past ten years, testified online about how Nebraska’s property tax system is forcing him to evict seniors who live on a fixed income. He wrote, “It breaks my heart when a fixed income renter has to move out because they can’t afford to pay rent anymore.”

Without these kinds of pertinent testimonies, State Senators in Lincoln and Omaha would have little idea about the severity of the burden of our property tax system and the predicament that it is putting property owners in. More and more Nebraskans are finding themselves in the difficult position of having to decide whether or not they can afford to continue living in Nebraska.

Something has to be done immediately to stop the bleeding from our overburdening property tax system. On July 23 the National Mortgage News published a report of states where mortgage delinquencies are increasing the most. Nebraska now ranks at number two. The only state where mortgage delinquencies are rising at a faster pace than Nebraska is the state of Vermont. Moreover, the USDA continues to rank Nebraska as the third highest state for farm and ranch bankruptcies.

State Senators at the Capitol in Lincoln are finally getting the message that real tax reform is needed in Nebraska. It is my sincere hope and desire that the Unicameral Legislature will be able to pass legislation that will result in meaningful and significant property tax relief.

The special session of the State Legislature has now begun. The first three days of the session were devoted to bill introduction. Gov. Pillen introduced his property tax relief plan first. I followed him shortly thereafter with the introduction of four pieces of legislation for the EPIC Option Consumption Tax. Today I would like to provide readers with my own analysis of the Governor’s property tax relief plan by comparing it to the EPIC Option Consumption Tax plan.

The Governor’s property tax relief plan should be called “EPIC Light”. I say this because the Governor’s property tax relief plan follows a similar path as the EPIC Option Consumption Tax but falls short of doing all that the EPIC Option Consumption Tax does. For example, the Governor’s plan eliminates sales tax exemptions on services (EPIC charges no tax on business services), funds public schools through the State, and recognizes the need to reform the Tax Equity & Educational Opportunities Support Act (TEEOSA), three important changes also made by the EPIC Option Consumption Tax, but there are also several differences between the two plans.

The Governor’s property tax relief plan differs from the EPIC Option Consumption Tax in some very important ways and falls short of doing what Nebraska’s taxpayers need from a comprehensive tax reform plan. Perhaps the biggest difference between the two plans relates to taxing agricultural inputs. Because the EPIC Option Consumption Tax never taxes an item twice, the consumption tax is only ever applied at the point of retail sale to the consumer. This means that business-to-business transactions never get taxed. However, Governor Pillen’s plan would tax agricultural inputs, such as the purchase of a new tractor, a new baler, or a new irrigation system.

Another difference between the two plans is that the Governor’s plan allows school districts to retain their tax asking authority by capping levy increases at five percent. In contrast, the EPIC Option Consumption Tax eliminates the property tax altogether. Allowing school districts to retain their property tax asking authority likely means that any tax relief Nebraskans might enjoy from the Governor’s tax plan would be temporary and short-lived. Within a few short years after the State implements the Governor’s tax plan, property taxes would be right back where they are today, and that’s not what I consider to be real property tax relief.

The Governor’s property tax relief plan lacks a complete and coherent distribution plan for school funding. While the Governor’s plan contains a fund and a formula for distributing revenues back to school districts, it lacks a plan for regulating how school districts write their budgets, additional funding for the construction of new school facilities, and a mechanism for planning for future growth, all of which the EPIC Option Consumption Tax provides in detailed form.

The Governor’s plan fails to reform the TEEOSA formula. Instead, the Governor’s bill simply recognizes the need to reform the TEEOSA formula. Stated in this way, the Governor is pushing his work off onto others to do for him. Under the Governor’s plan a future Legislature would have to do the heavy lifting and decide how to reform the TEEOSA formula. The current TEEOSA formula favors school districts in Nebraska’s urban centers. By way of contrast, the EPIC Option Consumption Tax team worked with three school superintendents to create a new school equalization formula that would work for all school districts across the state, including small school districts in rural areas of the state.

I share these differences between the Governor’s tax reform plan and the EPIC Option Consumption Tax plan in order to demonstrate how broken our current tax system really is. The current tax system cannot be fixed, and that is what the Governor’s plan tries to do. Instead, Nebraska needs a fresh new start with a tax plan that works. Passing the Governor’s tax plan in its current form would be like waking up from surgery in the recovery room only to hear the surgeon say that he removed half of the cancerous tumor in your body. Nebraska’s current tax system is cancerous, and the time has come to remove the whole tumor, and that is precisely what the EPIC Option Consumption Tax does.

Two ballot measures will appear on your ballot in November which would legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes. The first initiative would make it legal for physicians to prescribe medical cannabis, while the second initiative would regulate the dispensing of the drug. The reason for two separate ballot initiatives has to do with the single subject rule stipulated in the Nebraska State Constitution, which states in Article III, Section 2 that “Initiative measures shall contain only one subject.”

Medical marijuana is not medication. Medical marijuana covers such a wide range of applications that it defies the nature of what a medication is supposed to be. There is a clear difference between medication and medical marijuana. Medications isolate specific compounds or active ingredients in order to treat certain medical conditions, such as epilepsy or multiple sclerosis. Medications are subject to extensive testing, endure clinical trials for safety and efficacy, and are often subject to public hearings before they are ever approved by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA). Medications are closely regulated and are distributed according to dosages in milligrams. Medical marijuana would not be subject to any of this.

Medical marijuana is recreational marijuana disguised as medication. Medical Marijuana dispensaries would sell products such as vaporizers, edible candies, oils, tinctures, and patches, which all lack uniform dosing specificity. Levels of THC and CBD often differ greatly between cannabis products, batches, and dispensaries. Patients need to know what they are consuming. They also need to be assured that what they are consuming is safe and effective. Physicians, likewise, need to have confidence that the drug they are prescribing will work as they intend it to work. Pharmaceutical companies have already discovered cannabis derived medications which can treat diseases like epilepsy without the need for dispensaries or these kinds of unregulated recreational marijuana products.

Marijuana impairs driving. Last Thursday the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released its final report on a March 22, 2022 collision between the 16-year-old driver of a Chevrolet Spark hatchback who was using marijuana and a gravel-hauling semi-truck in the small town of Tishomingo, Oklahoma. In that report, the NTSB stated that “…marijuana decreases motor coordination, slows reaction time, and impairs judgment of time and distance, all critical functions for driving.”

The Oklahoma incident is important because recreational marijuana remains illegal in that state while medical marijuana is legal. NTSB Chairwoman, Jennifer Homendy, went on to warn folks in Oklahoma about the dangers of driving under the influence of marijuana. In states where some form of marijuana use is legal, people oftentimes make the mistake of assuming that it is safe and legal to drive while impaired by the drug.

Traffic safety must come first. Jennifer Homendy went on to say, “Unfortunately, I think state laws that are legalizing recreational and medicinal use of marijuana have come before thoughts or action on what they are doing about traffic safety…They are far ahead on legalizing it, but very behind when it comes to traffic safety.” Drivers need to have confidence that other drivers they meet on the road are not going to be impaired by marijuana.

These are just a few of the many reasons why I stand against the legalization of medical marijuana. I encourage you to vote against these two initiatives when you see them on your ballot in November.

I imagine that most readers are expecting me to write this week about the upcoming special session of the State Legislature. The Governor has not yet formally called for a special session of the Legislature and his plan for property tax relief remains under construction. When news becomes available, about a special session or about his plan for property tax relief, I will be sure to let the readership know.

I am committed to keeping the folks of Western Nebraska informed about state news. When it comes to state news, Western Nebraska is a kind of news desert. Many readers of my weekly column seldom ever receive news from the eastern part of the state. By the time folks living in the Panhandle receive news from Lincoln it has oftentimes already become history and is no longer even considered news.

Today I would like to inform you about the recent outstanding work of our State Auditor, Mike Foley. The job of the State Auditor is to analyze the financial records of our state agencies and to hold them accountable for how they spend taxpayers’ dollars. Mike Foley is the right man for this position. I have known Mike Foley for nearly 25 years. I first met him when he was a State Senator. He and my son, Philip, shared an office together at the State Capitol in Lincoln for two years.

Foley did an excellent job representing his district in Lincoln as well as the people of Nebraska when he served as a State Senator. For the first six years of my tenure as a State Senator, Foley served as the Lieutenant Governor of the State, where he presided over the State Legislature. Following his eight-year service as the Lieutenant Governor, he was elected to the office of State Auditor of Public Accounts in 2022. Foley may be the best State Auditor that Nebraska has ever seen!

Two years ago, Gov. Pillen had recommended that the State Legislature reduce the State Auditor’s budget by $250,000. The State Legislature ultimately decided against it, and that decision has proved to be one of the wisest decisions that the State Legislature has ever made. I say this, because Foley has recovered many times more than the Governor’s proposed budget cut of $250,000. Foley is a budget hawk who continuously uncovers how state agencies are misappropriating and abusing our state’s tax dollars, and today I would like to share a couple of examples of how he did this last week.

In a press release last Tuesday Foley identified millions of dollars which were improperly paid out by the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to child care providers through the NFOCUS Aid Payments Program. While participating in the childcare subsidy program, Foley said, “many of those providers took full advantage of the agency’s lax oversight and successfully bilked DHHS out of payments far in excess of those to which they were entitled.” Foley uncovered approximately $12.8 million in fraudulent billings that were paid out by DHHS over a nine-month period between 2023 and 2024.

Then, on Thursday of last week, Foley released another report showing how the Nebraska Board of Parole has been using state vehicles for personal use. The report identified 12 employees of the Nebraska Board of Parole who used state vehicles for a combined total of 291 unapproved trips. Foley uncovered the abuse of state vehicles by analyzing GPS data that the Nebraska Board of Parole allegedly never received. One staff member in particular used a state vehicle to travel 200 miles to attend a retirement party. Using a state vehicle for personal use is classified as a misdemeanor under Nebraska State law.

Cutting out fraudulent and wasteful spending is important. The work of the State Auditor is necessary to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not being wasted. There remains a lot more work that needs to be done at the state level to weed out fraudulent and wasteful spending, but please know that we have a good man at the helm who is doing this work on behalf of the Nebraska taxpayers.

Today it is with great disappointment that I must report that the EPIC Option Consumption Tax team did not meet the required signature count to place our two initiatives for constitutional amendments on the November general election ballot. While the team met the first goal of securing signatures from at least five percent of registered voters in 38 counties, the team fell short of the second requirement of securing signatures from ten percent of the registered voters statewide.

I would like to express my gratitude to the many volunteers who worked tirelessly with determination and self-sacrifice in order to put these two ballot initiatives on the November ballot. In order to meet the second requirement, these volunteer petition circulators needed to acquire a total of 123,190 valid signatures. That is a nearly impossible feat to accomplish without paid circulators. The last time that an all-volunteer team managed to place a ballot initiative on the ballot for the general election was back in 1966!

The fact that our volunteer circulators met the first requirement of securing valid signatures from five percent of registered voters in more than 38 counties represents an enormous accomplishment for the EPIC Option Consumption Tax team and the volunteer circulators who did the work. This fact alone ought to show the most ardent skeptics of the EPIC Option Consumption Tax how much Nebraskans are suffering under the current tax code and why it needs to be changed. There is no question that the EPIC Option Consumption Tax team would have met both constitutional requirements for the two petition drives with the help of paid circulators. Moreover, had the county assessors published their 2024 valuation increases in March instead of in June, I believe we would have met both constitutional requirements with our team of volunteer circulators.

What is most disappointing is that Nebraskans will have to continue to live and work under our state’s broken tax system. Going forward, we will continue to allow government leaders to pick winners and losers through TIF financing and the ImagiNE Nebraska Act. Nebraska will also continue to lose more population to other states. Nebraska will continue to suffer from brain-drain as our graduating college students choose to settle down in other states, our retirees move to more tax friendly states, and farmers and ranchers are forced to either sell their properties or file for bankruptcy because they can no longer afford to pay their property taxes.

The EPIC Option Consumption Tax team is not the only loser today. Those groups who spread misinformation about the EPIC Option Consumption Tax, such as the State Chamber of Commerce, the League of Municipalities, Farm Bureau, the Open Sky Institute, No New Taxes Nebraska and even U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts have suffered irreparable damage to their reputations. These organizations and individuals helped spread the false propaganda that the EPIC Option Consumption Tax would require a rate of 22 percent and result in a $5.5 billion deficit to the State of Nebraska despite clear and indisputable evidence to the contrary.

Despite this enormous loss, I and the other members of the EPIC Option Consumption Tax team remain optimistic about the future of the EPIC Option Consumption Tax. It is inevitable that Nebraska will move in the direction of a consumption tax. Although the team failed to get the ball into the endzone this year, we successfully moved the ball down the field and into the red zone. I believe we are now within scoring distance. I say this because the plan that Gov. Pillen has been floating for property tax relief looks an awful lot like EPIC light. Much like the EPIC Option Consumption Tax, the Governor now wants to fund all public schools through the state.

The EPIC Option Consumption Tax team is not going away. The team will regroup and explore their options for the future. Nebraska still has a serious tax problem, which the Governor and State Senators can no longer ignore. Whatever becomes the plan, it cannot be a simple tax shift; instead, it must reduce the overall tax burden that Nebraskans face.

The 4th of July is a time for celebrating our independence as a nation as well as the freedoms we share as American citizens. When the Declaration of Independence was written in 1776, three inalienable rights were mentioned, namely: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The one that concerns me the most today is liberty. Few Americans today understand the true nature of liberty and liberty continues to erode from American society.

Few Americans today understand the true nature of liberty because they erroneously associate the word with a license to do whatever one wishes. For example, a popular Internet meme today defines liberty as “The power to live as one wishes.” However, careful examination of American history reveals that liberty has never been construed to mean the freedom to do whatever one pleases.

During the Colonial Era John Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony defined the nature of liberty which would later become the standard in American jurisprudence. In 1645 Winthrop made an important distinction between natural liberty and civil liberty. Natural liberty, he said, refers to that which is common to man and beast and means doing whatever one wishes. Concerning natural liberty, Winthrop said, “The maintaining of this liberty makes men grow more evil and in time worse than brute beasts.” Consequently, throughout American history it has always been accepted that moral evils should be legislated against.

Civil liberty, on the other hand, Winthrop said, is liberty that is constrained by authority. Civil liberty is liberty within the confines of the law. Winthrop said, “This liberty is maintained and exercised in a way of subjection to authority,” and “…it is a liberty to that only which is good, just, and honest.” Winthrop went on to compare civil liberty to the quiet and willful submission that the Church has to Christ and that a wife has to her loving husband. So, when governments act benevolently towards their citizens in the way that Christ does to the church and that a loving husband does towards his wife, obedience naturally follows and there is little need for law.

It is only within the context of civil liberty that governments should ever be restrained. It is a self-evident truth that governments should restrain immorality, but what about laws that don’t address any particular moral evil? A stop sign, for example, lawfully exists to regulate the flow of traffic, yet it does not address any particular moral evil, and most of us would agree that governments should not erect any more stop signs than what are necessary to regulate the flow of traffic and to ensure public safety.

Governments have a natural tendency to slowly erode away our civil liberties. This is usually done by well-intentioned legislators who simply want to fix a problem, but the result is the incremental loss of our freedoms over time. For example, more than 600 bills get introduced in the Nebraska State Legislature each year and this year 103 of them made their way to the Governor’s desk to be signed into law. Each time the Governor signs a bill into law, it results in a small loss of liberty for the people.

By far, the largest loss of liberty through legislative action comes through taxation. Ever since the people of Nebraska changed the tax code by amending the state constitution back in 1967, the State Legislature has been in the business of eroding the economic liberty of its citizens. For example, every time a person has to pay $100 more in taxes than the year before, he or she loses the freedom to decide how to spend that money. That individual then has to make a choice between working more hours to make up the difference or suffering the loss of income. Working to pay taxes is a form of slavery where the government acts as the slave owner, and that is exactly how more and more Nebraskans are beginning to feel towards their state and local governments.

The Governor intends to call the members of the Legislature back to Lincoln for a special session at the end of July to deal with this over-burdening tax problem. The goal of that special session should be to restore economic liberty back to the people of Nebraska. True economic liberty happens by restraining the government’s power to tax the people, and this is accomplished best when we put the people, not the government, in charge of how much money they pay in taxes every year. That is what the EPIC Option Consumption Tax is designed to do. Only by putting more money into the pockets of the citizens can governments enable their citizens to pursue that third inalienable right, the right to pursue happiness.

Press Release
June 20, 2024
“A New Tax Revolt”
By Sen. Steve Erdman, LD 47

Are you satisfied with your property valuation? The time has come to revolt. Nebraskans will never be heard until we collectively decide to protest our valuations. Protesting valuations is the most cost-efficient way to lead a tax rebellion. Therefore, I want to encourage every property owner in Nebraska to file a protest. Form 422 must be delivered in person to the county clerk or mailed with a postmark no later than June 30, 2024. Instructions for filing and Form 422 can be found on the Nebraska Department of Revenue’s website at https://revenue.nebraska.gov. Let this be the year when our elected officials hear our collective cry against unabated and ever-increasing property taxes.

Sen. Steve Erdman, LD 47

Did your property assessment go down this year? Perhaps you are one of the very rare Nebraskans who by chance received an equivalent valuation as last year or even a slight reduction. Once again, this year’s valuation notices aptly demonstrate how broken our tax system is.

The process of valuating properties in Nebraska is completely subjective. There simply is no uniform, objective methodology for valuating properties. County assessors determine the value of properties as they see fit, and this is a dirty little secret that they never want the public to know about. There are numerous examples I can cite which demonstrate how valuations are subjectively determined, but today I will share three examples.

First, the methodology is not transparent. One particular woman I know in Lancaster County did her homework extensively to protest the valuation of her home. However, she was denied on the basis that her work did not conform to the assessor’s manual. So, she pressed her county commissioners and the county assessors with bulldog tenacity to see the manual. They refused to give her the information she needed to make the comparison.

Second, some county assessors make use of fuzzy math. Knox County is a good example. The county assessors in Knox County value grassland, dryland cropland, and irrigated cropland with different percentages across three different market areas within the county. However, when the math is done, their averages for this year do not match the percentages they claimed for these three different classes of agricultural lands in these three market areas.

Third, county assessors may use any method they want. County assessors have at their discretion several options in determining the value of properties. Nebraska state statutes allow assessors to determine which sales should be included in an array when valuing a particular property. However, they are not required to include 1031 tax exchange sales, and they are not required to use sales between neighboring landowners when a sale is done between two neighbors. They are also not required to assess home site acreages at a certain percentage. As a result, county assessors may use these questionable tactics to drive up the price of everybody’s property, and that makes the entire process subjective and broken. So, this year I say, “Thank you,” to all of the county assessors for making the people aware of how subjective and broken our tax system really is.

In Morill County, where I live, my valuation went up 42 percent this year. That increase was mostly due to an effort to raise the value of rural residential properties. When I inquired about this, I was told by my assessor that the standard procedure was to assume that 15 to 20 percent of the property is land, but according to the Nebraska Property Assessment Division, assessors may use any percentage they want!

If you have never protested the valuation of your property, this is the year to do so. There is no filing fee. Instructions for filing a protest and Form 422 can be found online at the Nebraska Department of Revenue’s website at https://revenu.nebraska.gov. Form 422 must be delivered to the county clerk in person or mailed with a postmark no later than June 30, 2024.

It is time for the property owners of Nebraska to revolt. Protesting your valuation is the most cost-effective way of leading this kind of rebellion. Every county assessor needs to be tied up well into August with hearings on these valuation protests. Just as a cord of many strands is not so easily broken, a rebellion by many property owners will not go unheard. The time has come to abandon Nebraska’s broken tax system and replace it with the EPIC Option Consumption Tax whereby eliminating all county assessors. Please visit our website at www.epicouption.org.

Nebraskans are now receiving their new property valuation notices in the mail. As a result, many Nebraskans are suffering from sticker shock once they see how much the value of their property has increased since last year. Mine, for example, went up forty percent! Other property owners are seeing their valuations increase by as much as fifty percent.

What these property valuation notices demonstrate is how broken Nebraska’s tax system is. To be sure, you can bet your last dollar that the tax levies won’t decrease by the same percentage as your valuation increase in order to keep the property taxes the same as last year. Instead, this trend in rising property values and rising property taxes will continue, forcing Nebraskans to sell their properties and move to more tax-friendly states. Not only is Nebraska’s tax system broken, but it cannot be repaired.

Nebraska’s tax system unfairly targets landowners. In order to help you see this, consider where the State of Nebraska and its political subdivisions derive their revenue. According to the Beacon Hill Institute, 47 percent of all tax revenues in Nebraska are derived from property taxes, compared to 28 percent from individual income taxes, 19 percent from sales taxes, 6 percent from corporate income taxes, and 6 percent from excise taxes, fees, and other miscellaneous taxes. As you can see, property owners carry the heaviest load of Nebraska’s tax burden.

Nebraska’s tax system is not neutral. Daniel J. Pilla is a tax expert who will be speaking in the East Campus Union at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln at 2:00 p.m. on Friday, June 21. Dan Pilla advocates for what he calls “the ten principles of good tax policy.” Principle number 6 is the principle of neutrality. According to Pilla, “Taxes should not fall more heavily on one industry or class of individuals than on others.” Whenever taxes target a particular industry or class of people, people stop purchasing the item that is subject to the tax, and that is exactly what has been happening in Nebraska. For example, because Nebraska’s tax system unfairly targets property owners, the old Cabela’s campus in Sidney continues to sit empty year after year without a new owner.

Neutral taxation used to be a core principle of American tax policy. Our American forefathers understood the need for tax neutrality. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court condemned the practice of unfairly targeting a particular class of people with taxes back in 1874 in a case known as Citizens Savings & Loan v. Topeka. The high court said in that case about the power of taxation that “This power can as readily be employed against one class of individuals and in favor of another, so as to ruin the one class and give unlimited wealth and prosperity to the other…” Is that not what is happening in Nebraska?

Nebraska will continue to see more people leaving our state. According to the World Population Review more people are leaving Nebraska than are moving into Nebraska. 55.7 percent of all moves now belong to residents who are moving to other states. Nebraska has one of the highest percentages in the country. Nebraska has the tenth highest percentage of folks leaving the state. We are now in the same league with Massachusetts (57.6 percent), Michigan (57.7 percent), and California (59.3 percent). Nebraska has a higher percentage of people leaving our state than any of our neighboring states, and this is not a statistic we should be proud of.

State Senators will continue to beat their heads against the brick wall of tax neutrality until they come to the realization that the EPIC Option Consumption Tax is the only fair way to tax the people. If the members of the Legislature believe the solution is to simply eliminate certain sales tax exemptions, then the result will be the same for those industries and classes of people who become the targets of their new tax policy after a special session of the Legislature. The only way to make taxes fair, is to put the people in charge of how much money they pay in taxes every year, and that is exactly what the EPIC Option Consumption Tax does. As Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist Paper Number 21, the consumption tax is the only tax which is fair and can never over tax the people.