Don’t you wish your personal finances worked like the State of Nebraska’s? If they did, you would never run out of cash. Recently, Nebraska’s Tax Rate Review Committee projected a budgetary shortfall of $432 million for the 2026-2027 biennium. This amounts to $490 million less than what was projected to come into the state’s coffers at the conclusion of this year’s legislative session back in May. While these kinds of numbers might seem overwhelming and even shocking to you, they are really just a drop in the bucket compared to the kinds of cash that the State of Nebraska keeps tucked away where nobody is looking.

There is no need to run for the hills. The sky is not falling. The State of Nebraska is really doing just fine as far as money goes. The dirty little trade secret which comes with being a Nebraska State Senator is knowing how much money the State of Nebraska actually has on hand, and I am not talking about the state’s rainy-day fund, which was projected to reach $903 million by the end of the 2024-2025 fiscal year. The State of Nebraska has access to billions of dollars beyond the revenues deposited into the state’s General Fund and into the state’s rain-day fund.

The secret treasure chest that I am referring to are the cash funds which belong to each of our state agencies. Currently, the Nebraska State Treasurer is holding onto approximately $9.5 billion in state agency cash funds. These are unused monies. Prior to 2003, the State of Nebraska deposited the interest from these cash funds into the state’s General Fund. After 2003 the rule changed, allowing the interest earned to remain in their respective agency cash funds, earning compounding interest.

Let me give you a little perspective now on what has happened over the years. We will start in the year 2003 and move in three-year increments. In December 2003 these agency cash funds totaled $1.3 billion. By December 2006 that number rose to $2.3 billion. In December 2009 the number was $2.7 billion. In December 2012 the number was $3.3 billion. In December 2015 it was $3.8 billion. Then, in 2017 the State of Nebraska found itself with a budgetary deficit of $1.1 billion. We paid for that deficit, not by cutting spending, but by sweeping some of these agency cash funds. Sweeping those cash funds had little effect, because by December 2018 the agency cash funds totaled almost $3.7 billion. Today, those agency cash funds are worth $9.5 billion!

In order to give you a little more perspective, let’s consider the cash funds belonging to the Game and Parks Commission. The Game and Parks Commission currently has almost $265 million of unused revenue sitting in their cash funds. To be fair, some of these cash funds are restricted and cannot be swept. Nevertheless, the Game and Parks Commission will earn 2.92 percent interest on that money this year yielding an increase of $7.75 million. Don’t you wish you could earn that much money in interest next year for your Christmas club account?

The bottom line is that the State of Nebraska won’t have to cut their budget or reduce their spending habits next year when they prepare the next biennial budget for the state. Instead, all that needs to be done is to sweep some of these agency cash funds. For example, if the State of Nebraska took just five percent of the revenue held in these agency cash funds, they would generate an additional $475 million in revenue for the state’s General Fund, which is more than what is needed to make up for the projected budgetary shortfall of $432 million.

I share these things with you today in order to show you how much money the State of Nebraska really has on hand. Not only can the State of Nebraska make up for the projected $432 million budgetary shortfall, but they also have the means to pay for the lost 2023 property tax credit when they (not me) voted for and passed LB 34, the property tax relief bill from Legislature’s special summer session. So, don’t let State Senators lead you to believe that they cannot cover the budgetary shortfall and also reinstate the lost 2023 property tax credit. We need to hold the Legislature accountable.