Education Funding, Prisons, Medicaid, Tax Relief...All in 60 Days

BEATRICE – State lottery funds that go to education in Nebraska are scheduled to sunset this coming year…meaning Nebraska lawmakers will be considering whether to reauthorize that funding.

That includes money for K-through-12 and higher education. The Legislature’s Education committee is charged with conducting a review of the issue.
Nebraska Community Colleges Association Executive Director Greg Adams, a former state senator and speaker of the legislature, testified at a recent hearing before the committee.

"For us, for higher education, the two most important things are the Nebraska Opportunity grant...which is grant money for the university, state colleges and community colleges and other higher ed, the independent colleges....and for us, specifically, it's the Gap program. It fills in that gap where Pell does not provide monies...even though the student may be eligible for it".

Adams gave an update to the Southeast Community College Board this week about education-related issues in the coming 60-day session. The NCCA serves as a lobbying organization for five of the six Nebraska community colleges, which allocate an annual dues membership.

Adams says he’s confident that the Nebraska Opportunity Act and Gap financing will be reenacted by state legislators. As for the 60-day session overall….Adams says, "it's like taking a night class...you're gonna do all the same amount of work, you're just going to do it in sixty days, instead of ninety. Things are going to come at you, fast and furious, there'll be more late-night sessions. It's going to be a real trial".

Early in the session, lawmakers will consider bills already on file from last year. Debate on those issues takes place while new bills are being introduced. He said the legislature has the issues of prisons, Medicaid expansion, second-year budget changes and the big issue....property tax relief. Adams said he anticipates it will take a lot to find 33 votes to move beyond cloture on any kind of proposal...as well as what the governor may want.

Adams says information he’s hearing is that state legislators may lower the value of agriculture land and consider lowering the value of residential and commercial property in the following year.

"I immediately got concerned, because that can have a huge impact on Southeast Community College. For Metro, ag is only five percent of their value base. As you go further west, the impact in terms of revenue stream, can be pretty extraordinary. He said his undertanding is that the value will be changed, but will happen inside the TEEOSA (state aid formula) calculation. TEEOSA is a needs, versus what do you have to pay for those needs?"

Adams says if the value of land is lowered inside the state aid to education formula, the needs don’t change….but what school districts could generate to satisfy the needs, changes. As that gap widens, state aid comes in to fill that gap.

"Now the school district gets less dependent on property tax, and will be more dependent on general fund appropriations....which, it seems could very well come from the growth in revenue that we're currently seeing....not only the sales tax, but income tax revenues that are growing. We'll wait and see".
Adams says one concern he has, is that many new lawmakers who have not previously served in local governing capacities, don’t know that local governments operate under both levy and spending caps.

Adams says for the NCCA, he expects during this next session to be, in his words, “playing more defense, than offense”.