If it hasn’t happened in your family, you know families that have had it happen to them.  

Their adult children have moved away from Nebraska to seek better job opportunities.  Maybe you’re considering leaving to find those opportunities yourself.  

The Unicameral has the power to keep those families together. 

Recently our state senators received a letter from Dana Bradford and Mike Cassling representing an organization called Strengthening Nebraska Families.  The letter is a detailed report about why cutting property taxes isn’t the solution to stopping the brain drain and fixing Nebraska’s economic problems.  The Unicameral needs to do more. 

I won’t get into the weeds in this column.  There are a lot of details and numbers in the letter. You can go to their website https://strengtheningnebraskafamilies.com to get all the figures. But they make some great points, and I’d like to highlight some of them. 

Nebraska is planning on allocating 3.2 billion dollars over the next four years from state revenue and use that money to provide property tax relief.  

The letter goes on to ask why state revenues should be used to reduce local property taxes.  They point out that local property taxes are determined by the voters in those communities and asks if there is a better way to control and reduce local property taxes without using the states revenues to do it.  

It then points out that those who will benefit the most from these property tax reductions are not the average tax paying Nebraska citizen. Some of the biggest landowners in the state don’t even live here.  They mention Ted Turner, Bill Gates, and the Church of Latter Day Saints as examples. Landowners that are not providing many, if any jobs or benefits to the state.

They then point out that this property tax reduction will be a windfall for landlords. Thirty Five percent of our population rent, and in most, if not all cases property tax relief will not lower the tenant’s monthly payments.

The letter then goes on to talk about how we are not doing a good job in bringing in primary employers to the Good Life State.  Some of the primary employers they mention in this letter are the Costco chicken plant in Fremont, Union Pacific Railroad across the state, and Nelnet in Lincoln. 

It also points out that Tyson foods was a primary employer in Lexington, and we all know what happed there. 

The primary employers are the catalyst for secondary employers.  The doctors, lawyers, hairdressers, restaurant workers and more. 

It’s not just the Tyson workers in Lexington that are losing their jobs.  They’re taking a lot of those secondary jobs with them. 

To keep these families together, and to bring new families to the state, we need to provide good paying jobs with opportunities for growth.

The report goes on to detail what other states in our region are doing to grow their economy.  The states that are winning are investing at least 5% of their general funds to retain and grow primary jobs.  

Nebraska on the other hand invests about ½ of 1%.  Is it any wonder South Dakota, Kansas, and other states are beating us when it comes to importing and keeping these major employers? 

Another solution to bring these jobs into the state to fix our budget and keep families together is something that has been near and dear to my heart for years.  We need to do a much better job in marketing ourselves.  We don’t do nearly enough to market Nebraska’s brand. 

According to this report based on what states like Iowa and South Dakota are spending we need to invest at least twenty million dollars.  Notice it says invest and not spend. You have to invest money to make money and historically Nebraska has not done enough to sing our own praises. 

I might suggest we even invest a little more than that to catch up. And if we do I hope we come up with a better slogan than one that says we’re not for everybody.  We must be for everyone if we want to continue to grow as a state.

As I said, this letter goes into much more depth than I have space for here. I hope our governor and state senators will take the time to read and digest what it has to say. I hope you’ll take some time to go to the website and see for yourself.  

Maybe if we get our act together your kids might just come back home. 

Tom Becka is a long time Nebraska broadcaster who for over 30 years has been covering Omaha and Midwest issues on both radio and TV. He has been a guest on numerous national cable and news shows, filled in for nationally syndicated talk radio programs and Talkers Magazine has recognized him as one of the Top 100 talk show hosts in the country 10 times. Never afraid to ruffle some feathers, his ‘Becka’s Beat’ commentaries can be found online on Youtube and other digital platforms.