Lincoln Earns High Financially Healthy City Ranking

Jan. 26, 2022, 3:09 p.m. ·

Lincoln Haymarket wooden tower on downtown street.
Lincoln's historic Haymarket district. (Nebraska Public Media archive photo)

Of the 75 most populated cities in the country, Lincoln maintains its spot as the third healthiest financially, according to an annual study by a nonpartisan think tank.

Sheila Weinberg is CEO and founder of nonprofit Truth in Accounting, which issues the Financial State of the Cities report annually and says Lincoln earned a B grade from the organization this year for having a $303.9 million surplus to pay its bills., not including pandemic-related federal money like that received from the CARES Act. Both the grade and rank are the same as last year.

“We're proud of cities like Lincoln,” Weinberg said. "They do have balanced budget requirements, so, therefore, they shouldn't be going into debt... and fortunately, Lincoln has been living up to that requirement. ”

Weinberg says even though all the listed cities have balanced-budget requirements, according to the study, Lincoln was one of only 14 cities to achieve a surplus last year.

Omaha ranked 50th in this year's study with a D Grade, also unchanged from last year, with a listed debt burden of $1.2 billion. Weinberg says the state’s most populous city got this way the way many cities do; unfunded retirement obligations.

“To get out of this debt, I say the first thing is to stop digging. Go ahead and truly balance your budget,” Weinberg said. “And then the second thing is obviously, the pension and retiree health care promises are what's getting into these governments. So they should go ahead and start putting enough money aside to actually fund those promises, instead of making them without funding them.”

The report says TIA analysts make their calculations using Annual Comprehensive Financial Reports on file in city halls across the country.