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The Legislature begins voting on appropriations this week to help balance the budget. Four lawmakers pledged ahead of the session last year not to raise taxes at all. In the months since then, Sen. Tanya Storer hasn’t lost her focus.
“Just say no,” Sen. Storer said, on her voting philosophy on tax increases. “It’s pretty simple.”
That was their policy when most other Republicans in the officially nonpartisan Legislature voted for an increased tax on cigarettes. The four senators who took the pledge, Storer, Jared Storm, Paul Strommen and Bob Anderson, were instead a deciding weight against the increase, joining their Democrat counterparts. The tax would have helped solve the budget deficit with an extra $50 million in tax dollars. But Storm said that would have hurt small businesses and Storer called it a short term solution.
“I am a firm believer that when we try to fix budget holes by increasing taxes, we’re simply becoming a higher tax state,” Storer said.
Sen. Storer wants to instead leave as much money in taxpayer’s pockets as possible so they feel they can spend money, boosting the economy and giving opportunity for Nebraska to grow. But she was tight lipped about potential options for balancing the budget without increasing taxes, even adding that some fees will have to increase, if only with inflation.
One of the primary options she and her colleagues were interested in last year was cutting state programs. This came after Gov. Jim Pillen advised all state departments to say how they could cut their budgets by 10%.
“We just have to look at where we are going to get the most benefit for the citizens of the state of Nebraska,” Storer said.
Storm said he would consider a 1% to 2% cut in the overall budget of all departments. He noted that, in spite of him and his colleagues blocking the cigarette tax increase, some taxes and fees have already been increased this session. The lawmakers will look for alternatives to cut in an effort to offset those increases.
“We just simply need to make sure that we don’t spend too much money,” Storm said. “People can’t afford to live and the last thing the State of Nebraska needs to do is contribute to that by raising taxes.”
Property taxes are another issue with voters, and Storer noted that the $1.6 billion boost in property tax credits did not help as much as lawmakers may have hoped. Storer was in favor of other tax relief options, including levy caps and a new tax evaluation system.
Strommen, the only pledger who is on the Appropriations Committee, was not forthcoming about how proceedings have gone, but noted that cuts will likely have to come from all over the state government to balance the budget.
After weeks of small transfers and cuts, including a $70 million transfer of cash funds to the general fund and another $130 million taken out of the state savings account, the appropriations committee is now just $125 million short of balancing the budget. But the full legislature must vote on each budget line first. That’s coming up this week.
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