The ads in Omaha and Lincoln feeds leave this out. The state cannot levy a property tax. Locals set mill rates. Lincoln printed a credit on the statement. Then the levy went back up.
If you just saw the ad
If a property-tax spot just landed in your Omaha or Lincoln feed — TV or digital, Pillen or Walz — this page is the Unicameral record behind it. Farmer footage is the costume. The audience is whoever pays the bill, including homeowners.
The state cannot levy a property tax. Locals set mill rates. Lincoln printed a credit on the statement. Homes already pay a higher average rate than ag land. The 2027 plan is a farm buy-down paid with broader sales tax and local levy caps.
Nov. 3, 2026 · Pillen vs Walz
He says he cut property taxes. The Legislature passed a coupon. The levy went back up.
Gov. Jim Pillen is running for re-election against Lynne Walz. TV and digital ads say “we reduced property taxes.” That is not the 40–50% mill-levy cut he touted in 2024. He has dated the next big push to 2027. The ad oversells a coupon as a cut.
Source: Nebraska Examiner — July 9, 2026 ↗Last session heartbeat · 2026 short session is over. Next: January 2027, 110th long session.
Sen. Brewer · 2024 special session
~30% credit on the school (non-bond) line for all real property. The state reimburses. Locals still levy.
Ad vs record · The ad calls this a cut. Lincoln printed a coupon.
Last action Signed Aug. 20, 2024 · Passed 40–3
Legislature.ne.gov ↗Sen. Briese · 2023
Moved most community-college operating levies onto the state. That shift produced the tiny 2024 statewide dip.
Last action Signed May 31, 2023
Legislature.ne.gov ↗Sen. Brandt · 2026
Would have dropped agricultural land valuation from 75% to 50%. Died in Revenue Committee.
Ad vs record · The farm valuation cut died. It is not a mill rate the governor set.
Last action Indefinitely postponed Apr. 17, 2026
Legislature.ne.gov ↗This is not an income-tax ad. It is not a school-choice ad. It is a property-tax ad that still uses farm footage, even when it lands in a metro feed, because in much of rural Nebraska the school is paid by whoever owns the acres. Pillen’s campaign language — “we reduced property taxes” — collapses three different machines into one sentence: a credit printed on the tax statement, an older credit that already tilts toward ag land, and a 2027 ask that has not passed.
The state of Nebraska cannot levy a property tax. Schools, counties, and cities set mill rates. What Lincoln can do is send money back — a coupon — or take over a local bill, the way it did with community-college operations. Everyday homeowners get the school coupon too. The farmer tilt is the older credit, the 75% ag valuation, and the 2027 agenda. It is not a different mill rate the governor set.
Machine A · Who is already taxed harder
Homes are assessed at 100% of actual value. Agricultural land is assessed at 75%. Farmhouses and farm sites are taxed as residential. The 2025 DOR pie charts show the result: residential property pays about 53.75% of the taxes on about 45.93% of the value (average rate 1.7244). Ag land pays about 22.30% of the taxes on about 31.92% of the value (average rate 1.0298).
On top of that sits the older Property Tax Credit Act. For 2025, DOR paid $119.00 per $100,000 of taxable value for non-ag property and $142.79 per $100,000 for ag land — a 120% allocation. That is a farm tilt in the coupon, not a different mill rate.
Sen. Brandt’s LB 814 would have dropped ag land valuation from 75% to 50%. It was indefinitely postponed April 17, 2026. That ask died in committee, not on a farm-tax mill rate the governor controls.
Machine B · Who pays for the coupon
Because the state cannot levy property tax, every credit on the statement is a state check. That money comes from income tax and sales tax. Income rates have already been cut. The remaining move — the one Pillen keeps dating to 2027 — is to cut state programs and/or broaden the 5.5% sales tax to goods and services that are now exempt, plus hard caps on local spending.
Sen. Tanya Storer, a rural Republican and former county commissioner, called the credit approach “feeding the demon”: state coupons hide the local levy and take pressure off the governments that actually set the rate. That is a structural argument, not a campaign slogan.
Same budget story, different line items: the governor vetoed SNAP eligibility for people with certain drug convictions and vetoed bed-bug inspections in Omaha public housing. Those were not property-tax bills. They are what gets squeezed when Lincoln spends the income-and-sales pot on coupons instead of services. See the 2025 recap.
Signed Aug. 20, 2024 · Passed 40–3
The 2024 special session did not pass the 40–50% mill-levy cut plus sales-tax expansion. It passed a slimmed-down package. LB 34 puts about a 30% credit on the school-district line (non-bond) for all real property — houses, ag land, commercial — printed on the tax statement. The state reimburses the district. Locals still levy. The Department of Revenue called it equitable: 30% of school district taxes, not the whole bill. DOR is explicit: credits are not a levy-rate cut.
Same bill: the Property Tax Growth Limitation Act, a cap on how fast cities and counties can grow their property-tax request. Earlier, LB 243 (2023) moved most community-college operating levies onto the state. That shift — not a mill-rate cut — produced the first statewide property-tax decrease in 26 years in 2024: about $6 million against a ~$5.3 billion total.
The biggest new on-bill win was mechanical. Under the old LB 1107 income-tax credit, DOR said approximately 45% of Nebraskans never claimed it. Front-loading puts the school credit on the statement automatically. People who already filed the old credit mostly got timing — the money shows up on the bill instead of a later refund — not a second cut.
2024 levy
−$6 million
First statewide drop in 26 years, vs. ~$5.3B total. Mostly the community-college shift.
2025 levy
$5,587,369,523
Up about $285 million. Credits did not hold the levy flat.
Where 2025 levies go · DOR
Schools (incl. bonds)
59.45%
$3,321,609,205
Counties
17.46%
$975,404,479
Cities / villages
11.69%
$653,061,843
Rest: NRDs, fire, misc, leftover community college, ESUs, townships.
2025 credits, from DOR EO 25-13: School District Property Tax Relief Credit $797,295,209. Property Tax Credit Act $467,132,271. Homeowners get the school coupon too — it is not a farm-only program. It is also not a mill-levy cut. The levy still went up.
Nebraska Examiner, Apr. 20, 2026 ↗A school-district credit is not school choice. The money still goes to that public district. The state reimburses the line. The district still levies. What the coupon can hide is the real local rate: school groups have said as much — the statement looks smaller even when the levy did not get cut.
The quiet squeeze is the same budget. Credits compete with state aid. Levy and growth caps limit what locals can ask. TEEOSA — the school funding formula — has already been rewritten and line-item vetoed. A coupon on the school line and a squeeze on the aid line can land in the same year. They are not opposites.
Referendum 435 (November 2024) repealed the private-school scholarship law 57.03%–42.97% statewide (508,140 to repeal vs. 382,921), including Douglas County at about 56%, and in 45 of 49 legislative districts. That is a voucher fight. It is not this levy story.
Pillen’s “right fit” language and a federal $1,700 education credit are 2027 arguments. Do not mash them into the property-tax coupon.
The 2027 ask
If re-elected, Pillen has said the next fight is 2027: more state spending cuts, maybe broadening the 5.5% sales tax to currently exempt goods and services, hard local spending caps, and possibly moving more K-12 operating costs onto the state the way community colleges already moved. He has also said the messaging needs to be simpler.
Voters have already seen the sales-tax-for-property-tax framing. A January 2024 poll paid for by Americans for Prosperity–Nebraska and conducted by Battleground Connect found about 70% of likely voters opposed increasing the sales tax to offset property taxes (70%–19%). Label the pollster: it is AFP-NE’s poll, not a state survey. Pillen’s office called it leading. The 2026 short session still ditched most of the remaining tax-base ideas.
Sources & Further Reading