Nebraska's new bill would prevent future casinos from getting subsidies on property taxes

A Norfolk senator is introducing a new bill to prevent casinos from getting Tax–Increment Financing (TIF). Sen. Mike Flood introduced Legislative Bill 713 on Wednesday to prohibit redevelopment plans with TIF related to casinos and licensed tracks.

The proposal Nebraska residents passed in 2020, legalizing casinos in the state, mandated venues to pay a 20% tax on gross gambling revenue, of which 70% would go to the state’s property tax credit fund. This has been seen as incompatible with casinos getting tax-increment financing, which subsidizes property taxes, to build their venues.

The state’s property tax credit fund, which offsets a portion of property tax bills, was touted as one of the reasons for voters to pass the proposal, Norfolk Daily News reports. According to Flood, Nebraska communities have “a vested interest” in seeing economically disadvantaged areas being redeveloped.

“That’s the goal of TIF, to attract private development to blighted and substandard areas in which development otherwise would not happen,” the senator said. His LB713 bill is likely to be assigned to the Urban Affairs Committee, with a hearing yet to be scheduled.

With TIF, developers’ infrastructure improvements are subsidized with property tax dollars: municipalities, school districts, counties and others give up that revenue for “up to 15 years,” with other taxpayers picking up a larger share of the local tax burden, explained Flood.

In order for a development to be subsidized, there should be “a real need,” as in the case of blighted areas. Thus, according to the senator, “using TIF to subsidize the construction of a multimillion-dollar casino on the backs of taxpayers” would be “just wrong” and “should be illegal.”

“Nobody when they went to the ballot box in Nebraska thought, ‘We are going to need TIF to make sure that we have casinos,’ ” Flood said, according to Daily News. He further claimed casinos in the state are going to happen without TIF.

In response to the City of Omaha having approved $17.5 million in TIF incentives for its casino, Flood said that there is “no question there’s going to be a casino” there, and that given how likely it is the Legislature is going to put restrictions on how many casinos will be in the state, the venue in Omaha “is going to make money” regardless of whether it gets TIF or not.

According to the senator, Omaha erred because the casino would have happened “anyway.” If the bill is passed, while it would probably be too late to affect Omaha, it would still impact other possibilities, including Lincoln and Columbus.

“Reasonable people can disagree on whether casinos will be a positive or negative force in Nebraska, but whatever your views on gambling, I think we can all agree that taxpayers have no place providing millions of dollars in property tax subsidies for casino development,” Flood said, remarking there’s nowhere else in the US where property tax subsidies are given to casinos.