Texas Governor Greg Abbott called lawmakers back for a special session to address Texas’ property tax burden. In his special session proclamation, Abbott has asked lawmakers to focus on two complementary items. The first is allocating more state money to reduce property taxes, and the second is to impose more strict spending restraints on local...
President Trump’s second term will be remembered for the rapid re-ordering of global supply chains. Trump’s tariffs target the reshoring of industrial production, and his tax plan in the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) provides massive tax incentives to make capital expenditures in the United States. Nebraska has an opportunity to put itself at the...
[Note: This is the fourth in a series of Research Notes by Platte’s summer intern, focusing on county zoning and agriculture issues] Thirteen years before Nebraska developed its Livestock Siting Assessment Matrix, its neighbor, Iowa, implemented a similar tool. In 2002, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) introduced a scoring system, known as the...
The Occupational Board Reform Act (OBRA) was passed in 2018 and became effective in 2019. It requires legislative committees of jurisdiction to review all occupational licenses in the state, roughly 20% per year, on a five-year rotation. These reviews examine whether the licensing requirements are adequate or excessive by current standards. The committees then submit...
Introduced in 2015, the Nebraska Livestock Matrix is a tool designed to help counties evaluate proposed livestock operations seeking conditional use or special exception permits. Created to promote consistency across county lines in the permitting process, the committee tasked with developing the matrix faced two significant challenges in aligning its objectives. First, the tool needed...
The Occupational Board Reform Act (OBRA) was passed in 2018 and became effective in 2019. It requires legislative committees of jurisdiction to review all occupational licenses in the state, roughly 20% per year, on a five-year rotation. These reviews examine whether the licensing requirements are adequate or excessive by current standards. The committees then submit...
The One Big Beautiful Bill introduces sweeping changes to federal fiscal policy that will have tangible impacts on the state of Nebraska. Policymakers must choose which provisions to adopt of the federal law and which to defer. These decisions will have significant budgetary and growth implications for Nebraska. On the tax side, the OBBB makes...
[Note: This is the second in a series of Research Notes by Platte’s summer intern, focusing on county zoning and agriculture issues] In Nebraska, conditional use and special exception permits are regulatory tools used by county commissions or boards to allow specific land uses that are not typically permitted under existing zoning rules but may...
States like Nebraska – and my native Wisconsin – face one of the biggest challenges, and public policy opportunities, you are likely to find in America. Our family farms in rural areas across the country have been disappearing at the staggering rate of 45,000 per year on average for the past century. The incredible thing...
[Note: This is the second in a group of articles reviewing occupational licensing reviews for the first five-plus years of the Occupational Board Reform Act. For more context, see this post.] The Business and Labor Committee has reviewed a number of licenses from 2019 to 2024. Their areas of review included: Boiler Safety/Pressure Vessel Inspectors...
Note: This is the first in a series of Research Notes authored by this year’s Platte Institute Summer Intern, Jakob Myers. Jakob is researching information related to zoning issues involving livestock facilities. The continued growth of Nebraska’s agricultural sector depends significantly on the development and expansion of livestock operations across the state. These projects typically...
At the Platte Institute, our mission is simple: we work to remove barriers that limit growth and opportunity in Nebraska. We believe every Nebraskan deserves the freedom to pursue their version of the Good Life—our state’s own take on the American Dream. Nonprofits like ours are vital to making that vision a reality. Across the...
The Occupational Board Reform Act (OBRA) was passed in 2018 and became effective in 2019. It requires legislative committees of jurisdiction to review all occupational licenses in the state, roughly 20% per year, on a five-year rotation. These reviews examine whether the licensing requirements are adequate or excessive by current standards. The committees then submit...