Governor Announces Special Session of Legislature for July 25

On Tuesday, June 25, 2024, Governor Jim Pillen sent a letter to Speaker of the Legislature John Arch, announcing his intent to call senators back into session starting July 25, to address property taxes. Pursuant to the Nebraska Constitution, prior to that date, the governor will issue a proclamation convening the special session and specifying its purpose.Governor Pillen has made cutting property tax the cornerstone of his administration. The regular legislative session ended this year without a tax deal. Even before the end of the session, the governor vowed to hold a special session to address the matter if no deal was reached.The letter reads in part, “In my sine die address in April, I stated that I would call a special session this summer to facilitate another opportunity for us to meet Nebraskans’ demand that their elected leaders fix this crisis now. I have traveled extensively across the state since the Legislature adjourned and have heard from a wide range of people. Their message is clear: stop this massive overall tax increase by fixing property taxes.”In his letter, the governor claimed, “Nebraska is hurtling toward a status quo in which total property taxes will grow by more than a million dollars per day.”The governor has recently held a series of town hall meetings throughout the state, attempting to drum up support for his tax proposal.While the primary issue at hand in the special session is property tax relief, Pillen also indicated he intends to address other matters, most notably changing Nebraska's decades long electoral system to winner-take-all. Currently, Nebraska is one of only two states in which electoral votes are proportionally allocated.Pillen wrote in his letter, “Prominent among our unsolved problems is Nebraska's three-decade-old allocation of our presidential electoral college votes for the presidency by congressional district instead of the state as a whole. I believe this practice is inconsistent with our constitutional founding, out of step with most of the rest of America, and signals disunity.”The only other state that allows electoral votes to go to different candidates is Maine. In the 2020 election, one of traditionally conservative Nebraska's electoral votes went to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, while one of liberal-leaning Maine's electoral votes went to Republican candidate Donald Trump.Earlier this year, Maine's House Majority Leader, Democrat Maureen Terry, vowed that, if Nebraska did indeed move to a winner-take-all system, then Maine would do the same.Terry said in a statement in April, “If Nebraska’s Republican Governor and Republican-controlled Legislature were to change their electoral system this late in the cycle in order to unfairly award Donald Trump an additional electoral vote, I think the Maine Legislature would be compelled to act in order to restore fairness to our country’s electoral system. It is my hope and the hope of my colleagues in Maine that the Nebraska Republican Party decides not to make this desperate and ill-fated attempt to sway the 2024 election.”

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