Nebraska needs property tax relief. It also needs to protect school funding. We can do both.

Wherever I go in Nebraska, I hear the same concern: the cost of living. Groceries cost more. Health care costs more. Insurance and utilities cost more. Mortgage rates are higher. The cost of doing business keeps climbing, while incomes struggle to keep pace.

And then the conversation turns to property taxes.

Nebraska now ranks fourth highest in the nation for property taxes, according to a 2025 Tax Foundation analysis of 2023 data, as reported by the Platte Institute.

Our effective rate, what homeowners actually pay relative to their home’s value, is about 1.43 percent. For farmers, the burden can be even heavier when land values rise faster than agricultural income.

For most homeowners, property taxes are bundled into their monthly mortgage payment. When taxes rise, escrow payments rise, and monthly housing costs go up even though the loan itself never changes. Combined with higher interest rates, this puts real pressure on household budgets. Property taxes are a tax issue and a cost-of-living issue.

High property taxes increasingly put homeownership out of reach for first-time buyers.

They also trap families in place, making it harder to move into larger or more suitable homes as their needs change. When taxes rise faster than income, families are forced to delay buying, delay moving or make difficult decisions about whether they can afford to stay in the communities where they work, raise children and care for aging parents.

Over time, this weakens neighborhoods, strains rural towns and pushes people to leave Nebraska in search of a more affordable future.

At the same time, property taxes fund essential local services. The largest share supports public schools, including teacher salaries, special education services, transportation, utilities, and building maintenance. They also fund sheriffs, courts, roads, police and fire protection that keep communities functioning and safe.

This issue is personal for me. My brother has a significant cognitive disability. I watched my mother fight to ensure he received an education designed for how he learns, led by a teacher trained in specialized instruction.

That teacher built trust, created stability, and recognized his potential when others did not. That education changed his life, and it required professional expertise and reliable funding.

The core problem is structural. Nebraska relies too heavily on local property taxes to fund education and essential services. When costs rise and state funding does not keep pace, property taxes fill the gap. When home and agricultural land values increase, tax bills rise even if income does not.

Solving this problem requires three things working together: economic growth, state-level financing reform, and targeted federal partnership. Most of the responsibility lies at the state and local level, but smart federal action can help relieve pressure rather than add to it.

First, economic growth creates the capacity for property tax relief. That is why I developed SHIELD — Security, Health, Infrastructure, Energy, and Land Defense.

SHIELD focuses on strengthening Nebraska’s core economic sectors, including agriculture, health care, energy, advanced manufacturing, and national security partnerships.

By expanding value-added agriculture, investing in ag technology and bioscience, modernizing infrastructure and growing higher-wage industries, we raise incomes and broaden the tax base. When economic growth is shared more widely, communities rely less heavily on property taxes to fund essential services.

Second, Nebraska must change how it funds schools and local services. The state should adopt a clear, multi-year plan to increase its share of K-12 funding and gradually reduce the local property tax share while maintaining or strengthening per-pupil funding.

Relief must come from restructuring how services are financed, not from shifting costs back onto homeowners, farmers, and small businesses. The state should also protect primary residences and agricultural land from rapid valuation increases automatically turning into higher tax bills when income does not keep pace.

Third, federal policy should focus on reducing cost pressures, not pushing them downward. Fully funding existing commitments, strengthening the educator workforce through targeted incentives, and supporting rural health care, housing supply, farms, and infrastructure can help stabilize local budgets without forcing property taxes higher.

There is no single fix for Nebraska’s property tax problem. Real progress requires economic growth that broadens the tax base, smarter state financing that reduces overreliance on property taxes, and federal partnership that supports, rather than complicates, local solutions.

Nebraskans deserve leaders who understand how this issue affects everyday life and know how to fix what is broken. People should be able to afford the homes they are already in, plan for the next stage of their lives, and build a future in the communities they call home.

Kishla Askins is a candidate for Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, a health care provider, 30-year Navy veteran, and senior executive with decades of experience leading complex transformation across the federal government.