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Ricketts announces ag land assessment guidelines

Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts has announced a plan to help alleviate some of the property tax burden on the state’s farmers and ranchers.

Ricketts says the state will provide new guidelines to county assessors, encouraging them to throw out factors which might cause spikes in ag land valuations—factors such as bidding wars, 1031 exchanges, special financing, and purchases for recreational use.

“The whole idea is to make sure that we are getting valuations as close as possible to what the true market is,” Ricketts says. “To be able to make sure that, as we have a changing market in our ag land, we see that market price accurately reflected.”

Ricketts contends such factors have unfairly driven up assessed valuations, putting a pinch on farmers struggling under a variety of pressures.

“We’ve seen commodity prices go down and the valuations on ag land have not followed down as quickly,” he says. “That does create pressure on our farmers and ranchers and has put a lot of them in a very tight situation.”

Ricketts says it’s difficult to quantify what effect the new directive will have on assessments, but says it will prevent improper increases caused by anomalies in the market place.

Ricketts made those comments Tuesday at a news conference in Kearney.