The spring semester’s first lecture in the Center for Great Plains Studies’ Paul A. Olson Seminars in Great Plains Studies series will feature UNL professors Eric Thompson and John Anderson. Anderson is a Baird Family Professor of Economics and Thompson is an associate professor of economics and the director of the Bureau of Business Research.

Thompson and Anderson will speak on state taxes in the region, which continue to be a highly controversial political topic, especially with recent developments in several states.

• Kansas has implemented deep tax reductions that produced sharp declines in state revenues and a scramble to impose budget cuts on education and other services.
• In North Dakota, taxes related to the oil boom produced a huge budget surplus but also created immense needs for new roads, schools, water treatment facilities, other costly infrastructure, and an economy that is sensitive to volatile world oil prices.
• Colorado’s legalization and taxation of recreational marijuana is generating large revenue allocated to fund education – revenues so large, in fact, that the state may have to refund some of the tax revenue under the state’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights.
• In Nebraska, newly elected Gov. Ricketts has pledged to make property tax reductions his first priority rather than reducing income, corporate, and other taxes. While Nebraska has a “rainy day” fund that could be dipped into, plans for reducing government spending have not yet been proffered and the state faces pressing demands for increased spending – on relieving over-crowded prisons, on a failed child welfare privatization, on education in school districts with large numbers of poor children, and on Medicaid expansion.

How will these and other states balance popular demands for tax cuts against the needs for social services? Anderson and Thompson will survey these difficult state financial issues on Feb. 18 at 3:30 p.m. at the Center for Great Plains Studies. The talk is free and open to the public. Visit the Center’s website at www.unl.edu/plains for more information.