LINCOLN - In the first three years of his first term, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen has made tax cuts — and particularly property tax relief — his administration’s top priority.

At the Republican governor’s direction, lawmakers have poured $1.38 billion into funds that provide direct property tax cuts to Nebraskans, and another $319 million into an education fund created in 2023 to reduce the reliance on local taxpayers to fund the state’s K-12 schools.

Pillen has tried and failed to convince lawmakers to raise sales tax revenue to help pay for the property tax cuts while pledging to slash the state’s “bloated government” that he has promised to run “like a business.” “We’ve got to run government with less money,” Pillen said in January. “We have to cut the size of government.”

However, under Pillen, Nebraska’s government and its budget have only grown, according to state fiscal documents and other public records. The state employs at least 1,100 more employees than it did at the end of former Gov. Pete Ricketts’ term — despite an executive order Pillen signed in 2024 that was said to eliminate nearly 1,000 state jobs and promised future cuts to vacant positions on a rolling basis.

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