Although I have been a Nebraska State Senator for the past six years, I had never introduced a bill that was referenced to the Judiciary Committee until this year.This year I introduced LB 394 which had a public hearing last week before the Judiciary Committee, so today I would like to tell you about that bill.
LB 394 is a bill that changes our laws about eminent domain. Eminent domain is the law which allows governmental entities to seize private lands for public use. Currently, Nebraska’s laws for eminent domain favor those governmental entities which use eminent domain and discriminate against those landowners who do not want the government to take their lands away from them. My bill institutes fairness in the way that eminent domain is used for taking private property in our state. Agricultural lands differ from residential properties in that agricultural lands are used to generate income for the landowner. Because agricultural lands represent the bread-and-butter income for those who own them, the future loss of income to the farmer or the rancher needs to be taken into consideration when valuing these properties for eminent domain. Current law says that properties seized by eminent domain are required to reimburse the landowner at the fair market value of the land, but the fair market value does not take into consideration the future loss of income to the farmer or the rancher.
In order to better compensate for the future loss of incomes to farmers and ranchers for properties taken by eminent domain, my bill would require that such properties be reimbursed to the landowners at twice the fair market value of the agricultural land. To be fair, it could be further argued that twice the fair market value does not adequately compensate farmers and ranchers for the long-term loss of their agricultural lands, but raising the rate to twice the fair market value at least gets us closer to what is fair.
