NORFOLK — I am currently bombarded with flyers supporting initiatives 440 and 441 legalizing and regulating online sports wagering in Nebraska. I get about one a day in the mail. The flyers are from Tax Relief Nebraska, an organization with an Omaha address. The flyers push the notion that this is a way to cut property taxes and cite a study that it will raise $166 million in tax relief over 10 years. The ads don’t suggest that it will make Nebraska a better place to live or that the people will have better lives as a result, merely that our lifestyle will be somewhat less expensive because of a tax reduction. Sounds like a lot of money until you realize that Nebraska political subdivisions levied around $5.3 billion a year in property taxes, or over $50 billion over 10 years. So, if everything works as it projected after this is passed, your tax bill will be reduced about .3 of 1%. That presumably does not account for the cost of regulation or human cost.
The worst part of this is that a UCLA study of states that allow this type of gambling found that bankruptcies rose about 10% and credit quality dropped slightly. It is important to note that it is probably not rich people who ow...