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If lawyers for 21 parties can sign off on 21 paragraphs by Wednesday, then the lawsuit challenging the two-county learning community can move on to the Nebraska Supreme Court.
If not, the plaintiffs, barring a deadline extension from the court, would have to consider taking the longer and more expensive route of filing their case in Lancaster District Court — starting from scratch rather than taking a shortcut to the high court.
The Sarpy County Farm Bureau and eight property owners filed suit in October asking the Nebraska Supreme Court to declare unconstitutional the common general fund and building fund levies that the learning community council imposed on member school districts for the first time this year.
The plaintiffs allege that the levies violate the Nebraska Constitution, which contains a prohibition against levying property taxes for a state purpose.
Attorneys for the 11 school districts, the learning community council, the State of Nebraska and other elected officials and agencies met this week in an attempt to reach agreement on the set of facts underlying the lawsuit, said Don Stenberg, the plaintiffs’ attorney.
Some issues remain unresolved, he said, and the attorneys agreed to meet again Tuesday in an attempt to reach agreement by Wednesday’s deadline.
The court indicated that it would take the case if the parties agreed on the facts by that date. The Nebraska Supreme Court is an appellate court and is not set up to hear original cases.
Stenberg said the attorneys have resolved “quite a number of issues.” He declined to say what issues remain in dispute, nor would he speculate about what would happen if the parties can’t reach agreement by the deadline.
“It really wouldn’t be appropriate to do that,” he said. “I think we made real good progress, but there are some issues that remain that hopefully we can resolve, but only time will tell.”
Rick Kolowski, chairman of the learning community council, said he expects lawyers to review the document line by line in an attempt to reach agreement.
He said the learning community council would continue working on its state mandate to develop learning centers and implement a diversity plan next year to improve academic achievement for disadvantaged metro-Omaha youths. If the common levies were struck down, those efforts could still continue because they are funded by separate sources.
With the court deadline looming, the school boards of the Omaha, Millard and Bellevue districts have scheduled special closed-session meetings today to discuss the lawsuit.
“It’s coming quick. That’s why we were just told to get a meeting together so the board could provide direction,” said Cathy Williams, spokeswoman for the Bellevue Public Schools.
The paragraphs at issue in the complaint are largely a chronology of the legislative steps that created the new school funding system and a description of how the levies redistribute local property tax money between districts.
The system is designed to take money from districts identified as property-rich and redistribute it to districts that educate high numbers of students who are low-income, learning English or face other learning challenges.
Because the plaintiffs wrote the complaint, the language will be closely scrutinized by supporters of the learning community.
For instance, the lawsuit describes the levy system as providing financial aid to “favored” districts at the expense of taxpayers in “disfavored” districts. It also contains a quote from the late State Sen. Ron Raikes, saying the learning community’s purpose was to share resources and “free up state aid money for the state.”
That quote goes to the heart of the plaintiffs’ allegation that the levies violate a prohibition in the Nebraska Constitution against levying local property taxes for a state purpose.
Although some school districts strongly dislike the common levies, they have reluctantly gone along with creation of the learning community because it fr
Eight law firms are involved in the negotiations, as well as the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office and the Sarpy County Attorney’s Office.
Contact the writer:
444-1077, joe.dejka@owh.com
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