Gubernatorial candidate Hassebrook makes stop in Sidney

Chuck Hassebrook, the Democratic candidate for governor, made a campaign stop Sunday evening at Sidney's Legion Park Shelter House to share his outlook with local citizens.

"I've spent my professional life working to create a better future in greater Nebraska – small town, small city rural Nebraska – and that's a big priority for me," he said.

Hassebrook has spent 36 years serving at the Center for Rural Affairs, effecting changes in federal tax, farm, conservation and rural development policy, and has been the executive director for the last 17. He has also been on the University of Nebraska Board of Regents for 18 years.

He will face off against Republican candidate Pete Ricketts and Libertarian Mark Elworth in the Nov. 4 election.

One of Hassebrook's highest priorities is to help Nebraska become one of the best states for small businesses by raising caps on tax credits and holding to those regulations that won't dampen the entrepreneurial spirit.

"We need to make our state one of the best states in America to start a small business, because there's a whole new generation of small-business opportunities out there today that could be anything," he said. "(There are) hundreds of thousands of opportunities, selling goods and services over the Internet."

At the Center for Rural Affairs, Hassebrook helped to pass the Nebraska Advantage Microenterprise Tax Credit Act, which provides investment tax credits to micro business owners that equals 20 percent of the new investment, with a $10,000 lifetime limit.

However, legislators capped the credit at $2 million for all the small businesses combined in Nebraska.

"It never really got off the ground because it was just too little," he said. "If we can afford $36 million for one business, we need to be able to invest more than $2 million on all small businesses in the state, combined."

Hassebrook also believes that supporting renewable energy is critical for Nebraska's future.

"We need to support our world-class renewable energy resources," he said. "Nebraska is the second-leading ethanol producer, but yet when it comes to support developing local markets for ethanol, we're behind many of our neighboring states."

Hassebrook said he intends to work with the corn board and the ethanol industry to increase the number of blender pumps in Nebraska, and will bring together a task force of scientists, farmers, business people and environmentalists to develop a strategy for Nebraska to stay in the forefront of biofuel production.

Wind energy in Nebraska is particularly underdeveloped, according to Hassebrook.

Nebraska has the nation's third-greatest potential capacity of any state in the union to generate electricity from the wind, he said, but Nebraska is far behind its neighbors.

"Where do you see the fewest wind turbines? It's in the state with the most wind – Nebraska," he said, "and it reflects a profound lack of leadership in the governor's office."

Hassebrook spoke about a time a few years ago when the state missed an opportunity to take part in a large wind development project that would have taken power to the Chicago area. Hassebrook said he asked the governor for help in making a plan to remove some of the disincentives that discourage wind development in Nebraska.

"He said he wasn't interested," Hassebrook said. "So, they are building that power line. They're building it from Iowa instead of Nebraska, and it's costing us thousands of good jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in local tax revenue that could be used for property tax relief."

Property tax relief is also high on Hassebrook's list of priorities.

For farmers and ranchers in particular, property taxes have really become burdensome, he said. To address this, Hassebrook believes the market valuations for agricultural land need to be reduced from 75 percent to 65 percent.

He also proposed collecting taxes from online out-of-state purchases as another source of revenue.

"What sense does that make that we would say, 'We're going to collect the tax from you if you support a Nebraska business, but if you bypass the Nebraska business and go out-of-state, we won't collect the tax,' " he asked. "It's just dumb economic development."

This would raise between $40 million and $140 million per year that could be used for property tax relief, he said.

Hassebrook spoke about the many Nebraska jobs that have not been filled due to the lack people with the right skills, citing welders and computer code writers as examples.

"These are typical skills that with a year or two of technical training, people can fill those jobs," he said, "and make $40,000 or $50,000 or $60,000 a year."

To help this, Hassebrook wants to "beef up" job training. He spoke about a high school in Grand Island that allows 11th-graders to spend half their day taking technical courses from the community college.

"By the time you graduate from high school, you can have a welding certificate or a certificate in writing code for computer programming," he said. "You come out of high school with skills that earn $40,000-$50,000 a year. I'd like to encourage more of that."

To accomplish this, Hassebrook would make the state partner in it by offering some financial assistance to those students with low-income families who can't afford to pay tuition.

Additionally, Hassebrook said he supports increasing the minimum wage.

He said that the earnings gap between those "on top" and ordinary working families is at its widest point in the history of America.