Candidates Speak at Leg Forum on Taxes, State's Budget Deficit
by Matt Johnson
OMAHA — Fiscal issues are at the forefront in the Nebraska Legislature this year, with a $471 million budget deficit looming and state senators working to close the gap. At the same time, property taxes are up 40% over the past five years as home valuations have outpaced homeowners’ ability to pay.
Guests at the Pachyderm Luncheon on Monday heard from three Republican candidates during a candidate forum on how they would address these issues—Bill Bowes (LD-14), Taylor Royal (LD-18), and Dean Helmick (LD-2). This is the second forum the Omaha group has held this month for Republican state legislative candidates.
Dean Helmick: Filling Rob Clements’ Fiscal Shoes
Dean Helmick is a recently-retired Air Force veteran who served 43 years, including 22 on active duty. He is running to replace Rob Clements in District 2, who is term-limited.
Helmick has consulted with Clements about his role as a state senator and has embraced his approach to fiscal policy, particularly Clements’s effort to recoup $2 billion in unspent cash from among 600 different cash funds.
“I think Rob Clements and the Appropriations Committee are doing this very well right now,” Helmick said. “Let’s see where there’s money that can be swept up and used to pay our bills. It’s not the government’s money, it’s your money.”
Clements had warned Helmick that this approach was also not one to win over friends in the Legislature. “He said there are two types of people in the Legislature. There are spenders, and there are savers. If you’re a spender, you’re very popular. If you’re a saver, he said it’s pretty lonely.”
As property owners in particular are feeling the pinch from higher property tax bills, Helmick sees taxes and spending as inextricably linked.
“The very first thing we have to do is control spending. Everybody talks about tax cuts. If we don’t control spending, there are no tax cuts. Those two things go directly together.”
And while many legislators try to balance a budget with either spending cuts or tax increases, Helmick hopes to find a third way.
“I think you grow your way out of this,” he said. “You cannot tax your way out of it. We have to grow the economy.”
Bill Bowes: The Firefighter’s Approach to Legislating
Bill Bowes is running in LD-14 to fill the seat of the term-limited Speaker John Arch. Bowes is a retired firefighter with 38 years of service, including 17 as fire chief of Papillion-La Vista after 21 years in the Omaha Fire Department. He ties all that experience back into the current state's need for fiscal discipline.
“I had a $12 million budget. All 17 years came in under budget, and usually with a nice little excess as well that we got to turn back,” Bowes said.
To balance the budget, Bowes also leaned on his experience in firefighting, suggesting a reduction in new hires in state government.
“A new fire truck is very expensive—hiring a new firefighter is really expensive, because we’re going to keep them around for 30 years,” Bowes said. “So it is an effective way of reducing the government, not hiring as many people, and we can do that through attrition if we need to.”
When asked which committees he would want to serve on, Bowes cited business and labor, noting his experience as a negotiator in union contracts as a fire chief. He also cited Health and Human Services in the hopes of reining in the “monster organization” in state government.
Bowes also agreed with Helmick on balancing the budget by growing the economy, focusing on growth through deregulation.
“Regulations have a lot to do with growth—I want to see Nebraska grow,” Bowes said. “Businesses and people come into the state. We have to be competitive with our neighboring states for incentives with businesses. I’m not for giving the farm away in that, but we have to be competitive.”
Bowes opposed the current tactic of raiding rainy day funds to balance the budget.
“We’re very fortunate in Nebraska that we have rainy day funds. We have a lot of money set aside for use when we need it, and we saw in last year’s Legislature that they were forced to raid that as well. We want to keep those funds available for those rainy days.”
Taylor Royal Wants More Government Efficiency
Taylor Royal is a partner at a wealth management firm in Omaha as well as a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). His perspective on conservative economic policy was shaped during his time in Texas over a decade ago.
“Down in Texas, not only was it hot—it was 100 days over 100 degrees—but also, the economy was hot,” Royal said. “And I saw firsthand, being a CPA working international accounts, I had a front row seat. I saw the smallest changes in tax and regulatory policy drove huge impacts to both businesses and families down in Texas.”
Royal specifically cited then-Governor Rick Perry as a champion for Texas’ economy through conservative fiscal policy.
“Texas is the place to be for opportunity because of its tax policy, because of its regulatory policy, and because of its people,” Royal said. “When I moved back to Omaha in 2015, we had lost ConAgra … seeing that dichotomy of the changes of what was going down in Texas and policies that they had versus when I moved back was pretty eye-opening.”
Royal wants to focus on actual cuts to government spending rather than “baseline budgeting,” where reductions in the rate of growth are often called “cuts.”
“We’ve cut the growth of the government, but I don’t think that’s really cutting government spending,” Royal said. “We do need to look for ways that we can be efficient with our operations, and that starts with going line by line. We don’t want to start from last year’s mistakes and just add an inflation adjustment to it. We need to start from zero and kind of build from there.”
Crowded Primary as the Race Heats Up
While the Nebraska legislature is officially non-partisan, state senators generally vote along party lines. In the primary this year, Bill Bowes will run against fellow Republican Jay Jackson and Democrat SuAnn Witt in LD-14.
Taylor Royal will run against fellow Republican Derek Schwarz as well as Democrat Jess Goldoni in LD-18. Dean Helmick will have two Democrats in his race for LD-2—Jayden Speed and Caitlin Knutson. Only the top two candidates in the primary will advance to the general, regardless of party.
The filing deadline for new candidates is March 2, and the Nebraska statewide primary election is on May 12, 2026.
— Matt Johnson is a freelance reporter with The Plains Sentinel.
