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Lincoln County limits refunds to three years but approves tax corrections for property owner
Summary
The Lincoln County Board of Equalization denied a request to refund taxes before 2022, citing state law, but approved tax-list corrections for 2022–2024 for property owner Cindy Daves and granted related certificates of correction.
The Lincoln County Board of Equalization on Nov. 17 denied a request to refund more than three years of property taxes to a local property owner but approved adjustments for the prior three years.
Cindy Daves, who identified herself at the meeting as a property owner, said the county had been charging her for roughly 35.6 acres she does not own and asked the board to refund taxes back to 2010 after she acquired the ground following her mother’s death. "The county's been basically screwing us out of 35 acres," Daves told commissioners during her public remarks.
County legal counsel Tyler read Nebraska statute 77-17,134.01 aloud, saying that a refund claim "shall be made in writing to the county treasurer ... within 3 years after the date the tax was due," and described the provision as an absolute three-year cutoff for refunds. Based on that reading, Commissioner Hughley moved — and Commissioner Bruns seconded — a motion to deny any refund claims prior to 2022. The motion carried on roll call.
The board then approved, on motion and roll call, tax-list corrections for the property owned by Cindy Daves for 2022, 2023 and 2024 to reflect corrected acreage and valuations. The assessor, Julene Stinger, told the board staff had rescinded those earlier assessments after receiving a boundary-line agreement and updated GIS mapping.
Stinger explained the assessor's office had applied the statutory three-year correction window for refunds but adjusted valuations prospectively for 2025 once the corrected acreage was entered into GIS. She told the board she had contacted the Department of Revenue for guidance and that the department identified the three-year limit as the controlling statute.
Separately, the board approved certificates of correction and refund submitted by the assessor for William and Charlie Cleveland as a final Turk order.
Next steps: the board made the tax corrections for 2022–2024 effective as recorded; the denied request for refunds before 2022 was entered into the record as constrained by statute.
