State Aid Certification
Procedures; Effect of the 1997 Enactment of LB 595 and LB 713
(August 13, 1997)
Opinion 97041
SUBJECT: State Aid Certification
Procedures; Effect of the 1997 Enactment of LB 595 and LB 713
REQUESTED BY: Douglas D.
Christensen
Commissioner of Education
WRITTEN BY: Don Stenberg,
Attorney General
Lauren L. Hill, Assistant Attorney General
You have requested an opinion
from this office regarding
what effect the 1997 enactments of LB
595 and LB 713 have upon the
Nebraska Department of Education's
duties with respect to
certification and distribution of state
aid payments to local
school districts. Specifically, you have
posed two questions which
are set forth, below, following a brief
statement of the facts
which were supplied as background to the
opinion request.
Pertinent Facts
Pursuant
to Neb. Rev. Stat. ¤ 79-1022 (1996), the
Nebraska Department of
Education ["NDE"] is required, on or before
July 1 of
each year, to determine the amount of state aid that
will be
distributed to Nebraska public school districts under the
state's
statutory school finance formula. The certified state aid
amounts
are then distributed to the school districts in ten
payments made
from September through June of the ensuing school
year. In
developing their annual budgets, school districts are
required to
use the amount of state aid that the NDE has certified
will be
received for that particular school fiscal year. See Neb.
Rev.
Stat. ¤ 79-1022. School districts must complete and file
their
proposed budget statements no later than August 1. Neb. Rev.
Stat.
¤ 13-504(1) (Supp. 1996).
The NDE utilizes information
collected within the agency,
from school district reports, and
from other sources in order to
calculate and certify each year's
state aid payments. As to
information regarding each school
district's adjusted valuations,
Neb. Rev. Stat. ¤ 79-1016
requires that on or before July 1, 1997,
the Property Tax
Administrator compute and certify to the NDE "the
adjusted
valuation for the current calendar year of each district
. . . so
that the valuation of property for each district, for
purposes of
determining state aid [payments] . . . , shall reflect
as nearly
as possible state aid value [as defined by the statute]."
The
adjusted valuations utilized by the NDE in the 1997-98 state
aid
formula calculations were those provided to the NDE pursuant to
Neb.
Rev. Stat. ¤ 79-1016.
At times, data relied upon in
calculating and disbursing
the statutory school finance formula
payments is changed. In those
circumstances, the NDE is required
to recalculate a prior year's
state aid payments so that each
school district "will receive all
funds to which it was
finally determined to be entitled." Neb.
Rev. Stat. ¤
79-1065 (1996). When the NDE recalculates state aid
payments
under ¤ 79-1065, it incorporates adjustments in the
following
year's state aid payment amount. The NDE makes an annual
recalculation
for all school districts because of the fact that any
adjustment
(positive or negative) to one school district impacts
all other
districts receiving state aid payments in a particular
year. See
"Tax Equity & Educational Opportunities Support Act,"
Neb.
Rev. Stat. ¤ 79-1001 - ¤ 79-1033 (1996).
On
June 26, 1997, the NDE certified to all school
districts the
amount of state aid payments which the districts
would receive
for the 1997-98 school year. The certification was
based upon
statutes which were current in June, 1997 -- the time
frame in
which the NDE computed the 1997-98 payments. However,
occurring
concurrently with the NDE's 1997-98 state aid
certification
process was the Legislature's deliberation and
enactment of LB
595. The legislation added the following new
requirement:
Beginning
with the 1997-98 school fiscal year, in
the school fiscal year
beginning during the calendar year
that a county board adopts
special valuation for all
qualifying property in the county
pursuant to sections
77-1343 to 77-1348, the adjusted valuations
used in the
calculation of state aid shall not exceed one hundred
eight percent of the assessed valuation for the property
tax
year on which the adjusted valuation is based.
Neb. Rev. Stat. ¤ 79-1016(6) (as
amended by 1997 Neb. Laws, LB 595,
¤ 6) (effective June 10,
1997).
Analysis
Based
upon these facts, we now address your two specific
questions. To
the extent that resolution of your inquiries turns
on
construction of the newly-enacted statutes, our analysis is
governed
by several well-established standards of statutory
construction.
First, in the absence of any indication to the
contrary,
statutory language is to be given its plain and ordinary
meaning.
State ex rel. City of Elkhorn v. Haney, 252 Neb. 788,
792, ____
N.W.2d ____ (1997). Therefore, no interpretation is
required to
ascertain "the meaning of statutory words which are
plain,
direct, and unambiguous." Id. Finally, a statute "is open
for
construction when the language used requires interpretation or
may
reasonably be considered ambiguous." Id. at 793, ____ N.W.2d
at
____; Omaha Public Power Dist. v. Nebraska Dep't of Revenue, 248
Neb.
518, 537 N.W.2d 312 (1995).
1. If any of the data provided to
the Nebraska Department of
Education was changed (or corrected)
after the certification
date specified in the statute (July 1 for
1997-98 State Aid
and December 1 for 1998-99 State Aid and each
year
thereafter), is NDE required to do a recertification
immediately,
or are we required to use this information in the
recalculation
of the prior year's State Aid?
An initial duty imposed upon the
NDE is to correctly
calculate and certify school fiscal year
state aid payments under
the formula set forth in the "Tax
Equity and Educational
Opportunities Support Act." Once,
however, changes or corrections
are required to be made to an
annual state aid calculation, the
only duty imposed by law upon
the NDE to recalculate state aid
payments is that set forth in
Neb. Rev. Stat. ¤ 79-1065 (1996).
The statute mandates that the
NDE shall adjust state aid payments
provided to school districts
which, after final determination,
received funds not equal to the
appropriate allocation for a
previous year. The purpose of the
recalculation is to ensure that
the district will receive all
funds to which it was finally
determined to be entitled. There is
no duty under ¤ 79-1065 to
immediately recalculate state aid
payments; rather, the statute
contemplates an annual
recalculation made by the NDE to rectify
errors made in a
previous year's calculation.
2. In addition, as LB 595 passed
with the emergency clause, ...
my second question is (and it is
our understanding that the
Property Tax Division will also be
asking you to address some
questions regarding LB 595, 1997)
should the certification of
the 1997-98 State Aid, which was
mailed on June 26, 1997, have
the [LB 595, ¤ 6] provision in the
certification process?
The provisions of LB 595 were
signed into law on June 9,
1997. Since the legislation contained
an emergency clause, the
provisions of the bill became operative
on June 10, 1997. See Neb.
Const. art. III, ¤ 27. Clearly, the
NDE became obligated to
operate under Neb. Rev. Stat. ¤ 79-1016,
as amended by LB 595, on
June 10, 1997. What is not as clear is
precisely how the NDE could
comply with the LB 595 amendment by
July 1, 1997, the date on which
it was required to certify state
aid payment amounts to each school
district. Existing law
requires that
[a]djusted valuation means the
assessed valuation of
taxable property of each district in the
state adjusted
pursuant to the adjustment factors described in
section
79-1016. . . . For calculation of state aid to be paid
in
school year 1996-97 and each school year thereafter,
adjusted
valuation means the adjusted valuation for the
property tax year
ending during the school year
immediately preceding the school year
in which the aid
based upon that value is to be paid.
Neb.
Rev. Stat. ¤ 79-1003(2) (1996). This provision must be
reconciled
with the ¤ 79-1016(6) provision, operative as of June
10, 1997,
which requires, beginning with the current school fiscal
year,
that if a county board adopts a special valuation for certain
agricultural
and horticultural property in 1997 or future years,
then the
adjusted valuation used in the calculation of state aid
shall not
exceed 108 percent of the assessed valuation for the
property tax
year on which the adjusted valuation is based.
As a general rule, "[i]n the
absence of clear legislative
intent, a construction of a statute
will not be adopted which has
the effect of nullifying or
repealing another statute." State ex
rel. City of Elkhorn,
252 Neb. at 794, ____ N.W.2d ____ (____);
Georgetown Ltd. Part.
v. Geotechnical Services, 230 Neb. 22, 430
N.W.2d 34 (1988).
Therefore, the plain meaning of both ¤ 79-
1003(2) and ¤
79-1016(6) must be construed so as to give legal
effect to each
statute. Section 79-1003(2) clearly directs the NDE
to have
utilized in its 1997-98 state aid certification adjusted
valuations
for the property tax year ending during the 1996-97
school year.
Section 79-1016(1) directs the Property Tax
Administrator to
compute and certify to the NDE the adjusted
valuations for the
current calendar year. In addition, ¤ 79-
1016(6) clearly directs
that specific valuations should not have
exceeded 108 percent of
the assessed valuations for certain
property in certain counties.
What is assumed by the LB 595
amendment is that the Property Tax
Administrator would have data
available from each of Nebraska's
93 counties with which to compute
and certify to the NDE adjusted
valuations which the NDE should
have utilized in certifying the
1997-98 state aid payments to
districts. Evidently, due to the
time constraints imposed by
existing statutes, the Property Tax
Administrator was not able to
provide to the NDE adjusted
valuation figures reflecting the
requirements of the LB 595
amendment. Thus, we conclude that, if
applicable, the Neb. Rev.
Stat. ¤ 79-1016(6) provision should have
been taken into account
by the NDE in certifying state aid payments
for the 1997-98
school year.
Sincerely,
DON STENBERG
Attorney General
Lauren L. Hill
Assistant Attorney General