If you are like me, you might be wondering exactly how the City of Lincoln could issue $25 million of bonds to finance the new downtown central library without putting it on the ballot for voters to weigh in on?

I think there’s really two parts to the overall question – the how part and the why part.

As I read the City’s press release on May 15, 2025, I was confused – mostly by the language.

The press release stated: “Because no general obligation bond would be needed, the project would not require a vote by the community.”

That same day, the Lincoln Journal Star reported these are “municipal (improvement) bonds, which don’t require a vote of the people or a separate tax levy to pay off.”

Adding to the confusion, The Journal Star also quoted Mayor Gaylor Baird as saying the bonds will be paid from the existing city budget, without a tax increase. The implied reasoning is that no vote is required if a separate levy isn’t needed.

So, my curiosity – and my background as a CPA/auditor – got the best of me and I pulled up the City’s audited financial statements. Municipal improvement bonds are a form of general obligation bonds and thus are backed by the full faith and credit of the city (in other words… us, the taxpayers).

That led me to Article 40 of the City Charter that governs the City’s authority to issue bonds. Article 40 says all general obligation bonds require voter approval unless they fall under one of three narrow exceptions – none of which apply to the new library. The City Charter makes no mention of “municipal improvement bonds”.

There is also no exception or provision in the City Charter that allows the City Council to bypass voter approval simply because the bonds can be repaid out of the City’s existing budget authority.

After digging further, I found that municipal improvement bonds not governed by the City Charter, but by the State of Nebraska. Presumably, the authority to bypass a public vote lies in a myriad of statutes. Finding the exact statutes could be its own research project and I’m certain the City Attorney and the City Council did that research. So—I quit digging on the HOW question.

But the WHY still concerned me. Over the past decade or so, the city has asked voters to stormwater bond in amounts far smaller than the library bonds. And in May of 2010 the voters were asked to approve $25M in bonds to finance the Pinnacle Bank Arena via the West Haymarket JPA.

It begs the question: why should one $25 million project go to the voters and another bypass them entirely?

There’s also the matter of long-term budget impact. These bonds will be paid from the city’s general fund. If the City’s levy increases before the bonds are repaid, residents could reasonably ask:

Would this have happened if voters had been allowed to weigh in on the bond?

It comes back to the age-old adage – just because you CAN do something, doesn’t mean you SHOULD. Projects of this scale deserve more than just legal compliance — they deserve a public vote or, at the very least, a clear, transparent explanation of why one is being denied.