Gov. Pete Ricketts vetoed a bill April 23 that repealed the Black-Tailed Prairie Dog Management Act.<\/p>\n
The act, which was passed by the Legislature in 2012, authorizes county boards to adopt and carry out coordinated management programs to control black-tailed prairie dog colonies on property within the county. LB449, sponsored by Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers, would have repealed the act. <\/p>\n
The law requires a landowner to effectively manage prairie dog colonies on his or her property to prevent them from expanding to adjacent property if the owner objects to the expansion. If a landowner does not provide evidence that a colony is being managed within 60 days of a county board\u2019s notice, the county may enter upon the property to manage the prairie dogs.<\/p>\n
The landowner is responsible for any expenses, and unpaid assessments become a lien on the property. Landowners who do not comply also could receive a fine of up to $1,500. The law allows a county to file a foreclosure suit to recover the debt.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers voted 26-13 to pass the bill April 18, the final day of the 2018 session. <\/p>\n
Chambers has said the act violates property owners\u2019 rights by allowing government agents to come onto their land without notice when a neighbor makes an unverified complaint about prairie dogs on the property.<\/p>\n
In his veto message, Ricketts said that repealing the act would fail to protect the property rights of landowners who are harmed by the spread of prairie dogs from a neighbor\u2019s property. He said the law provides an incentive for landowners to manage prairie dogs on their property and that counties have used it \u201cjudiciously.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Pete Ricketts vetoed a bill April 23 that repealed the Black-Tailed Prairie Dog Management Act.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[97],"class_list":["post-24145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","tag-sen-ernie-chambers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24145"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24146,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24145\/revisions\/24146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}