One football Saturday a 40-year old Mike Groene got so upset at a Husker play, he hit the top of the radio. And broke it.
His wife looked over at him and said, “How old are you going to be before you stop letting 20-year old kids ruin your weekend?”
That’s when Groene (pronounced grow-nee) says he stopped paying as much attention to how many yards a running back ran and started paying more attention to how much money government spent.
And this year Groene, now 51, has dedicated his considerable passion to a proposed amendment to cap state spending.
He is the leader of the Stop Overspending Nebraska (SOS) campaign.
The man who has called opponents to the lid “a consortium of tax dollar profiteers,” is a homegrown Nebraskan.
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He was raised on a 160-acre farm near Olean in northeast Nebraska, the second youngest of seven children in an Irish-German family that argued at the dinner table — loudly.
“We would yell. A newcomer might think that we hated each other.”
He still enjoys a good debate.
Groene and the group he co-founded, Western Nebraska Taxpayers Association, were the mouthpiece of the successful petition drive to get the spending lid amendment on the November ballot.
Since then, Omaha businessman Dave Nabity has joined the fight, forming his own group, Committee for State Stewardship.
Groene does his research in a study overlooking green grass and summer flowers. His home, on an acre outside the North Platte city limits, sits in the middle of progress. The adjacent cornfields have been replanted to new homes.
Groene is a territory sales manager for Brothers Equipment Company. He oversees sales in western Nebraska, western Kansas, Colorado and Wyoming.
He and wife, Barb, have two grown children, Jeb and Becky, and a 2-year-old granddaughter. Both his children work at jobs supported by taxes. His son is a correctional officer; his daughter a school teacher.
Groene recognizes the irony but points out he isn’t anti-government. He wants government to be efficient.
“I want government to be the only struggling industry, to be always begging. I don’t want it to be the center of our life as Americans.”
Groene reads two to three newspapers every day and says he has a knack for numbers. “That’s what a lot of government is — numbers.”
He follows state and local issues, with an eye for the important, if less sexy, issues.
While others are squawking about the UNO athletic department squandering $1 million, Groene wonders why the university is raising tuition 5 to 6 percent a year on average.
“Where is all that money going? That is more of a scandal to me. One million dollars, that’s peanuts.”
‘You paid your own way’
Groene is well read and articulate, which he attributes to his mother (his Irish roots) and the nuns in his country elementary school
“I never read less than 60 books a year. I mean we read; we read all summer. I’m a country hick, never went to town. But I read everything I could get my hands on.”
He also was a high school jock, playing basketball, football and participating in track at Dodge High School. He graduated in 1973.
Groene offers his high school history, only after prodding. He’d much rather talk about issues. He wants to point out the problems inherent in public employee unions which he believes protect inadequate workers.
And he has an opinion on the culture’s emphasis on athletes.
“The saddest thing is an adult still talking about the touchdown he scored when he was 14.
If he could, he would change the mentality that says because you can play sports, you have good character and therefore are a natural leader.
Athletic ability and leadership ability “are not related at all,” he says.
Groene left home at 18, paid his way through the University of Nebraska-Lincoln working for a veterinarian and one summer for Deeter Foundry, where “I threw manhole covers in 120 degrees.”
“We are pretty conservative,” he says of his family. “You paid your own way. You didn’t ask government to bail you out or do things for you.”
Wants to reduce taxes
Groene graduated with a degree in ag economics in 1977, got a job, married, had two children, and in 1990 moved to the small Colorado town of Holyoke as a part of his job with Brothers.
He was involved in local Republican politics there and ran for the school board in 1995.
Newspaper stories on the election issues show Groene stressed academics over extracurricular activities and sports. He said he wanted to see just 20 students per class in lower elementary grades.
Groene said he didn’t pay a lot of attention to taxes in Colorado because they weren’t that high.
But in 1997 Groene moved back to Nebraska, to North Platte, to what he considers shockingly high taxes.
Nebraska’s income tax is more progressive (higher wages are taxed at a higher percentage) “so it penalizes successful people,” he says.
His house taxes doubled from $850 in Colorado to around $1,700 in Nebraska on a house with a similar value.
In North Platte Groene and Gary Heinzle began the Western Nebraska Taxpayers Association, a group of like-minded people who want lower taxes. It’s a nonpartisan group with no interests beyond tax reductions, he says.
Groene is registered Republican so he can vote in all the primary races. Otherwise, he said he’d switch to Independent.
“One party represents the rich corporations; the other party represents every oddball out there. Nobody represents the middle class anymore,” he says.
His solution: reduce taxes, improve efficiencies.
Local watchdog
Groene often represents his taxpayers association before the local school board, city council and county board by questioning spending decisions.
While the North Platte politicians and government leaders may not always agree with Groene, many say they respect the way he conducts himself.
He’s intelligent, does his research and offers well-prepared presentations, several said.
“He’s very interesting. He’s very cordial,” says Jim Paloucek, a North Platte attorney and school board member.
“The opposition may see him as a fire-breathing crazy. But that is absolutely inaccurate,” he said.
“He’s very well-informed, very sincere in his beliefs, and his arguments are very well thought out.”
“He’s the kind of person you would like to have a debate with. He’s very thoughtful. He doesn’t come at you with demagoguery. And you can walk away, disagreeing, but not angry,” Paloucek said.
But not everyone thinks Groene and the group have been a good influence.
“As far as I’m concerned he was a disruptive influence on the community by fighting many things, including tax increment financing,” said James Whitaker, former North Platte mayor.
“He influenced our council and stopped some progressive things that were going on,” including TIF financing.
Whitaker said at least once he had to “gavel” Groene out of order so that the meeting could continue.
Groene is proud of his influence on local decisions, including encouraging the city to back away from what he calls the “misuse” of tax increment financing to raise prices for local land speculators.
He has also successfully urged the school board not to use local tax dollars for before- and after-school care and convinced the county to switch museum costs to the lodging tax.
And local government leaders pay attention to the group.
“He’s one of the watchdogs, which is healthy,” said North Platte Mayor Keith Richardson.
“Mike is straight forward, honest. He tells it like it is,” said Heinzle, co-founder of the taxpayers association.
Elected leaders on the receiving end of Groene’s criticism have suggested Groene should run for office himself. So he is.
He survived a three-person primary and is one of two candidates for a seat on the Mid-Plains Community College board.
‘An average guy’
Groene is the state mouthpiece for the Nebraska Stop Over Spending petition, but the financial backing has come from a cluster of organizations with libertarian roots that also paid for similar campaigns in at least eight states.
Support from Americans for Limited Government is the reason the Nebraska proposal targets state spending, not local property taxes.
The national group is focused on state spending, which is funded in Nebraska by sales and income tax.
Nebraska would need a separate petition to deal with property tax, said Groene.
So a property tax initiative will be next, in two years, assuming the state spending lid passes, he says.
Groene has never met the leaders of the Americans for Limited Government, which provided $860,000 for collecting voter signatures, but he figures they are “conservative folks like me.”
The group did help organize the petition drive and the paid circulators.
It’s not unusual for outsiders to come in and help when an underdog is overwhelmed, Groene says.
He points to the college students from the north who went south to help register black voters and the French who sided with the Americans during the American revolution.
Groene has taken no money for his time, or his expenses during the signature gathering process, though the head of the humane care petition drive received more than $6,000 for his work this summer and a Nebraska public relations firm got $13,500 for work on that campaign.
Groene has not been compensated for the hours spent talking to reporters on his cell phone.
Nor for the miles he put on his car.
Nor for the grief dished out by opponents who hired “blockers” to convince people not to sign the petitions.
Groene and Heinzle are the only Nebraska donors to the petition drive, giving $1,000 each, according to reports to the state.
Groene accepted help from the national group because he knows you need money for paid circulators for a successful petition campaign.
In 2004 his taxpayer group worked with Ed Jaksha’s group out of Omaha on a tax spending lid petition drive.
“It was a disaster,” Groene says. While Groene and some folks from the Western Nebraska Taxpayers Association gathered signatures to qualify a few western counties, Omaha and Lincoln were still getting organized, Heinzle said.
Never again would he work on a petition unless there was “some money behind it” to hire circulators in the urban east, Groene vowed.
By chance, Groene ran into Scott Tillman, employed by Americans for Limited Government.
Tillman was pulling a Trojan horse through the state, supporting term limits in the spring of 2005. Nebraska state senators were considering putting a term limit repeal on the ballot at the time.
Groene met Tillman when he decided to check out the Trojan horse in a North Platte parking lot.
The two talked several other times and Tillman knew Groene’s group had an interest in a spending lid.
In April, Tillman “called me up and said, you want to go for it (petition campaign), you file it and we will line up the financial support.”
Groene expected a good debate. But he didn’t expect the amount of attention he’s gotten from reporters and his opponents, who mounted a campaign to stop people from signing petitions.
“I’m just an average guy who got involved. I never anticipated the opposition’s fury. I never anticipated it at all.”
Reach Nancy Hicks at 473-7250 or nhicks@journalstar.com.
What would the lid do?
The proposed constitutional amendment would limit state spending increases each year to the consumer price index plus population growth.
It will be on the Nov. 7 ballot.
Supporters of the spending lid amendment have set up two offices.
Stop Over Spending Nebraska, the group led by Mike Groene and the Western Nebraska Taxpayers Association has opened a North Platte office, managed by Vicky Morris. The telephone number is (308) 534-4012.
The Committee for State Stewardship, organized by Dave Nabity, has opened an Omaha office, managed by Rick Galusha. The telephone number is (402) 934-4350.
Opponents of the state spending lid, organized as Nebraskans for the Good Life, also have a Lincoln office. Their telephone numbers are 742-0605, for Lincoln residents, and toll free at 888-588-3717.
