Resistance in Omaha
The Taxpayers Plan
The Taxpayers Plan Committee was a conservative, populist organization that advocated limited government and low property taxes. Its membership drew largely from South Omaha and its working-class homeowners. Initially formed to defeat the Omaha Plan's $68 million bond proposals and urban renewal projects, the Taxpayers Plan later became the first grassroots neighborhood organization that fought early Interstate construction in Omaha. After the Omaha Plan's defeat in 1958, which The Taxpayers group claimed to have scuttled, the Taxpayers Plan turned into a long-term organization that advocated an agenda based around cutting taxes, monitoring government spending in schools and city services, and seeking a repeal of the 1956 city charter. The Taxpayers Plan organization, in part, was representative of a growing trend of conservative grassroots political efforts that took root in the 1960s that rejected the costs of postwar growth liberalism. The Taxpayers Plan valued homeownership, low taxes, limited government, and rejected urban renewal and other liberal reform initiatives.
Taxpayer Plan Activities Prior to the Interstate
In 1958, the Taxpayers Plan was the Omaha Plan's most outspoken critic. The group organized and announced its existence in late April of 1958, two months prior to the June 17 Omaha Plan vote, and called for voters to reject the booster- and business-backed bond proposals. The Taxpayers Plan contended that the Omaha Plan would "create a staggering debt for many years to come," arguing that Omaha voters should reject the total package proposal in favor of approving individual components in the future. The group solicited contributions from sympathetic voters, created a public speakers bureau, and planned door-to-door canvassing at homes and local businesses. The Taxpayers Plan butted heads with Omaha's boosters and business interests and sparked the Omaha World-Herald's disdain, which challenged the Taxpayers Plan to provide its own alternative plan to grow Omaha's economy.
The Taxpayers Plan found initial success in the city-wide defeat of the Omaha Plan by a five-to-one margin and, by a thirteen-to-one margin in South Omaha and the Taxpayers Plan's districts (Stevens, Jr., 51). The organization's chairman, Ralph Bremers, soon after the vote announced that it would become a permanent organization to advocate for lower taxes and oppose future referendums similar to the Omaha Plan package. In August 1958, the Taxpayers Plan expanded its agenda and announced it would seek to repeal Omaha's city charter through a petition initiative. Although they placed it on the November ballot, it failed to pass.
The Taxpayers Plan began as an ad hoc group with limited formal structure. Articles in the World-Herald reveal that the Taxpayers Plan had few original ideas beyond cutting government spending and provided no alternative city government structure had their charter repeal passed. Moreover, chairman Bremers described their petition effort as "a sort of hit-and-run operation." Revealing the group's resourcefulness but also its lack of professional organization, Bremers explained that the Taxpayers Plan depended on "fellows on the streets that I knew, friends of mine through various organizations, fraternal groups and such. We did distribute petitions by mail to all bars because we figured that would be a good place to get signatures."
Pending Interstate construction and land acquisition seemed to elude the Taxpayers Plan as an issue throughout 1958. Strangely, when asked about the Taxpayers Plan's position on the coming Interstate Highway, Bremers offered no thoughts on likely residential displacement, suggesting only that "We don't want to be a great big metropolitan city. If we wanted one like New York or Chicago we'd move there. Our people are basically farmers. Many of them came right off the farm" ("Group Offers No Substitute," Omaha World-Herald, 19 October 1958).
The Taxpayers Plan's Interstate Opposition
News reports surfaced in early 1959 seeking answers to when the state would purchase private properties for Interstate construction. In response to requests from State Senator Skarda, Governor Ralph Brooks and the State Highway Department convened three town forums in April at the Immaculate Conception Church gymnasium to address relocation concerns. The Governor’s administrative assistant, Robert Conrad, stated that the forums were “for the purpose of informing the people of their rights and the legal steps which they can take to protect those rights,” but emphasized that “the meetings are not to be held to hear complaints on where the highway is going. Its route is set and there can be no changing it” (“State Calls Meet on Interstate Route: Right-of-Way Rights, Legal Steps Listed,” South Omaha Sun, 2 April 1959).
The Taxpayers Plan remained largely inactive on the Interstate issue until the first mass public meeting was held at Immaculate Conception in early April 1959. There, an estimated 1,000 people listened to state officials announce their plans to begin door-to-door appraisals within three weeks and begin possessing properties within four months. Two state senators, William Skarda of Omaha and Terry Carpenter of Scottsbluff, who opposed constructing urban Interstates before rural routes, called for the South Omaha community to organize against the urban Interstate routing in favor of a route that bypassed the city. The public forum grew increasingly disorganized as citizens' questions turned into tirades against the state's power of eminent domain. Before the forum dissolved, Taxpayer Plan co-chairmen in attendance agitated amongst the crowd and began circulating petitions under the title, 'The Home You Save May Be Your Own" (“Few Questions, Answers Mark Interstate Meeting,” South Omaha Sun, 9 April 1959).
Highway opponents in South Omaha advocated a form of “defensive localism” that emphasized property owners’ and taxpayers’ rights in defense of the neighborhood. Father Kent of Immaculate Conception church condemned the Interstate as “cruel . . . and downright dictatorial,” arguing against the use of eminent domain so property owners could “live out their lives in that little bit of America they cherish so dearly.” Father Edmund Placek, also of Immaculate Conception, warned of further government action when he posited that if “they can deliberately withhold information about the interstate . . . and shove it down your throats . . . what’s going to stop them from going further?” (“Interstate Story—‘It Will’—‘It Won’t’: Taxpayers Plan Maps Way to Stop Route,” South Omaha Sun, 16 April 1959). The most outspoken citizens argued for the Interstate to bypass Omaha on its south side rather than run through the city itself.
Cold War and defense rhetoric also surfaced in taxpayers’ appeals. Alice Delaney, a nearby homeowner, decried the road because she believed it would only benefit “tourists” rather than the local “taxpayers [who] will be forcibly evicted from their homes,” declaring it Communist tactics in action!” (“Interstate Story—‘It Will’—‘It Won’t’: Taxpayers Plan Maps Way to Stop Route,” South Omaha Sun, 16 April 1959). Anti-freeway advocates in Omaha turned the Interstate’s pro-defense argument on its head by claiming it would hinder urban evacuation in case of a nuclear attack. Ralph Bremers, the former Taxpayers Plan chairman, told a crowd that he feared “the Interstate could become a ‘Chinese wall’ which because of its location could ‘trap’ many citizens in the event of enemy attack” (“Omaha Group Asks Change,” South Omaha Sun, 23 April 1959). Such claims raise questions whether some opponents were merely grasping for arguments against the freeway or if they actually presumed that freeways would lack on and off ramps.
Shortly after that public forum the Taxpayers Plan reorganized itself around opposition to the urban Interstate route. The Taxpayers Plan and supportive citizens in South Omaha and Sheelytown solicited funds for their efforts, collected more than 5,000 signatures opposing the route and hosted weekly protest meetings at Immaculate Conception Church where it outlined its agenda to crowds of as many as 500 listeners. Plan co-chairmen Fred Sorensen and Al Baker, and legal counsel Ralph Bremers, called for writing letters to and meeting with Governor Brooks, Vice-President Nixon, and Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy to urge a rerouting of the interstate. If Governor Brooks refused to reroute the expressway, Bremers argued, then the Taxpayers Plan would seek an injunction to land acquisition ("Interstate Story—‘It Will’—‘It Won’t’: Taxpayers Plan Maps Way to Stop Route," South Omaha Sun, 16 April 1959). The Taxpayers Plan organized a few public demonstrations, sending seventy Omahans to deliver their protests at Governor Brooks’ office in early May and brought a crowd of 200 to a city council meeting at the beginning of June. Ralph Bremers compared the Taxpayer Plan's fight to their previous opposition to the Omaha Plan: “They said we couldn’t beat the bond issues, but we did.”
As the first of many weekly meetings progressed, it appeared that the group’s support was divided even within threatened neighborhoods. An Omaha World-Herald survey of Sheelytown residents conducted from Grover to Leavenworth Streets along north 34th Street claimed that many homeowners were actually resigned to freeway construction and hesitant to battle the highway. Many indicated reluctant support for the Interstate as long as the interstate was not financed primarily through local tax dollars. Quoting more than twenty people surveyed, the report concluded that many of those affected “recognized the need for the road” while some even welcomed payment for their property to move out of the “old” and “declining neighborhood” in exchange for what they consider better homes. In reference to the Taxpayers Plan and other citizens opposed to the freeway, the article described only a “small core” of “fighting-mad people willing to take almost any course to block the superhighway” (“Residents in Interstate Pathway ‘in Suspense’: Survey Shows Most Ready to Go Along,” Omaha World-Herald, 12 April 1959).
It can be said that the Taxpayers Plan's leadership may have misunderstood the desires of those who attended their meetings and assumed they supported their opposition efforts outright. Plan organizers may have conflated individuals' attendance as support rather than homeowners’ simple desire to learn concrete timelines to move. This was evident at an April meeting where Ralph Bremers, asserting that the people surveyed in the World-Herald study “weren’t quoted the way they felt,” asked for misquoted or misrepresented individuals in the crowd of 500 to stand up. No one stood. In response to the World-Herald, the Taxpayers Plan conducted their own survey of 200 people and claimed that ninety-two percent of those surveyed favored a bypass route around the city ("Plan Outlined at Interstate Protest Meet: 500 Hear Declaration: ‘In Fight to Stay’," Omaha World-Herald, 14 April 1959). Although many Omahans may have preferred an alternate route south of town, the Taxpayers Plan ignored many of those in the Interstate’s path who believed that construction was certain and that the highway was a necessity for the larger community. Some Omahans also resented Scottsbluff Senator Terry Carpenter's outspoken criticism for his “projection into an Omaha affair” and saw his advocacy as an effort to shift federal highway funds away from Omaha in favor of rural Nebraska (“Residents in Interstate Pathway 'in Suspense'—Survey Shows Most Ready to Go Along—But Canvass Finds Some Are Bitter,” Omaha World-Herald, 12 April 1959).
Although the Taxpayers Plan continued to hold weekly mass meetings through May and June, the meetings made little discernable impact on government officials who reiterated that plans had been underway for three years, required hearings had already been held, and that the city’s industrial needs required the route (“Interstate Foes Visit City Hall,” South Omaha Sun, 4 June 1959). In mid-May the Highway Department opened a relocation office to begin informing citizens of expected property acquisition timelines and appraisers began moving through the neighborhood.
By summer the Taxpayers Plan’s local and state efforts stalled through the remainder of 1959. With few alternatives, the Taxpayers Plan turned to the federal level and urged Omaha Congressman Glenn Cunningham to conduct an investigation into the interstate planning process ("Top Priority Asked for Interstate Probe," Omaha-World Herald, 23 October 1959). The potential investigation, which never materialized, claimed that inadequate public notice was given of the federally required public hearing in January, 1958. While it is likely that notices of the public hearing was inadequately distributed throughout the community, particularly among those who stood to be most affected, the State Highway Department fulfilled its only federally-mandated public hearing. It would not be until 1968 that the Department of Transportation required new procedures that required at least two public hearings (Mohl, 680-681). By October 1959, the Taxpayers Plan pinned their hopes on a federal investigation halting the process in light of the state highway department preparing to begin its first property acquisitions.
Taxpayer Plan efforts markedly faded in late November of 1959 as the state acquired its first properties for Interstate-480 ("Interstate 3 Sites Bought," Omaha World-Herald, 29 November 1959). From mid-December through early-August, 1960, the Omaha World-Herald reported each week of dozens of homeowners signing their property over to state officials. By the summer of 1960, hundreds of families had sold their homes and the state began clearing land. The Taxpayer Plan held less frequent meetings and its membership, while still formally opposed to construction, recognized that their efforts had at most, if at all, momentarily delayed interstate construction. “To be honest with you,” an anonymous Plan member told The Sun, “it looks as though we have gone as far as we can. And I think we did a pretty good job in delaying the Interstate. It would have been a reality if it were not for our efforts” (“Taxpayers Plan Hasn’t Given Up to Interstate,” South Omaha Sun, 14 July 1960).
The Taxpayers Plan's efforts, like other early movements, were unsuccessful. Interstate developments through 1957 and 1958 appeared to be overshadowed by the uproar over urban renewal and the Omaha Plan. The Taxpayers Plan had been an extremely vocal group, but it failed to create cross-city, cross-class coalitions beyond Omaha’s old white-ethnic neighborhoods directly in the path of the Interstate's right of way. Moreover, the Taxpayers Plan’s opposition formed late in the Interstate’s planning process and confronted affected homeowners with diverse perspectives ranging from stubborn reluctance and resignation, to those eager to move to newer neighborhoods.
The Taxpayers Plan also received little support within the broader public discourse. The Omaha World-Herald was unsympathetic to the opposition’s demands, providing ample coverage to city planners and state highway officials who had learned from the failure of the 1958 Omaha Plan to articulate the Interstate's essentialness and federal-financing to the broader community. The weekly South Omaha Sun, while providing close coverage of interstate and opposition developments, remained noncommittal toward the Taxpayers Plan at best and eventually paid less attention to their increasingly ineffective and polarizing opposition.
In the end, the Taxpayers Plan could not match the speed that state and city planners moved with Interstate construction. Land acquisition and construction began in less than a year from the first mass informational meeting held at Immaculate Conception Church. Opposition to massive public projects had been successful against the $68 million Omaha Plan. Unlike the Omaha Plan, which would have shoulder much of its expense on Omaha taxpayers, similar financial objections to the Interstate's enormous construction and land acquisition costs were mitigated by substantial federal funding. Although the Plan also faced defeat over popular objections to eminent domain, urban freeways affected a comparably smaller degree of territory. Moreover, urban renewal provisions under the Omaha Plan required a popular vote—a vote which Omahans would not be privileged to hold on the Interstate Highway.