Leveraging market forces

It has been a while since anything out of the Governor’s Office invited genuine optimism, but yesterday brought welcome news. Gov. Jim Pillen announced that Nebraska will participate in the next round of the federal Opportunity Zone program, a tool designed to direct private investment into communities that have struggled to attract it. “Opportunity Zones are powerful tools that help create jobs and growth in areas that need new investment,” the governor said. “We can help revitalize neighborhoods and build new, long-lasting opportunities – which are good for taxpayers across our state and great for Nebraska’s economic growth too.”

This is welcome news for anyone who still believes, as Adam Smith did, that the steadying hand of private enterprise can accomplish what government cannot.

The modern Opportunity Zone program traces its lineage to the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, in which Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina embedded a deceptively simple idea: allow investors to defer or reduce capital gains taxes if they reinvest those dollars into distressed census tracts through certified funds.

Scott, who rose from modest circumstances to the Senate, has long argued that private capital—properly incentivized—can do more for long-neglected neighborhoods than layers of bureaucracy and dependency on entitlements ever could. The current administration has kept the program’s structure intact while strengthening transparency and reporting requirements. In this respect, the tool remains recognizably Scott’s creation, but is refined for an era that expects measurable outcomes and greater accountability.

The program’s intellectual roots extend back to the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Congressman Jack Kemp championed the concept of “enterprise zones.” Kemp believed that cities hollowed out by economic change could be revived not through heavier federal spending but through lighter tax and regulatory burdens that would invite entrepreneurs to take risks and hire locally. Although Congress never adopted Kemp’s proposals wholesale, pieces of his vision filtered through successive administrations and eventually resurfaced in Scott’s Opportunity Zones. What now exists is the most complete expression of that lineage—a market-driven framework designed to encourage investment where it has historically been absent.

Whether McCook qualifies for such incentives remains to be seen. Opportunity Zone eligibility is determined by census-tract poverty and income data. Updated American Community Survey data are expected to be released today, with additional federal guidance expected in early 2026.

Charlie and Amanda at the EDC will, no doubt, sift through the fine print on our behalf when today’s data is released. It is entirely possible that McCook will fall outside the boundaries of what Congress intended, and that is fine. Rural communities often do not meet the statistical thresholds, nor were these zones primarily designed for places that already possess a functioning economic base.

The greater opportunity lies elsewhere. This program is, at its core, a chance for the political right to demonstrate the practical strength of free-market solutions in Nebraska’s Second Congressional District—an area where Republicans must win not only by tinkering with election rules, but by earning trust.

If conservatives want to demonstrate they can compete—and win—without changing the rules or shifting the goalposts, this is the place to start. Free-market advocates have championed these ideas for four decades. Now comes the chance to see whether they work as intended, once given room to run: that economic renewal begins when government steps back just enough to let capital, creativity, and local ambition return to communities that have gone without for too long.