KIRTLAND HILLS, Ohio — A grassroots campaign to abolish property taxes in Ohio is gaining momentum, but supporters don’t have enough signatures yet to put the issue before voters in November.
So far, volunteers have collected 305,000 signatures — putting them almost halfway to their goal of 620,000 signatures by the end of June. There’s still a lot of work to do.
“We’re calling on all Ohioans to help us reach or surpass our goal,” Brian Massie, a leader of the effort and the co-founder of AxOHTax, said during a news conference Thursday afternoon.
Massie and other members of the campaign provided an update on their progress in an unusual setting — a replica of the Oval Office tucked inside a house in Lake County.
With some pageantry, Massie sat behind a copy of the president’s Resolute Desk to sign his own take on the Declaration of Independence.
“My message to our state legislators and to our governor: Can you hear us now?” he said. “It is no longer acceptable to accept the status quo. … We are no longer just going to take what you’re giving us. We expect meaningful reform.”
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To get their proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot, the group must submit more than 413,000 valid signatures to state election officials by July 1. They’ll need to gather hundreds of thousands of extras, though, since many signatures are likely to get thrown out for failing to meet Ohio’s rules. That’s common for ballot initiatives.
Massie said campaign leaders will evaluate where they’re at in mid-June and decide whether to risk turning in everything they’ve collected — or wait, focusing on 2027 instead.
“We will not stop until we get this amendment on the ballot,” he stressed.
So far, no state has placed a similar measure on the 2026 ballot, said Nicole Fox, a policy analyst at the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan research organization. And no state has scrapped property taxes, which fund schools, local governments, libraries, parks and more.
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In Ohio, property taxes bring in about $24 billion a year for basic, local services.
There’s no clear solution for replacing that money.
“It’s interesting,” said Massie, who suggested spending cuts and said it’s up to state lawmakers to figure out a fix. “People always say, ‘well, Brian, how are you going to replace the property tax dollars?’ My response to that is, ‘we’re not going to.’”
If we turned to sales taxes to fill the void, Ohioans could end up paying 18% to 20% on purchases, Gov. Mike DeWine said in February. That would be the highest sales-tax rate in the nation.
If communities turned to income taxes, Ohio’s average income-tax rate would be 12.59%, according to a recent Tax Foundation analysis.
“You’re talking California-level taxation,” Fox said.
But many homeowners are fed up, tired of watching their property-tax bills climb as property valuations rise and voters approve levies.
Massie and his fellow campaigners have no confidence in the General Assembly. They’re reflecting the outrage of elderly taxpayers, in particular, who feel overburdened and ignored.
“Any tax causing a citizen to become homeless is immoral,” Massie said.
Opponents say eliminating property taxes entirely — on all kinds of real estate — is a drastic move. Ohio governments would have to make deep cuts, sharply raise other types of taxes or do a combination of both things to have any chance at making up the difference.
“There’s a reason why this hasn’t been done already,” said Fox, who covers Ohio for the Tax Foundation and has been monitoring property-tax revolts in other states, too.
“There’s a lot of potential unintended consequences,” she said, pointing to possible ripple effects on business growth, hiring and consumer spending, if income-tax and sales-tax rates in Ohio jump dramatically compared with those in neighboring states.
State Sen. Jerry Cirino, a Kirtland Republican, watched Massie’s news conference online. He raised an eyebrow at the faux-Oval Office setting — and objected to many of the remarks from supporters of the tax-abolition movement.
“It would be devastating,” Cirino said of jettisoning property taxes. “It would put the state of Ohio in such a terrible position.”
Under pressure from constituents, and facing the prospect of a ballot initiative, the General Assembly approved a package of property-tax reforms late last year. But property owners won’t feel the impact of most of those changes until the second half of 2026.
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The reforms include some property-tax credits and rollbacks, tweaks to the calculus around school levies, adjustments to the state review process for county reappraisals and increases in oversight powers for county budget commissions. Lawmakers expect those updates to result in $3 billion worth of savings for homeowners over the next few years.
“We have probably at least a dozen property tax bills in play right now in the House and the Senate,” Cirino said during an interview Thursday afternoon. “So we will see some additional activity. But we bit off quite a bit last year. And I think people need to be patient and wait for some of the benefits to kick in.”
Critics view those changes as too little, too late. They want lawmakers to slash taxes — not just attempt to curb future property-tax hikes.
“If the state legislature doesn’t want property taxes abolished, they’d better cut ’em now,” said Lake County Commissioner John Plecnik, who stood by Massie’s side during the news conference. “And they better cut ’em big. Because we’re coming.”
Cirino said he hears people’s frustrations. But he’s not worried about the campaign.
“If it does magically get on the ballot, we have massive numbers of organizations, some that you would never in other areas see working together … working together to make sure this gets defeated,” he said.
He believes Massie and other volunteers have a huge hill of signatures to climb.
“If I were them,” Cirino said, “I would be targeting 800,000 to make sure that we met the qualifications.”
Michelle Jarboe is the business growth and development reporter at News 5 Cleveland. Follow her on X @MJarboe or email her at Michelle.Jarboe@wews.com.
