The following article was originally published in the Ohio Capital Journal and published on News5Cleveland.com under a content-sharing agreement.
Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman has announced a bid to override Gov. Mike DeWine’s property tax vetoes. The House plans to take up three of the governor’s vetoes in a July 21 session, but the notice leaves the door open for more overrides down the line.
Ohio House lawmakers and advocates calling for property tax reform howled at DeWine’s decision to strike out provisions aimed at lowering tax bills by taking target at local levies.
The governor cut a measure giving county officials authority to roll back voted levies as well as changes to the way levies get calculated. He also vetoed limits on the kind of levies school districts can put on the ballot and the amount of cash districts can carry over year-to-year.
The House wants to override all but the carryover provision.
In a press conference outlining his vetoes DeWine argued imposing those changes, “all of them at once on our local schools, would create a huge, huge problem.”
DeWine insisted the vetoes don’t “lessen our obligation” to deal with rising property taxes, and he proposed a new working group to come up with recommendations.
That suggestion apparently rung hollow for many Republican lawmakers.
The General Assembly stood up a joint committee just last year that held several hearings and issued a report with more than 20 recommendations. On social media, state Rep. Tex Fischer, R-Boardman, argued “We do NOT NEED A WORKING GROUP. We need ACTION.”
Outside of the planned override vote, Fischer and state Rep. Beth Lear, R-Delaware, want to put a measure on the ballot capping property taxes.
Ohio Democrats, meanwhile, criticized the GOP for complaining about property taxes after advancing provisions to fund a new NFL stadium and deliver tax cuts that benefits the state’s highest earners.
“Governor DeWine saw through the sham and knew these provisions would hurt our public schools and local governments, and that’s why he vetoed several of them,” Minority Leader Dani Isaacsohn said.
“If Republicans were serious about real property tax relief they wouldn’t pass the buck,” he added. “They would use this session to vote on bipartisan, commonsense solutions that would make a real difference.”
What are lawmakers trying to override?
DeWine scrapped a budget measure granting new authority to county budget commissions — three-member panels made up of the local auditor, treasurer, and prosecutor. In particular, the governor opposed changes allowing commissioners to reduce voter-approved levies.
State lawmakers also wanted to restrict what kinds of levies school districts can get on the ballot in the first place.
Replacement levies, fixed-sum or substitute emergency levies, and combined income and property tax levies would all be prohibited under the state budget. DeWine argued those measures are “important tools” for school districts and vetoed the provision.
The governor also turned down a change to the way school district millage gets calculated.
It’s complicated.
Ohio’s constitution grants jurisdictions the authority to levy up to 10 mills in property taxes. A mill is one thousandth of a dollar, so 10 mills is 1% of a property’s value. Anything beyond that 10-mill limit needs voter approval.
Last year in Columbus, for instance, a typical residential homeowner saw an effective rate of about 49.6 mills.
Naturally, as property values rise, the same millage brings in more money. So, in the 1970s Ohio lawmakers created a kind of brake on those kinds of increases. They created a reduction factor bringing down rates, so homeowners’ bills held steady.
Importantly, those reductions can’t bring a school district’s tax rates below 20 mills. If property values rise high enough, the rates can’t get reduced any further.
School districts found a work around in certain levies that aren’t subject to the reduction factor. The state budget would’ve required those additional levies to be counted as part of the 20-mill floor. The change would mean some districts that were previously at the floor would have room for additional reductions.
DeWine rejected that change.
Outside reactions
Tom Zaino, a former state tax commissioner who heads up the Ohio Taxpayer Protection Coalition, lobbied lawmakers for changes to the 20-mill floor calculation.
He said the budget “goes a very long way in addressing” what his group was seeking. But Zaino insisted they’re not trying to undercut school districts’ revenue, but they want to ensure those levies are subject to reductions, not growing with property values.
“It is only tamping down inflationary growth in revenues,” he argued, “and they still can go back to the voters. None of their current revenues go away or anything like that. So, they can still go back to the voters and get more revenue if they can justify that with the voters.”
Zaino admitted some discomfort with county budget commissions rolling back voted levies — DeWine’s justification for a different veto — but argued an agency could file an appeal with the Board of Tax Appeals.
Zaino noted his coalition, which has the backing of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and Ohio Realtors, would like to see lawmakers override all four of the governor’s property tax vetoes.
That includes a provision capping at 40% of operating revenue the cash reserves districts can carry into the following year.
Donovan O’Neil, who leads Americans for Prosperity Ohio, said the planned override vote shows lawmakers “commitment” to taxpayers.
“These commonsense reforms were crafted to stop the unchecked growth of property taxes and restore a stronger voice for voters,” he said. “Lawmakers are doing the right thing by fighting to get them back on the books.”
But Scott DiMauro thinks the override effort is misguided. The high school social studies teacher and president of the Ohio Education Association argued the state budget put public schools in a massive funding hole.
“What the governor did was just help mitigate the damage,” he said. “Not only was the legislature underfunding schools in terms of state funding, they were also trying to solve their property tax problem on the backs of Ohio’s public school students.”
He argued the provisions DeWine vetoed were “half baked” and that it’s “disappointing” some lawmakers in the majority are eager to double down on bad policy.
“We hope that common sense will prevail,” he said, “and this veto override effort will fail.”
