Then, too, the 2023-24 bipartisan General Assembly study group, the Joint Committee on Property Tax Review and Reform, went home in December without reaching any consensus on easing property tax pressure on homeowners.
So: If Citizens for Property Tax Reform, a “grass-roots citizens organization” led by Keith Davey, a Lakewood Republican, can gather petition signatures from at least 413,487 registered voters statewide, Ohioans would get a chance to vote “yes” or “no” on this plain-English proposal:
“[Proposed] Article XII. Section 14.
“(A) No real property shall be taxed, and no law shall impose any taxes on real property.
“(B) No other provision of the Constitution shall impose any taxes on real property.
“(C) As used in this Section, ‘real property’ includes land, all growing crops, all buildings, all structures, and all improvements permanently attached to land.
If voters agreed, then, for example, the $19.5 billion in property taxes paid by Ohio homeowners and other real-estate owners in 2022 (an all-time high) would vanish.
And neither the state nor any locality would ever be allowed to collect any real-estate taxes, which Ohio first imposed 200 years ago, in 1825.
Forbidding real estate taxes would be a disaster for Ohio’s local governments, local services (such as development disabilities and mental health boards, and public libraries). And it would devastate public schools.
Why? Because the LSC also reports that about 60% of all property tax money collected in Ohio helps fund public schools.
Where would school boards, etc., make up that tax money? Even expanding Ohio’s 5.75% statewide sales tax to groceries (rough estimate of yearly statewide sales: $30 billion) would produce only about $1.73 billion a year in revenue. Besides, Ohioans, in a 1936 voter-initiated ballot issue forbade forbidden charging sales taxes on groceries.
Despite ifs and buts, House Bill 920 of 1976 does limit much property-tax growth. As cleveland.com explained, “As property values go up, the effective millage rates of [voted] levies generally go down to bring in the same amount of money that voters [had originally] approved.” (There are exceptions. LSC reports HB 920 doesn’t apply to all levies.)
Still, HB 920 is so complex it recalls something the English diplomat Palmerston said about a boundary dispute only three people had ever understood: One was dead. The second went mad. The third, Palmerston, couldn’t remember any details.
Gobbledygook aside, here’s HB 920’s bottom line: Schools and other Ohio property-taxing units entities must repeatedly ask taxpayers for more money when inflation drives up costs.
So, as Ohio school-finance expert Howard Fleeter told the property-tax study committee, “Since 1984 there have been a total of 15,922 school operating and capital levies placed on the [Ohio] ballot ... an average of 398 school levies per year, with an overall average passage rate of 54.9%.” He added, “Ohio votes far more often on school levies than anywhere else in the nation.”
Meanwhile, the General Assembly, rather than debate property taxes, focuses on, say, abortion and sexual identities, though voters’ wallets and checkbooks, already threatened by the White House’s voodoo economics, want spiraling property taxes addressed. Now.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. You can reach him at tsuddes@gmail.com.
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