The Blessing-Smith plan drew praise from Policy Matters Ohio, the nonprofit think-tank, as “a good deal for Ohioans.” SB 190, Policy Matters said, would “provide targeted tax relief to Ohioans with the most need. [It] would help renters and homeowners of all ages while holding schools, libraries, and local human services harmless.”
The Blessing-Smith plan would close some tax loopholes enjoyed by corporate pets of the General Assembly and create a property-tax “circuit-breaker.”
As Policy Matters’ Zach Schiller explained last year, “Like an electrical circuit-breaker, which prevents electric current from overloading, a property tax circuit-breaker reduces the load if property taxes are too high a share of [a homeowner’s] income.”
In contrast, the Ohio House wants to pass a lame-o “solution” that would, in effect, punish thrifty school districts by hammering down carryover cash balances some districts hold for rainy days. Brilliant.
The Blessing-Smith bill was introduced May 6 and referred to the Senate Finance Committee. Since then? Crickets.
To Senate Republicans’ credit, their proposed rewrite of Ohio’s pending state budget does tweak Ohio’s homestead exemption to help more homeowners, the Senate’s GOP caucus said: “The maximum income [level] ... would rise to $42,500, and the homestead deduction would climb from $29,700 to $32,000.” Both amounts would grow as inflation pushes up homesteads’ values.
Welcome though that is, it’s not the thorough property-tax reform that’d benefit most Ohio homeowners.
The legislature’s stall on property-tax reform isn’t lost on Ohioans. Consider an admittedly unscientific poll the Columbus Dispatch’s opinion pages published last week,
Among participants, 65% “blamed state lawmakers for the property tax crisis” and did not “blame school district leaders, overpaid employees, unions, business owners who get breaks or city/municipal leaders.”
Voters meanwhile are being asked, or will be, to sign petitions to add an amendment to the Ohio Constitution to abolish real-estate taxes and forbid any new real-estate taxes to be imposed. Given what seems like white-heat anger among homeowners, Ohioans might just say “yes.”
True, in the again, unscientific Dispatch poll, 49% of respondents said property taxes shouldn’t be eliminated; 43% said they should be cut; and 8% were unsure. Still, 45% said they thought Ohio would pass the amendment if it made the ballot, and 48% said they’d sign the Citizens for Property Tax Reform petition. (Backers must gather the signatures of at least 413,487 Ohio voters to qualify the measure for the ballot.)
Voters’ track-record for abolishing or cutting Ohio taxes isn’t great. In 1972, voters refused to repeal Ohio’s (then-new) income tax (passed by a Republican-run legislature in1971); only 31% voted “yes.”
In 1983, Ohioans rejected tandem “Stop Excessive Taxation” amendments skippered by the late Thomas A. Van Meter, an Ashland Republican and iconic Ohio conservative. One SET amendment would’ve made it harder for the legislature to raise taxes. The other would’ve repealed taxes passed or boosted after Democrat Richard F. Celeste became governor in January 1983.
Only in three counties – Lake, Marion and Warren – did voters OK both of the Stop Excessive Taxation initiatives. (Voters in Butler and Clark counties OK’d repeal of post-January 1983 taxes.)
Still, given legislative staling, today’s Ohio voters are ornery. An Ohio that has supported Donald Trump three times might well decide to abolish property taxes – unless the General Assembly stops goofing off.
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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