“I feel comfortable saying no property tax relief will pass this (General Assembly),” Blessing said.
There was a last ditch effort in the House last Tuesday when House Bill 274 — that doubles the homestead exemption for qualified taxpayers to $50,000 for those who have lived in their homes 20 years or more — passed by a vote of 78 to 11. Before the vote bill co-sponsor Rep. Adam Mathews, R-Lebanon, urged its passage: “No Ohioan who has lived their entire life in their home should be at risk of losing it to taxation.”
“Each of our offices has undoubtedly received dozens, hundreds, thousands of calls from constituents rightfully concerned about getting taxed out of their homes,” he said during the House session. “The House has sought to take meaningful steps over this General Assembly to address these rising tax costs, by passing H.B. 274 we take a step forward to provide continued relief to homeowners needing it most right now.”
The measure, which would cost the state around $190 million annually, passed the House Ways and Means Committee hours before it gained approval from the full House. Prior to that it had languished on a shelf since its last hearing ― its third — on Dec. 12, 2023. The bill must move to the Senate now for concurrence, but there is no time for it to go through the normal hearing process prior to the end of the 35th General Assembly.
Since it is a tax bill it would be referred to Senate Ways and Means but Blessing told this media outlet he isn’t planning any more meetings — unless the Senate president requests one — and the legislature is scheduled to recess for the year this week.
At the end of the two-year General Assembly the clock on legislation resets and all pending bills die.
‘Kicking the can’
Regardless of the timing, Blessing said he doesn’t like the bill anyway.
“They’re doing this to make it sound big when it’s really not,” he said and later added, “It’s not really providing all that much relief. I don’t think we’d pass that.”
Senate President Matt Huffman, R-Lima — who won a House seat in November and will be the next speaker — could not be reached for comment on whether he wants H.B. 274 vetted or not. However two legislators told this news outlet Huffman has said he plans to dig into tax reform next year.
Rep. Dan Troy, D-Willowick, told this news outlet: “I understand that the Senate president said he’d rather deal with this stuff next year, so we’re kicking the can down the road.”
Rep. Thomas Hall, R-Madison Twp., has introduced more tax reform legislation than anyone else and said he has had recent conversations with the incoming House speaker.
“He believes what I believe, the current property tax system is a failure to Ohioans and he believes that if we’re going to do something we’re going to do it right and overhaul the whole thing and not just try to piecemeal it,” Hall said. “I’m very, very optimistic to see how much progress we can make especially with the next budget, which will be here quicker than we know.”
Proposed bills
There have been 23 stand-alone bills introduced over the past two years but only two measures have become law, namely indexing the homestead exemption to inflation and a small measure for surviving spouses of disabled veterans.
The most expensive bills — each chamber introduced their own version — are modeled after the “circuit breaker” approach recommended by Policy Matters Ohio and gives tax breaks or credits to both homeowners and renters based on the percentage of their income they pay in property taxes.
The House version would cost an estimated $894.8 million in the first year — the thresholds mean more people would get the tax break — and the senate bill would cost approximately $819.6 million.
Hall said he believes no meaningful reform has come to fruition because when the two-year budget for this General Assembly was being negotiated, only 13 of 88 counties had been hit with huge, pandemic-induced property value hikes during the triennial update. Butler, Greene and Montgomery counties were among the few with average value increases of 37%, 30% and 34%, respectively. Warren County has undergone the sexennial reappraisal this year and the average increase is 27%.
“When we were trying to tackle the property tax issue in April, May of 2023 we were in budget negotiations at that time, during those negotiations property tax wasn’t a huge priority to anybody because we were one of the first counties to get hit with this,” Hall said. “Now I think it’s a whole different landscape because we’ve been through an election cycle and make no mistake about it, we were the only ones in the beginning but now every corner of the state has heard from their constituents on property tax.”
Properties statewide are reappraised every six years, and property values are updated every third year based on sales data and the shifts are reflected on tax bills the following the year.
Joint committee
The current budget didn’t have room for much actual tax relief but legislators did create a Joint Committee on Property Tax Review and Reform and that group held several meetings in the first half of the year, vetting various tax relief ideas. The special committee was charged with developing a plan by year’s end but it hasn’t materialized yet.
Blessing and House Ways and Means Committee Chair Bill Roemer, R-Richfield, are co-chairs and there are two other Republicans and two Democrats from each chamber on the committee. Blessing said he has sent the Senate’s recommendations to the House but “I don’t know what they’re doing with it at this point.” He said he believes there will be a report issued before year’s end as required.
Neither Roemer nor his staff responded to repeated questions regarding this issue in the past few months.
Blessing said he thinks the House is basically putting some of their recommendations into one of his bills — that passed the Senate and is in the House for concurrence — that addresses property tax procedures. The House approved seven amendments — Roemer noted some of them were suggestions the joint committee considered — to Senate Bill 186 on Dec. 10, but the chairman told the committee it wasn’t quite ripe for passage.
“We’re going to take some time on the bill because the Senate and the House are working very diligently to make sure that we have everything from a property tax perspective and overall tax perspective included,” Roemer said. “So we’re going to work for the next week to see if there’s any modifications, changes, additions that we need to include.”
As of late Monday morning S.B. 186 was not on the House Ways and Means Committee agenda and no Senate Ways and Means Committee meeting had been scheduled.
Troy, who recommended the creation of the joint tax reform committee and is a member, said he has an amendment he wants added to Senate Bill 186 that would extend the life of the temporary committee another year so they can truly finish their work. He said he is “frustrated” the group never had any priority setting meetings or discussions about the various suggestions amongst themselves.
“My idea and I’ve been in government a long time is we sit down and we look at everyone’s suggestions, we roll up our sleeves and say okay where can we reach consensus,” Troy said. “Maybe we can’t reach total consensus on this particular point, but we can reach some middle point or some compromise.”
Blessing said he would oppose extending the work group.
“We’ve heard enough at this point, I certainly have and I know where I want to go. As far as local governments and constituents, they very much want the relief but they don’t want schools and local governments to be impacted,” Blessing said. “I would definitely oppose extending this for another year.”
When asked why he thinks the legislature has failed to pass significant property tax reform, term-limited Majority Floor Leader Rep. Bill Seitz, R-Cincinnati — who is responsible for developing and implementing policy for the party — simply said, “apparently there has been an inability to agree between the House and the Senate on what should be done.”
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