The largest slice of that money is given to families with children already enrolled in private schools, not parents seeking to transfer their children out of (purportedly) underperforming public schools.
True, in 2002 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld 5-4 a pilot voucher program the General Assembly devised in mid-1995 – the Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program – for children who live inside what’s now the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.
As a practical matter, Ohio’s statewide private school vouchers are subsidies for voters – many in Republican suburbs – who can already afford private school tuition. Meanwhile, the General Assembly fiddle-faddles over the skyrocketing property taxes (by dollar amount, roughly 70% of which fund public school) crushing Ohio homeowners.
The legislature’s dawdling over real-estate taxes, while lavishing Ohioans’ state tax payments on private schools, virtually invites a voter-signature-initiated ballot issue that’d slam a meat-axe into Ohio’s property tax set-up. Ohioans who remember California’s 1978 Proposition 13 – the Jarvis-Gann tax-cut initiative – knows what an Ohio anti-tax ballot issue could do.
The Ohio Constitution requires the legislature to “secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state,” and forbids any “religious or other sect, or sects, [to] ever have any exclusive right to, or control of, any part of the school funds of this state.”
Some pro-voucher hairsplitters try to argue “common schools” aren’t the same as “public schools.” If so, that’d sluice taxpayers’ money away from public schools, subject to elected, taxpayer-accountable school boards, toward private, very private, schools
That “common” vs. “public” argument was refuted long ago by Ohio’s then-attorney general, future Gov. John W. Bricker, an ultra-conservative Columbus Republican. In 1933, Bricker ruled “state school funds could be used only ‘for the establishment or maintenance of common or public schools.’ ” Such schools, Bricker added, “ ‘were those popularly referred to as synonymous with the term “common schools” as used in the state constitution.’ ”
House Speaker Matt Huffman, a Lima Republican, ardently supports vouchers, as does Gov. Mike DeWine. That suggests mis-spending (to use a polite word) of taxpayers’ money that should go to public schools will continue unless judges step up. But given the Ohio Supreme Court’s ... deference ... to fellow Republicans in the General Assembly, that’s a reach.
---
Upper Arlington tech zillionaire, Cincinnati-born Vivek Ramaswamy, age 39, announced something last week many Ohioans already knew – he’s running for governor in 2026’s Republican primary.
Cincinnati-born Ramaswamy was immediately endorsed for governor by Vladimir Putin’s American bestie, President Trump. (Other Republicans running for governor: Attorney General David Yost, of Columbus, and Heather Brazell-Hill, of Morgan County’s Malta.)
Ramaswamy earned a sterling academic record – a Harvard bachelor’s degree, a Yale law degree – and earlier was class valedictorian at the Jesuits’ all-male Cincinnati high school, St. Xavier.
Among other promises, Ramaswamy said that if he’s elected governor, he’d repeal Ohio’s state income tax and local real-estate taxes.
For calendar year 2024 collections, local governments took in about $16 billion in taxes on Ohio residential and agricultural real estate. And for the fiscal year ending June 30, Ohio budget analysts estimate state income-tax collections will total about $10 billion. Combined, local real-estate and the state income tax: About $26 billion a year. How would a Gov. Ramaswamy replace those lost revenues? With bake sales?
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.
About the Author