Montgomery County Auditor Karl Keith told this media outlet “it was a surprise.”
“Given all the talk about property tax relief being a high priority at the state level and throughout Ohio I think those of us who watch these things were expecting something to be in the governor’s budget about property tax relief. It does effect the state’s budget whatever’s done, if relief is done in some form or fashion,” Keith said.
Many taxpayers took a big hit last year following the 2023 triennial update when property values soared by an average 37% in Butler County, 34% in Montgomery County and 30% in Greene County. Warren County underwent the sexennial reappraisal last year and the average increase is 27%.
Budget process
When asked by this media outlet why there are no property tax reform measures in his executive budget, DeWine’s press secretary Dan Tierney said, “We continue to work on this issue with the General Assembly. Property taxes generally do not support state revenues, although we are not opposed to this being addressed during the budget process.”
Republican Sen. Bill Blessing from Colerain Twp., who chairs the powerful Ways and Means Committee and co-chaired the special tax reform committee said this is kind of par for the course.
“That’s kind of unsurprising,” he said. I think he’s going to defer to the General Assembly, he has done that in the past.”
During a House Finance Committee last week Rep. Bride Rose Sweeney, D-Cleveland, asked the state’s budget director why property tax reforms are “missing” in the budget at this point, since this is “the No. 1 issue facing Ohioans is the property tax increases that have been historic.”
“You don’t often get such a resounding mandate from the people to fix this,“ she said.
Office of Budget and Management Director Kimberly Murnieks had highlighted the $108 billion proposed budget for this year — it jumps to $110 billion next year — earlier in the meeting.
“One of the top 10 general fund line items in the state budget is property tax reimbursements to local governments,” she said. “And that continues to be a priority for all of us. We look forward to continuing to work with the General Assembly as we address this challenging issue. We continue to support property tax reimbursements.”
The state reimburses local governments and schools for property tax breaks like the homestead exemption for some homeowners — age and income are a couple qualifiers — allowing them to reduce the taxable value of their home.
House Speaker Matt Huffman, R-Lima, said last week that he intends to keep large-scale property tax reform out of the budget. He’d rather address it in single-topic bills.
“This problem with property taxes has been created over decades, much like other problems that we have in some other issues,” Huffman said. “The concept is, we’re going to peel the onion apart a little bit at a time in a single issue, a single bill. And hopefully that can go from the House over to the Senate and we can have some real clarity on that issue.”
New proposal
Freshman Rep. David Thomas, R-Jefferson, the former Ashtabula County auditor, has been selected by the majority caucus to “spearhead” wide-reaching, comprehensive property tax reform legislation. He is also vice-chair of the Ways and Means Committee.
He criticized some of the bills introduced during the previous General Assembly.
“Frankly many of the bills last year that were introduced were purely ‘Hey I’m running for reelection I’ve got something on this but I don’t really know what I’m doing, I’ll just do a bill and say I’ve got a bill',” he told this news outlet.
He along with Rep. Jack Daniels, R-New Franklin, introduced the first new property tax reform offering last week, the Homestead and Owner Occupancy Overhaul Act.
Thomas said the bill “would fundamentally change how the homestead and owner occupancy credits are done and greatly increase relief to those eligible.”
In a nutshell the measure changes the exemption from reducing the value of a person’s home to a flat credit amount, “on average this new credit would double the amount of savings to property owners.” It also changes the 2.5% owner occupancy credit to a flat $750.
He said he has at least 10 bills pending that are “heavy, intense areas of policy focus on property taxes,” many identified by the previous special tax reform committee.
Previous efforts
Legislators created a Joint Committee on Property Tax Review and Reform in the previous state budget. It resulted in 21 recommendations for various ways the general assembly “should” act to address the problem but no favored fixes.
“It’s been much of a year taking testimony from us and a number of groups and organizations and at the end of day, at the end of year there is absolutely nothing, they didn’t recommend anything,” Keith said.
The legislature introduced 23 property tax relief bills over two years and only passed two, namely indexing the homestead exemption to inflation — which was done in the previous budget — and a small measure applying to surviving spouses of disabled veterans that may apply to only a couple hundred taxpayers statewide.
As of mid-week legislators had reintroduced six bills from the 135th General Assembly, including one of the most expensive, the Senate version of the “circuit breaker” income tax credit that would cost the state at least $816.9 million. The House submitted a pricier bill at $894.8 million which hasn’t resurfaced yet.
The County Auditors Association of Ohio was very involved with the tax reform committee, offering testimony during several hearings. They are advocating expanding the homestead exemption and owner occupancy credit; “capping the revenue growth on certain school levies to an inflationary index” and creating new tax relief programs aimed at protecting low-to-moderate income residents such as tax deferrals and the circuit breaker idea.
County auditors are currently touring the state raising awareness about property tax reform.
Newly named CAAO President Warren County Auditor Matt Nolan said they have an event scheduled in Clark County on Feb. 21 and are working on more. He said it is amazing that the public has been so “apathetic” so far and that’s part of the problem.
“We going to present our ideas with the hope people will talk to their legislators,” Nolan said. “You know legislators don’t listen to county auditors very much but I do think they’ll listen to their residents.”
Staff writer Avery Kreemer contributed to this report.
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