But leaders of DeWine’s working group Thursday reiterated that they‘re intent on building on the legislature’s ideas rather than ignoring them.
“I want to make it very clear: We are not trying to ignore the good work that has been done previously,” said Bill Seitz, a former longtime Republican lawmaker who co-chairs this new venture alongside Republican former U.S. Rep. Pat Tiberi.
Seitz touched on the fact that his study commission is beginning its work not long after a bipartisan legislative commission from both the Ohio House and Senate produced a list of 21 recommendations for property tax relief and reform.
“The recommendations were not quite reduced to concrete legislative form, but they were helpful. And I view part of our job (to be) building on what they had set forth,” he said.
In DeWine’s messaging around his property tax vetoes, he indicated that he isn’t willing to act on property tax measures that will have an outsized negative impact on local services, and he tasked this group with providing “meaningful property tax relief” while also ensuring “adequate” funding for local schools, fire, police, EMS, libraries, and developmental disability boards.
The need for an approach more nuanced than the legislature’s was reiterated by Tiberi on Thursday.
“This group’s job is to try to bring, quite frankly, diverse perspectives together,” he said. “We know that’s not easy, but we truly want to try and deliver some recommendations that are both actionable by the legislature, fiscally responsible, and publicly feasible as well.”
DeWine’s working group features three county commissioners, two county auditors, two public school superintendents, a county treasurer, a mayor, and two former lawmakers in Seitz and Tiberi.
“It is our objective to provide as much meaningful property tax relief as we can, particularly to those who need it most, and do it in a way that does not break the bank of the state of Ohio,” Seitz said. “We’re going to do all of that while being respectful, I hope, of the needs of our units of local government and of all other taxing jurisdictions in Ohio. Admittedly, there are a lot of them, but they’re providing services that folks care about.”
The group is keeping a flexible schedule, with talks of meeting publicly every other week, to come up with a set of recommendations by DeWine’s deadline of Sept. 30.
For more stories like this, sign up for our Ohio Politics newsletter. It’s free, curated, and delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday evening.
Avery Kreemer can be reached at 614-981-1422, on X, via email, or you can drop him a comment/tip with the survey below.
About the Author
