“We packed a lot into two months, as everybody knows it’s a very complicated subject, one that the average Ohioan I think struggles to understand, quite frankly policymakers struggle to understand,” co-chair Pat Tiberi said and later added. “At the end of the day hopefully some of these recommendations see the light of day and make it across the finish line and become law.”
The group is recommending 20 ways the property tax system can be improved and taxpayers can get much needed relief. They offered tweaks to three of the four items the governor vetoed in July in the biannual budget; weighed in and generally supported six pending legislative measures — contained in 14 separate bills — and 11 ideas address bits and pieces of the entire property tax system but won’t have an immediate impact on taxpayers’ bills.
It is now up to DeWine to choose which one of these recommendations he thinks the state should take on.
DeWine didn’t put guardrails on what the group could consider, but Tiberi, a former state legislator and congressman, said state legislators repeatedly told him “they’re not going to write a check for” any tax cuts.
Likely the easiest recommendations involve the items the legislature put in the budget and DeWine vetoed, they are:
- The budget called for limiting school district carryover to 40% of their expenses and requiring excess funds be refunded to taxpayers. The group upped it to 100% and included all taxing bodies. Refunds weren’t mentioned.
- The group made a number of changes on the issue of including emergency and substitute levies for school districts in the 20-mill floor calculation. They would rename these levies “fixed sum” levies and apply them to the 20-mill floor, but there would be a five-year “glide path” for existing levies to let entities get used to the new structure.
- Giving county budget commissions the authority to “unilaterally” reduce a levy passed by voters if they determine the funding isn’t necessary is okay, but they can’t touch levies until they have been in effect for five years for new and two years for renewals.
- The House overrode the governor’s veto of eliminating replacement and some other tax levies in July and the Senate concurred this week. The group said that measure was fine during discussions but the final report is silent on the measure.
As far as existing proposed bills go, House Bill 186 was a favorite of the group but it is currently under transformation in the House Ways and Means Committee. The original version limits increases in property tax revenues for school districts at the 20-mill floor to the three-year average rate of inflation.
The House Ways and Means Committee just approved an amendment that would give taxpayers a credit totaling roughly $1.7 billion over three years, effectively erasing the windfalls the 20-mill floor districts received as a result of the huge value hikes recent reevaluations produced.
The group was silent on the latest development, but recommended bill sponsors extend the inflation cap to inside millage for all taxing bodies. Rep. David Thomas, who Republican leadership tapped to spearhead property tax reform, has amended House Bill 335 — which would have erased all inside millage — to include a cap.
Other pending legislation the group supports involve circuit breaker-style income tax credits for the needy, expanding the homestead exemption, tax deferrals and credits for the elderly. These items all involve state contributions and they provided a menu of cost estimates — for a variety of options — in supporting documents.
During their last meeting on Tuesday the two Democrats on the committee, Dreihaus and Athens Mayor Steve Patterson, complained the circuit breaker and homestead expansion — a combined recommendation — were “relegated” to last on the list.
Former legislator Bill Seitz said nobody reading the list should pay attention to numeric order.
“There is no magic, recommendation one is not the recommendation that we think is the best one and 20 is not the one we think is the worst one,” he said.
“Many of us would like to be a little bit more robust with state-funded circuit breaker and or homestead exemptions and or a deferral program that would provide meaningful relief to those that we believe most need it, which we think is the senior citizen population principally. But the legislature has shown a reluctance to do any of that at least with their money. That’s why we were trying to walk that delicate balance.”
Some of the system-wide adjustments include ballot language reforms so voters better understand what they are approving, improving the penalty and interest rules for delinquent taxes, regular review of tax exemptions and encouraging the governor to convene another working group to study shared resources and consolidation of governments and schools.
Nolan told this media outlet their suggestions aren’t groundbreaking, the legislature could “without much difficulty have it all passed by the end of this year — we know it’s not going to happen — it’s all already out there sitting in front of them to do."
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