Ohio has more than 600 school districts in a state with 88 counties. Each one has its own superintendent, treasurer, central office and elected board before a single dollar reaches a classroom. You do not need a Ph.D. in public finance to see the problem. One district per county would still give us local control, but it would pull tens of millions of dollars out of overhead and put it into teachers and kids instead of into offices and titles.
Look at Jefferson Twp. It runs a K to 12 system for 250 students. You need a principal, that’s it. Multiply that across Ohio and levies become inevitable. Every tiny district pays for an administration, transportation, maintenance and technology stack. A new mandate does not hit one system, it hits hundreds. Homeowners are told to “support our schools” then discover they are mostly supporting a bunch of folks playing at school leadership.
Ohio is full of small villages and townships that function less like noble examples of local self-government and more like banana republics with letterhead. There are more than 2,200 townships and municipalities stuffed inside 88 counties. Many have part time elected officials and a few administrators, but they still generate full time budgets, legal expenses and debt.
Do we really need a mayor and council in every tiny village that can afford to pay a lawyer thousands of dollars a month to clean up its mistakes? New Lebanon anybody? Do we really need “urban townships” like Miami Twp. that are larger than most cities in their county, that operate like cities when it is convenient, but still sit outside a coherent metro government? When they get sued and lose, as Miami Twp. did in a $45 million judgement, the bill still lands on taxpayers.
Then there is the alphabet soup of quasi-governmental slush funds. Educational Service Centers, downtown partnerships, development coalitions, regional planning councils, park districts, county social service agencies, public health departments and more (JobsOhio anyone?). Many do useful work. Taken together they are a maze of boards, executives and budgets that are very hard for communities to oversee. If you built a private company with this much overhead, investors would call it bloated. In Ohio we like to call it “economic development” and stick taxpayers with the bill.
Our property tax system treats homeowners very differently from other asset holders. If your stock portfolio doubles, you don’t get a tax bill just because the market moved. You pay when you sell. With a home in Ohio, government effectively taxes you on what your neighbor did. Reassessments turn unrealized housing gains into real annual bills, even if the increase is driven by your neighbor’s remodel or a hot market, not anything you did.
For seniors on fixed incomes and working families who bought modest homes years ago, this is not an accounting curiosity. It is the difference between staying in place and being forced out. When they can’t pay, the sheriff arrives. In too many counties the sheriff is the number one real estate broker, without a Realtor’s license, transferring homes at auction because tax bills have no connection to your investment.
If you want lower taxes and better schools, stop listening to politicians who whine about the latest levy or valuation. The honest solution is twofold. First, stop taxing homeowners on phantom gains. Anchor property tax assessments to what people actually paid for their homes, plus the value of improvements they choose to make. If a community wants more revenue, it should have to vote openly on rates, not quietly benefit from appraisal spikes that force people out of their homes without a single ballot cast.
Second, straighten the foundation we built all this on. That means fewer jurisdictions, not more. One school district per county instead of hundreds. One integrated metro uni-gov in places like Montgomery County instead of a checkerboard of cities, townships and authorities that can barely share a 911 system. Rural Ohio is different from urban Ohio and deserves structures suited to it, but the basic principle should be the same. Clear lines of responsibility. Enough scale to deliver services efficiently. No more tiny fiefdoms whose mistakes land on someone else’s tax bill. It is also time to redraw the county lines to match the sprawl. The last change to an Ohio county boundary was in 1888. We have been paying for a 19th century map ever since.
If we really want tax relief and better schools, the path is obvious. Fewer overlapping governments. Smarter, fairer property tax rules. A statewide tax distribution system based on needs. A modern map for a modern state. The rest is noise from lousy carpenters.
Esrati is a community activist who is running for Congress in Ohio 10 district.