“The final bill will not mandate that there be a 2/3 vote to get a levy on the ballot,” House Finance Chair Brian Stewart, R-Ashville, confirmed with this outlet.
As drafted, the Senate’s budget proposal would have required a two-thirds vote from a local school board, instead of a simple majority, in order to get a property tax levy on the ballot. The vote threshold for passage at the ballot box would still be a simple majority.
The proposal was a lower-ticket item but one that raised concerns for school boards across the state.
“It’s maybe a second or third-tier issue, so we haven’t had a lot of conversation in our caucus about that one yet,” Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman, R-Lima, told reporters shortly before conference committee.
Huffman, an avid proponent of a 2023 failed constitutional amendment that would have made it harder to get citizen-initiated constitutional amendments onto the ballot and raise the threshold for passage to 60%, said he’d like to see what sort of precedent there is in Ohio for raising the threshold of a specific legislative body, like a school board.
“I think it’s worth discussion,” Huffman said.
Statehouse Democrats had been more closed off to the idea.
In Senate Finance Committee, Democrats voted to get rid of the provision entirely. Sen. Catherine Ingram, D-Cincinnati, framed the provision as one that “continues to erode local control.” Senate Republicans overruled her and her Democratic colleagues.
The idea was also met with push back from the Ohio School Boards Association, which encouraged lawmakers to remove the provision in conference committee.
“We are open to thoughtful reform but cannot support changes that reduce local control or hinder a district’s ability to serve its students,” the association said in a letter.
In the House, the Democrats’ budget expert and House Finance Committee ranking member Rep. Bride Rose Sweeney, D-Westlake, told this outlet that the 2/3 vote idea “is not actual property (tax) relief.”
For Sweeney, the property tax crisis is a result of under-investment from the state, not over-investment from local taxing jurisdictions like school boards.
“What the state has done in the past 10 years under Republican control is continue to pay less so that the locals have to pay more,” she said.
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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.
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