Rep. David Thomas, the former Ashtabula County auditor who has been picked by Republican leadership to spearhead property tax reform, said when he introduced his bill the tax system is “broken.”
“The counties are able to have a sales tax, our cities and our villages and our schools are able to have an income tax and our question back is ultimately, if you have other ways to provide services, why place it all on the property owner, who for the last five years has been crying out that enough is enough and they’re tapped out,” Thomas said.
He said the $3.5 billion will save “the average Ohioan” $850 on their property tax bill, “if they own a home with the average value.”
County Auditor Nancy Nix did a rough calculation — there are many variables involved — on the impact of erasing all of the inside millage countywide and replacing it with sales tax. The inside millage for the county, schools, cities and villages amounts to around roughly $118 million and the sales tax rate would need to increase from 6.5% to 8%. Voters would have to approve the rate hike.
Commissioner Don Dixon told the Journal-News if the measure passes, it would be devastating for the local governments trying to provide vital services.
“Making the counties put the sales tax on because the state wants to get out of the target zone, getting their ass handed to them because they’ve done nothing to fix it permanently just doesn’t make any sense,” Dixon said. “It’s too much, too fast, not enough thought, don’t know what the repercussions are going to be.”
This week, he and his fellow commissioners urged their residents and other elected officials to deluge state lawmakers representing the county with phone calls protesting the reform bill.
“Tell our residents call your state reps, call your state senators call anybody,” Dixon said. “We have to raise the red flag and say this is crazy, crazy crazy,” Dixon said and later added. “Because if this thing comes down, it puts more pressure on our budget, we’ve already put a hiring freeze on through ‘26. We had no idea this was coming, we have to be prepared and we are prepared but we’re not prepared for a tsunami like this, that just drains cash from the county.”
The county is represented in Columbus by state representatives Rodney Creech, Jennifer Gross, Thomas Hall, Diane Mullins and Sen. George Lang. Their contact information can be found online at legislature.ohio.gov under the “legislators” tab.
Commissioner T.C. Rogers said the state lawmakers are touting $2 billion they pay in tax rollbacks and Homestead exemptions, but those provisions have been around for decades; they are nothing new.
He noted when pandemic-induced property value explosions hit two years ago, Butler County took steps to lessen the blow. Nix issued a challenge to all taxing bodies in 2023 asking them to forgo the windfall funds they received from bloated property values.
The commissioners and officials in Middletown and Seven Mile and Fairfield, Liberty and West Chester townships accepted the challenge saving taxpayers $8 million combined.
About HB 335 Rogers said, “I don’t feel that’s an answer, I feel that’s a milquetoast response to a much larger problem.”
Commissioner Cindy Carpenter harkened back to two years ago when county officials here were the first to warn lawmakers that property values were exploding and they needed to act. They proposed a three-year average for valuing property that would have given the state three years to fix the problem for good.
Early estimates were values would jump 42% and the three-year average would drop it to 25%. The final average was 34%.
“There was a solution that came forward a couple years ago, our county was actively involved in that,” she said. “This bill they don’t address that at all, in fact they come up with ways to ding commissioners with restrictions on using inside millage.”
Thomas told the Journal-News he has gotten a mixed reaction to the bill, which was scheduled for a first hearing in the House Ways and Means Committee. He insists these measures are critical.
“The taxpayers are rising up, they’re rising up against the excessive taxation and the spikes in Property Taxes over the last 5 years. I believe and our taxpayers want a say over these increases and this amount of property tax,” Thomas said. “We need to change how we operate to better respond to the taxpayer’s needs. Relying on property taxes for the majority funding is not right.”
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