The Ohio General Assembly’s real priorities: Lickety-split, the legislature tucked into the state’s operating budget a $600 million handout to help the NFL’s Browns abandon Cleveland by building a new stadium in suburban Brook Park, and Republican Gov. Mike DeWine readily signed off on that. (Coincidentally, the governor and his family own North Carolina’s Asheville Tourists, a Minor League Baseball affiliate of the Houston Astros.)
Meanwhile, after more than 18 months of hemming-and-hawing over the homeowners’ tax revolt sweeping the state like a prairie fire from Lake Erie to the Ohio, Ohio’s House – but not, so far, the Senate – passed legislation to address to some degree homeowners’ crushing school-levy burdens.
Key reason for the Statehouse wake-up: The possibility fed-up voters may completely ban real-estate taxes altogether via a constitutional amendment that may reach November 2026’s statewide ballot.
Left unaddressed were the real reasons school-levy costs are busting homeowners’ budgets.
Reason One: The state is paying a smaller and smaller percentage of public-school costs, requiring homeowners to pay a larger percentage.
Reason Two: The state is sluicing more and more taxpayer money to nonpublic, often religious schools, which flagrantly violates the Ohio Constitution, as Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Jaiza Page ruled in June. The state constitution forbids a “religious or other sect, or sects, [to] ever have any exclusive right to, or control of, any part of the school funds of this state.”
It’s hard to parse General Assembly Republicans’ disrespect for public schools, given that almost all Ohio legislators graduated from them. (Maybe they got too many detentions.)
But a real-world possibility for GOP disdain for public schools: Many public-school teachers in Ohio, and many other school employees (bus drivers, secretaries, etc.), are union members. And unions are generally pro-Democratic because of their un-American belief that working people’s wages should rise, not fall.
According to the National Education Association, the average salary for an Ohio teacher this year is $68,236, 22nd among the states.
The NEA’s Ohio affiliate represents about 120,000 Ohio teachers and allied professionals, including the Columbus and Dayton Education associations. The Ohio Federation of Teachers represents about 20,000 Ohio teachers and allied professionals, among them Cleveland Teachers Union members.
Early opinions on the usefulness, or not, of the two Ohio House-passed property tax measures – Substitute House Bill 186 (introduced March 19, passed last week, 73-23, the omnibus property tax bill), and Substitute House Bill 335 (introduced June 4, passed last week 71-24, boosting the power of Ohio’s 88 otherwise obscure County Budget Commissions) – were low-key, except among the Republican cheerleaders who applaud virtually anything that they and their caucus leader, House Speaker Matt Huffman, of Lima, do.
The Ohio House Democrats voting “yes” on both property tax bills were Reps. Sean Brennan, of Parma; Rachel Baker, of Cincinnati; Karen Brownlee, of suburban Cincinnati; Joseph Miller, of Amherst; Mark Sigrist, of Grove City; Bride Rose Sweeney, of Westlake; and Daniel P. Troy, of Willowick.
Among the House Democrats voting “yes” on HB 186 only – the omnibus property tax “reform” – was Rep. Allison Russo, of Upper Arlington, who is seeking Democrats’ nomination for Ohio secretary of state. In contrast, the House’s Democratic minority leader, Rep. Dani Isaacsohn, of Cincinnati, voted “no” on both property tax bills.
The point of Republican’ Statehouse exercise was apparently to be seen as doing something about the property tax mess without in fact doing all that much.
Thomas Suddes
Thomas Suddes
If the central problem is, as it’s always been, constitutionally fair state funding for local public schools without bankrupting homeowners, there are two readily available General Assembly solutions.
One is to stop (unconstitutionally) handing taxpayers’ money to religious and other nonpublic schools. The other is for legislators to undo their brazenly broken promise to fully fund the Cupp-Patterson Fair School Funding Plan, devised by then-Senate President Robert Cupp, a Lima Republican, and then-Rep. John Patterson, a Democrat from Ashtabula County’s Jefferson.
Only a cynic would suggest that Speaker Huffman opposes the Cupp-Patterson plan because it actually might work. “I think those increases in funding are unsustainable,” he said earlier this year. But $600 million in state-held money for a new Browns stadium in Brook Park? Hey: Why not?
Thomas Suddes, a member of the editorial board, writes from Athens.
To reach Thomas Suddes: tsuddes@cleveland.com
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