The Ohio Statehouse. Photo by Joe Deptowicz

County auditor and treasurer say tax reform is needed (part 4)

This is part four of our four-part series on revaluations in Portage County. Read parts one, two and three.

This is part of a series of articles The Portager is offering about the revaluation process. This article focuses on what Portage County Auditor Matt Kelly and Treasurer John Kennedy think about Ohio’s taxing structure and what residents can do.

Fielding near-constant complaints from county residents upset about rising property taxes, they feel some answers are in order. And given today’s divisive political landscape, the fact that Kelly, a Republican, and Kennedy, a Democrat, see eye to eye is notable, even if they’re unsure exactly how to solve the problem.

That problem is Ohio’s tax structure, Kelly and Kennedy said, singling out school funding laws and the state’s Homestead Exemption Act.

Ohio House Bill 920, which state lawmakers passed in the mid 1970s, directs about two-thirds of property tax revenue to local school districts and the rest to voted levies for police, fire, EMS, roads, bridges, schools and parks, to name the most common ones.

“There’s not much you can do about the housing market, which ultimately decides what each property is worth, but what we can do is change the way property taxes are attached to the value of your property. HB 920 has been in place for 50 years. It’s outdated and it needs to be changed,” Kelly said.

“The way the property valuation system is set up, taxes rely too heavily on the property owner. I would not make property taxes so dependent on valuations. I would put checks and balances in place to not have what we have this year, which is an average increase of 33% [in valuations],” he continued.

State legislators need to figure out alternative funding sources for schools and first responders, he said.

“We have billions of dollars in the Ohio rainy day fund. Why aren’t we using that money to give property owners all around the state relief this year?” he asked.

The Ohio Supreme Court declared the state’s school funding formula to be unconstitutional in 1997, but it somehow remains in place, Kelly noted, insisting that has to change as well.

(State lawmakers included a new school funding plan in Ohio’s fiscal year 2024-25 budget. Aurora schools Treasurer Bill Volosin said the Fair School Funding Plan is an improvement on previous efforts, but even it has not been fully implemented.)

Kelly and Kennedy also said the state’s Homestead Exemption Act is in need of revision. The Act reduces property taxes for citizens who are 65 or older and meet certain income requirements, individuals who are permanently and totally disabled, military veterans who have received a 100% disability rating, and spouses of first responders killed in the line of duty.

Lawmakers should reduce or eliminate the Homestead Act’s $38,600 per-person income cap and revise the 100% disability rating to “something less,” Kennedy said.

What residents can do

Neither Kennedy nor Kelly has fully worked out plans to address taxing inequities, but they both encourage residents to contact their state legislators to review HB 920 and to demand that the school funding formula be changed. People should also demand that lawmakers review and revise the Homestead Exemption Act.

“You are free to call the auditor’s office and express your frustration, and you’re free to dispute your valuation, but if you want to change the way Ohio taxes property owners, you need to get your state legislators to do that,” Kelly said. “If we don’t change something with our property tax structure, in six years we’ll be reliving this all over again.”

Unless lawmakers both listen and act, school districts, parks services and just about any other public service provider will still need to ask voters to approve tax levies. They’re on each ballot, and Kelly knows each one will be a hard sell moving forward.

“The way we’re structured now, you’re going to have to decide what levies you want to pass. You can vote for all of them or you can vote for none of them. It’s your personal decision. It’s going to cost you money,” Kelly said.

Kennedy agreed.

“The state could finally address and fix the unconstitutionality of the way we finance schools in the state of Ohio. You deal with that and you tweak the Homestead Exemption, and you go a long way to addressing the disparity and the problem, not just for Portage County, but the whole state,” he said.

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Wendy DiAlesandro is a former Record Publishing Co. reporter and contributing writer for The Portager.