Letter to the editor: John Kennedy calls out state lawmakers on property tax

Editor’s note: The Portager publishes letters to the editor from the community. The opinions expressed are published not because they necessarily reflect those of the publication but because we feel they contribute meaningfully to the local discourse on matters of public interest.

Well, well, well. After all the talk about making “property tax relief” the number one legislative priority this session in Columbus, what are we actually getting?

A half-baked bad idea that, if put into place, serves only one real purpose: to cleverly hand off the problem to county officials to deal with. To me, that’s like saying, “Sorry, we were unable to do our job; this was too damn hard. But here’s the doggy bag full of you know what. You do something with it.”

Even worse, the “doggy bag” doesn’t get a public hearing, faces no questions or testimony, because, well, the stench might be unbearable. But if you tuck it into the state budget, no one may notice (and that’s key). And when the Governor approves the budget with the stroke of a pen in June, those pesky property tax relief problems are magically whisked away — pictures are taken and credit given to the courageous state lawmakers who did…nothing. Not entirely fair: they punted, they kicked the can, they shrewdly handed off the doggy bag. All of that strategizing and toil to avoid tough problems you were elected to solve takes effort, I give you that.

So as they say in the legal profession, I have “standing” on this because that doggy bag is headed for my doorstep — the county’s budget commission, of which I am a member. The “fix” included in the state budget will require county budget commissioners to focus solely on one “subdivision” entity — you guessed it, public schools — for special scrutiny and oversight. Why? Because as the myth making goes in Columbus, our public schools are so flush with buckets of extra cash and “carry-over” money that they (not the state) should be on the hook to provide local property tax relief.

So let me get this straight: When the state proudly cuts public school funding by hundreds of millions of dollars below what is statutorily required by state law (Cupp-Patterson, remember that?), they also believe you can finance impactful property tax relief by picking the bones of anything leftover on the public school cadaver?

Sorry, I’m calling BS on this one. If those in the super-majority in Columbus truly cared about giving property tax relief to seniors they would do it; they would have done it by now. There’s no excuse when you have full control of every branch of state government, from the executive on down. I have publicly made the case that you could provide significant property tax relief to our seniors by amending the Homestead Exemption to increase eligibility and double the tax saving benefit, two modifications which would provide real, impactful relief to the folks that need it the most.

But that’s not what we got. Instead, we got an unvetted, half-baked bad idea that serves only to further defund public schools and doesn’t provide real, impactful property tax relief, especially for our seniors.

But maybe that was the goal all along.

— John Kennedy, Portage County Treasurer