Why? Because state legislators want to play Santa Claus for wealthy Ohioans – in say, Greater Cleveland’s Hunting Valley, in Central Ohio’s New Albany, in Cincinnati’s Indian Hill and Canton’s Hills and Dales – by transforming Ohio’s once multi-bracket income tax to, in effect, a flat tax.
That’s the income tax Ohio’s Republican-run General Assembly voted to create in 1971 at the behest of then-Gov. John J. Gilligan, a Cincinnati Democrat.
Voters, in a statewide 1972 ballot issue, refused to repeal the income tax on the same day they overwhelmingly helped re-elect Republican President Richard M. Nixon.
Since the mid-1980s, when state Senate Republicans started to squeeze the state income tax’s brackets like a concertina, the income tax (and state taxes generally) have funded a smaller and smaller state share of Ohio public school costs.
A new report co-authored by two highly respected Ohio analysts, school finance expert Howard Fleeter and R. Gregory Browning, state Budget director for Republican George V. Voinovich, tells the story. Their research was commissioned by the Ohio Education Policy Institute, founded in the 1990s and “funded through dues from members ranging from school districts to statewide education organizations.” Key findings:
- “In 2002, Ohio ranked 19th in state plus local taxes per
- capita; however, by 2021, Ohio’s rank had fallen to 30th, and Ohio’s state plus local tax revenues per capita were 12% below the national average.”
- But “(while) the burden on [Ohio’s] state-only taxpayers has been reduced, landing Ohio in 42nd (with 50th as lowest) place nationally in per capita state taxation ... Ohio currently has the 8th highest property tax rate in the nation.”
- “Ohio has fallen from 35th nationally in the state share (emphasis added) of K-12 revenue in 2002 to 45th in 2023. [That] has obviously placed more pressure on school districts to fill the gap through increased local funding, which for Ohio school districts primarily means the local property tax.”
- Net of rollbacks, “state General Revenue Fund budget funding” – the GRF is Ohio’s central budget account – “for primary and secondary education grew by only 59% between [fiscal years] 2005 and 2025, when the inflation rate was 66.5% ... [with] Ohio falling from 35th nationally on the state share of K-12 revenue in 2002 to 45th in 2023.” And who, prithee, must make up for the funds a grandstanding legislature denies public schools? You, Ms. and Mr. Homeowner.
Statehouse flim-flam, coupled with huge legislative subsidies for “vouchers,” which help pay private school tuition for K-12 pupils, leave school boards no choice but to repeatedly ask voters for levies. That and inflated real-estate prices are squeezing Ohio homeowners, especially older homeowners.
That’s what happens in a state whose legislature rigs (“gerrymanders”) its districts to comfort fat-cats, and which thinks the Ohio Constitution is a list of hints, not a binding contract between voters and those they send to the Statehouse.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. You can reach him at tsuddes@gmail.com.
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