- Eliminating the state’s highest income tax bracket for Ohioans earning more than $100,000 a year, thereby creating a flat 2.75% income tax for all Ohioans making more than $26,000 a year. The cut puts $1.6 billion of would-be state revenue in doubt.
- Increasing state investment in public schools while backing out of the third and final stage of a so-called fair school funding plan, which would have awarded public schools hundreds of millions of dollars more than what’s included in this budget.
- Capping school districts from carrying financial reserves greater than 40% of their previous year’s operating expenses. Funds above that threshold will be returned to the property taxpayers of that district. (This outlet analyzed a previous 30% cap proposal and found it would impact 47 of 57 nearby school districts, targeting $553.7 million in school reserves.)
- Granting county budget commissions authority to unilaterally adjust the millage of most voter-approved tax levies if it’s deemed “reasonably necessary or prudent to avoid unnecessary, excessive, or unneeded property tax collections.”
- Giving the Cleveland Browns $600 million to partially fund a new stadium project in the suburb of Brook Park. The money will come from a huge pot of Ohioans’ unclaimed funds maintained by the state. Lawmakers expect to get all money back through tax revenues eventually generated by the project.
- Changing Ohio’s public library funding model away from a simple 3.5% share of the state’s tax revenues to year-by-year allocations instead.
- Prohibiting all “replacement” property tax levies and prohibiting school districts from putting on “renewal and increase” levies, fixed-sum emergency levies, substitute emergency levies, and combined income tax/fix-sum property tax levies.
- Eliminating the Ohio Elections Commission, once responsible for overseeing certain election disputes, and transferring that authority to the partisan-elected Ohio Secretary of State office.
- Sunsetting a tax credit, potentially, for rehabbing historical buildings that has awarded more than $52 million in tax incentives for Dayton projects including the Dayton Arcade, the Delco building, the Grant-Deneau Tower and multiple commercial structures in the Fire Blocks District.
- Prohibiting Dayton Public Schools high school students from transferring bus lines at the downtown RTA bus hubs.
- Prohibiting government buildings from putting menstrual products in men’s bathrooms.
- Granting Miami University $7 million, instead of the requested $14 million, to help establish the Ohio Institute for Quantum Computing Research, Talent and Commercialization.
- Codifying in state law that there are only two sexes, male and female, which are “not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”
- Increasing the scheduled pay raise for county and township officials, judges and members of county boards of elections from from 1.75% per year through 2028 to 5% per year through 2029.
- Removing passenger rail representation on the Ohio Rail Development Coalition while adding representation for freight rail.
- Among many, many other provisions.
House Bill 96, which sets the spending for fiscal years 2026 and 2027, now heads to the desk of Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican overseeing his fourth and final budget process and wields line-item veto power.
DeWine started this process out with his own budget proposal and has since seen the bulk of his priorities thrown out. Axed was his proposed $1,000 tax credit for children under five years old; his plan to partially fund sports stadiums and children’s extracurricular activities; his plan to bring drivers education courses to schools; and many more priorities.
The budget passed Wednesday was, perhaps unsurprisingly, largely shaped by the Republican-dominated Ohio General Assembly — first the House, then the Senate, and then through a so-called conference committee, a negotiation phase between the two chambers.
The Republicans most responsible for shaping the bill said Wednesday that it meets the needs of the state while balancing fiscal stewardship.
“This budget sends a signal to job creators, workers, families, to everyone in America that is looking to build a better life, (that) we are rolling out the welcome mat,” House Finance Committee Chair Brian Stewart, R-Ashville, told his colleagues on the House floor. “We want you to achieve your American dream here in Ohio.”
Stewart framed the budget as one that will proffer real property tax relief — through the carryover cap, by allowing county boards to lower millage, and by allowing counties to grant tax exemptions for some Ohioans — to the many Ohioans who have seen their tax bills soar as their properties have shot up in value.
Democrats, who are in a superminority in each caucus, say they’ve improved the budget from what it would have been without their opposition. But those wins weren’t enough to convince any Democrat in either chamber to vote for the bill.
“This budget is making the wrong choices for who we are trying to serve. We are choosing the wrong Ohioans to invest in,” newly-elected House Minority Leader Dani Isaacsohn, D-Cincinnati, told reporters, referencing the budget’s flat tax plan. “...At a time when tons of people all over the state — we hear about it constantly — are worried about paying their property taxes, we’re cutting taxes for the 20% of the wealthiest people in this state."
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Avery Kreemer can be reached at 614-981-1422, on X, via email, or you can drop him a comment/tip with the survey below.
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