Property tax reform bills offer relief, local officials express concern

ATHENS COUNTY, Ohio — Several property tax reform bills were signed into law by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine at the end of 2025 amid a citizen-led initiative to ban property taxes statewide. The new laws leave local governments and school districts with questions about how they will fund themselves.

Ohio’s property tax system is a complicated web of legislation that voters, lawyers and finance professionals have often questioned. 

For Athens County Treasurer Taylor Sappington, the issues with Ohio’s property taxes stem from years of legislative neglect.

“Years worth of what is, essentially, deferred maintenance on the property tax equation and formula by the statehouse has resulted in taxes being too unpredictable and too high for many property owners in the state,” Sappington said. “I think there’s pretty much universal agreement on that point.”

A recurring issue in the state is school funding. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that the current model of funding schools created educational inequality between wealthy and poor communities, violating the Ohio Constitution which mandates a “thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state.”

Earlier this year, a Franklin County Court of Common Pleas judge cited that same clause to strike down the state’s private school voucher program on the basis that the program created a second system of school funding. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said that he plans to appeal the decision.

Understanding property taxes in Ohio

Adding to the complexity of Ohio’s tax code are the various types of property tax levies and the math involved in calculating the taxable amount. 

Ohio has six different types of levies, with two of them — emergency and substitute levies — reserved only for school districts.

The two crucial numbers when it comes to calculating property taxes in Ohio are the assessed value of a property and the desired amount of revenue generated by the tax, known as a mill. 

The assessed value of a property is calculated by the county auditor and is 35% of the market value of a home. A mill is then calculated based on that assessed value at a rate of $1 per $1,000 assessed value.

For instance, a $200,000 home would have an assessed value of $70,000 and one mill of tax would be worth $70. If a school district had 20 mills of property tax assessed to the property, then it would collect $1,400 in taxes from the property.

Property tax reform legislation

Senate Bill 93 is the broadest of all the property tax reform bills that was introduced into the Ohio legislature in 2025. 

The proposed bill seeks to eliminate the ability for school districts to levy property taxes and will instead fund schools through a single statewide property tax and increased sales tax.

Athens County Auditor Jill Davidson told the Independent she thinks a statewide property tax might create more problems than it would solve.

“While I really appreciate the innovation, the creativity and the recognition that school funding is part of the problem and must be part of the solution, I really have trouble supporting the premise to start collecting property tax at the local level and sending it to the state to decide where those dollars are going to be spent,” Davidson said. 

“Athens County taxpayers would still be paying but the state would determine who gets that money and how that pot is split up,” she added. “I’m not sure where that would end if we started going down that road.”

House Bill 186 and House Bill 335 were signed into law by the governor on December 19, 2026. Those two bills limit the increase of certain types of property taxes to the inflation rate. HB 186 applies to school levies, while HB 335 applies to the 10 mills of property taxes that are not subject to a vote and are guaranteed to local governments in the Ohio Constitution.

HB 186 also increases the tax credit applied to owner-occupied housing and maintains the current agriculture tax credit. The owner-occupancy credit will increase over a four-year period, while the current residential housing credit shrinks. The bill also increases the tax on landlords who do not live in the properties they rent. 

HB 129 was signed into law on Dec. 19, 2025, and makes it so that substitute and emergency levies count toward the 20 mills of property taxes guaranteed to Ohio school districts. 

Previously, these taxes did not count toward the guaranteed property tax because they are collected as a fixed sum and not at a fixed rate, like other forms of property taxes. 

Since emergency and substitute levies didn’t count toward that guaranteed 20 mills, a school district could have 18 mills in regular property taxes and five mills in emergency levies and still be bumped up to 20 mills of regular property taxes, effectively giving them 25 mills worth of total property taxes. Under the new law, that same district would receive 23 mills total in property taxes.

HB 28 was put into Ohio law as part of an override in the state budget in October 2025, as reported by the Statehouse News Bureau. As a result of the bill’s passage, replacement levies can no longer appear on the ballot in Ohio. This means that an existing levy will be forced to appear as either a renewal levy maintaining the same collection rate, or as a new levy with an updated collection rate.

HB 309 was amongst the bills signed into law on Dec. 19, 2025, and allows each county’s budget commission, consisting of the county auditor, treasurer and prosecutor, to rollback levies that they deem excessive. The bill initially provided a five-year period of protection from rollback for recently approved levies. After negotiations in the Ohio Senate, the protection period was reduced to one year. HB 309 also allows the county budget commission to reduce levies if financial reserves have been built up by the entity collecting the tax.

Davidson, who sits on the Athens County Budget Commission, said that she appreciates the legislature explicitly spelling out the powers of the county budget commission.

“This gives us that authority very clear in statute, which allows the budget commission to kind of do their job on the local level and hold folks accountable when necessary,” Davidson said.

HB 124 was also signed into law on Dec. 19, 2025, and is similar to HB 309, in that it explicitly details the powers of the county auditor and the Ohio Department of Taxation. The bill does a number of things to allow county auditors to have a greater influence in assessing property values. 

Previously, the state department of taxation reviewed each county auditor’s property assessments and could order a given county auditor to adjust valuations. Auditors could appeal this order, but were required to prove that their original assessments were correct. HB 124 flips that situation on its head — now, the Ohio Department of Taxation must file an appeal and must prove that the county auditor’s original assessment was incorrect.

Additionally, the bill outlines how taxes will be collected during an appeal and moves the deadline for when county auditors submit annual property assessments.

As the entities levying and collecting property taxes, school districts and local government agencies are going to be the ones most impacted by changes to property tax collection. 

Davidson told the Independent that a careless reduction in property taxes could do more harm than good for local communities.

“If the state holds their ground that this is a local government problem and that local governments need to fund the tax relief, I think that’s going to come at the cost of local essential services,” Davidson said.

Jared Bunting, the treasurer of Athens City School District, said that he has been closely following all of the property tax reform bills working their way through the Ohio legislature. He pointed to HB 186 as a bill which will negatively impact school funding.

“The legislature removed language from the bill that required an adjustment to the State Funding Formula to account for the reduced home valuation based on the tax credit,” Bunting wrote in an email. “By removing this language, schools will not only see a reduction in anticipated local revenue, but the state will not recognize this lower valuation and the schools will also see less state aid in the process, making it a double hit on school district revenues.”

HB 129 will also impact the Athens City School District as it will factor-in the schools emergency levy into the 20 mill floor and will reduce the district’s overall revenue, according to Bunting.

Bunting told the Independent that despite all of the bills attempting to reform property taxes, taxes will likely still increase.

“This is not going to lower tax bills, what it does is reduce the increase,” Bunting wrote in an email. “An overly simplified example I used at the last board meeting was this, say your tax bill was $100 last year. Under normal conditions your tax bill next year would have been $110 but with these changes it will only be $105.  Your tax bill still went up, just not as much as it would have.”

Property tax abolishment

While state legislators work to reform property taxes from inside the halls of government, multiple citizen groups have begun a push for the outright abolishment of property taxes in Ohio. 

These groups include Citizens for Property Tax Reform and Ax OH Tax. Both groups are collecting signatures for a ballot initiative that would amend the Ohio Constitution to ban the collection of property taxes.

Both groups’ websites point to the previously mentioned Ohio Supreme Court case about the educational inequality between wealthy and poor communities. 

As for alternatives to property taxes, Ax OH Tax offers few details. However, the group’s FAQ states, “We are NOT for defunding essential services, but re-funding them in a more equitable way.” Meanwhile, Citizens for Property Tax Reform advocates for the implementation of a consumption/sales tax or a school district income tax.

Davidson told the Independent that she isn’t convinced that those alternatives would work, as taxes elsewhere would have to go up to match the loss of property tax revenue.

“If property taxes go away, then funding must shift,” Davidson said. She later added, “If you abolish taxes, that revenue is gone.”

Davidson specifically took issue with the sales tax idea, pointing out that townships, schools and cities do not have the legal authority to levy a sales tax. Davidson said that if these entities could implement a sales tax, then the total county sales tax would need to be 17.11% to maintain current funding levels.

Athens County Emergency Medical Services Chief Amber Pyle said that roughly 75% of Athens County EMS’s budget comes from local property taxes.

“If [property taxes] go away completely we would be in a mess,” Pyle said. “We would have to close stations down and lay people off. It would not be good.”

The Athens City-County Health Department would be in a similar situation. Health department Administrator Jack Pepper said that the health department raises between $1–1.2 million annually in property taxes, and that 70% of health department staff are paid using funds generated by property taxes. Pepper said that he has done the math and made a plan for what the health department budget would look like if property taxes were to cease.

“We essentially would become a privatized company, and everything that we did … there would be some sort of fee tied to it,” Pepper said. “It would be permits coming out of our environmental health division, it would be vital stats, birth and death records. Our clinic would essentially turn into a privatized healthcare office, where we’re billing for insurance.”

Sappington told the Independent that he believes abolition of property taxes would further erode the power of local government. He said that the state government has increasingly centralized authority and sought to control funding mechanisms. For Davidson, this is why local governments and school districts now levy more property taxes.

“As those supports and as those funding streams have dried up or reduced for local governments, there’s no other option but to go back to the property tax levy, because those are one of the few options we have left,” Davidson said.

In the last 15 years, the state has reduced its contribution to the Local Government Fund, which supports essential services, and removed the ability for local governments to assess an estate tax. The Ohio Capital Journal reported that this has resulted in a $1 billion dollar funding gap for local governments across the state. 

“To me, the most persuasive argument I’ve heard is that property tax is the only taxation that the state continues to allow to be controlled by the locals,” Sappington said. “It is the only taxation where you, the voter, have any control over. In the end, the state pulls most of the sales tax up to Columbus, the state pulls almost all of the income taxation in the state up to Columbus.”

Sappington later added that he thinks abolishing property taxes would result in the decline of Ohio’s infrastructure, emergency response times and education when compared to other states. 

“There’s no doubt in my mind that reform and fixes are necessary, but there’s also no doubt in my mind that abolishment will make our lives worse,” Sappington said.