In what amounts to a publicity stunt, Ohio’s Republican-run House of Representatives will try tomorrow to override three item-vetoes by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine in Ohio’s new 2025-27 operating budget, House Bill 96.
The House should back off; grandstanding for headlines won’t accomplish even a smidgen of what Republican leaders claim: That the three budget sections, if saved by veto overrides, would help hold down skyrocketing property taxes afflicting Ohio homeowners. Horsefeathers.
Rather than genuinely address the property tax crisis, which would require (a) hard work from Ohio’s La-Z-Boy legislature and (b) lots of Statehouse good will, House Republicans, paced by Speaker Matt Huffman, of Lima, want to revive
the trio of school-related items DeWine spiked
.
Stripped of legalese, the House’s anti-school-district triplex would all but require school boards to ask voters for more levies, more often – an increasingly tough sell – and let certain county officials, without any real responsibility for public education, monkey with the amount of millage a school district collects.
Overall, those items would handcuff school boards in their constitutionally required duty to offer young Ohioans thorough, efficient – and public – schooling.
Though mulish House GOP partisans won’t admit it, DeWine did legislators a favor. If left in place, the three contested budget items would only have worsened Ohio’s property tax mess, making it even harder for constructive General Assembly members – they do exist – to straighten out school funding statewide.
Truly comprehensive, forward-looking property tax reforms require carrots, not sticks, at the Statehouse. In this instance, the governor, as he’s had to do at other times during the last few years, saved the House’s majority – fellow Republicans – from itself.
DeWine’s vetoes, upheld, would help legislators avert policy mistakes that could make Ohio’s property tax mess even worse. That is, the governor is aiming to shore up the public interest in adequately educating public school pupils, and in lightening the tax burdens of their home-owning parents.
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