Speaker 1: Seven oh six at fifty five kre CD talk station.
Speaker 1: By the time I was wishing ever to a happy
Speaker 1: Wednesday and welcoming back to the fifty five CARCE Morning
Speaker 1: Show from the Buckeye Institute, which you can find online at
Speaker 1: Buckeyeinstitute dot org. I found an eighty nine it to
Speaker 1: independent research and educational institution whose mission is to advance
Speaker 1: free market public policy in Ohio. Greg Lawston, it's always
Speaker 1: great having you on the fifty five KRC Morning Show.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot for having me.
Speaker 1: I love the pleasure, I love the topic man, and
Speaker 1: I laugh every time the topic comes up because it's
Speaker 1: property taxes and everyone's fed up with how high they
Speaker 1: are twenty thirty percent increases destined to increase even more.
Speaker 1: We got seniors in their homes, fully paid off and
Speaker 1: living on a fixed income, can't afford they hit. There's
Speaker 1: problems and complications and anger and frustration. And now we
Speaker 1: have a citizen led constitutional amendment effort to completely abolish
Speaker 1: property taxes. And that's always what makes me chuckle, because
Speaker 1: what the hell are they going to do about funding
Speaker 1: literally everything that's funded through property taxes? How can you
Speaker 1: rejigger the system to cover the costs the police, fire levies, parks,
Speaker 1: the whole litany of things that are funded through property taxes.
Speaker 1: I'm going to boil it down to calling it a
Speaker 1: Charlie Foxtrott situation. Greg, you've looked into this, what's your
Speaker 1: take on it?
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's one of the biggest issues that
Speaker 2: the stay in Ohio has maybe ever faced in terms
Speaker 2: of how Ohio government's literally organized. I certainly understand the frustration.
Speaker 2: I've talked to quite a few of the folks actually
Speaker 2: that are involved in kicking off this whole ballot campaign
Speaker 2: to abolish property taxes, and they have a lot of
Speaker 2: very legitimate beefs out there with how things are operating.
Speaker 2: You said it yourself. You know, at the seniors who
Speaker 2: are worried about losing their homes after paying off the
Speaker 2: mortgage maybe decades ago and now because of ever escalating
Speaker 2: costs there on the property tax that they can't afford it.
Speaker 2: So the anger is real, it's boiling over. This is
Speaker 2: sort of a tech No, we're not going to take
Speaker 2: it anymore, and we're going to do something about it.
Speaker 2: But the problem with that solution is that it really
Speaker 2: doesn't solve all the problems because if you get rid
Speaker 2: of the property tax, you still have all these services.
Speaker 2: You've still got you know, a ton of the education
Speaker 2: costs at the local level, and almost all of your
Speaker 2: public safety costs that leaves, fire and everything else it's
Speaker 2: paid through property taxes, not to mention all the other
Speaker 2: kind of things that folks like, from parks and stuff
Speaker 2: like that, to even just doing the small the local
Speaker 2: roads and fixing local roads and local potholes and doing
Speaker 2: trash cans. So it's a massive issue. It's going to
Speaker 2: blow if that thing goes through, it goes to the
Speaker 2: ballot and ultimately where to pass maybe a twenty billion
Speaker 2: dollar hole across the whole state. Actually probably been a
Speaker 2: little bit more than that. So we've got to do
Speaker 2: it off water reform, I think, before any of this happens,
Speaker 2: so that taxpayers can get some relief, get released now,
Speaker 2: and get relief in the long term, so that we
Speaker 2: don't have to run this frankly, pretty radical experiment.
Speaker 1: Well, and it is a radical experiment I'll acknowledge, and
Speaker 1: I think born of frustration, because I would argue our
Speaker 1: elected officials and Columbus haven't lifted a finger to try
Speaker 1: to address the problem, at least that's what it appears
Speaker 1: from the outside. How come our property taxes one I'm
Speaker 1: thirty percent? Are they doing anything to address this? Shouldn't
Speaker 1: there be a cap on the percentage they can increase
Speaker 1: our taxes. Something needs to be done. It's almost as
Speaker 1: if this radical effort was done out of frustration in
Speaker 1: order to light a fire under the bottoms of our
Speaker 1: elected officials to get on the thing and get on
Speaker 1: it right away. Do you feel that way. I mean,
Speaker 1: you guys are located right across the street from the
Speaker 1: State House, and you've been interacting with our politicians and
Speaker 1: getting a response from them on what they plan on doing.
Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely, and you're right. This was born of frustration,
Speaker 2: completely legitimate frustration, understandable frustration. I think that it has
Speaker 2: lit a fire. There's a whole bunch of legislation out there,
Speaker 2: separate bills. In fact, I was actually at to stay
Speaker 2: down so after one o'clock in the morning today because
Speaker 2: they were putting the finishing touches on the state budget
Speaker 2: and the conference committee that was reconciling differences between the House,
Speaker 2: no House Senate. So they're actually going to put the
Speaker 2: budget on the floor and both chambers, I think today
Speaker 2: to send it to the governor. And there are some
Speaker 2: things that they have put into that that I think
Speaker 2: are good property tax reforms that are going to be helpful.
Speaker 2: I don't think they are enough. I don't think they're
Speaker 2: going to solve this problem. And in some way some
Speaker 2: of the stuff they've done and stuff that's that's necessary,
Speaker 2: but it's a little bit more long term. It will
Speaker 2: help in the long rund, but it isn't necessarily going
Speaker 2: to fix the spikes that have hit people so hard recently.
Speaker 2: So there's some more work that absolutely has to be done.
Speaker 2: I'm talking all the time. There's a State rep of
Speaker 2: Ashtribuba County former County Autogra actually up there, Dave Thomas,
Speaker 2: who's been doing an awful lot of work in this
Speaker 2: space to try to fix a lot of problems. Represented
Speaker 2: to actually out of Matthews from down near Neck of
Speaker 2: the Woods and done some bills and things like that
Speaker 2: to try to help out. So we're constantly talking to them.
Speaker 2: I was testifying last week in the Ohio House a
Speaker 2: major committee on a big bill that had a lot
Speaker 2: of moving pieces, very complicated, but that would have done
Speaker 2: quite a bit unfortunately because of how complicated it is.
Speaker 2: I can tell you there's a line of local government
Speaker 2: organizations out the door opposing all these reforms going and
Speaker 2: buying to the legislators because they don't want to change things.
Speaker 2: And some maybe you can't change, but a lot you can't,
Speaker 2: and a lot of folks don't want to change the
Speaker 2: status quo. So you've got this interesting vice really on
Speaker 2: legislative You've got this incredible anger in the grassroots that again,
Speaker 2: I get it, you're kicking people out of their homes.
Speaker 2: People aren't going to sit down and just say that's okay.
Speaker 2: It's not there's a moral issue here. Uh. You know,
Speaker 2: people are wondering if they even own their own homes
Speaker 2: you can lose it over the taxis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the point that's not lost on my listeners.
Speaker 2: I hear that.
Speaker 1: All the time, nobody really truly owns something that they
Speaker 1: think they own because of this very issue. And it
Speaker 1: is really in a world that you know, we have
Speaker 1: private property ownership here in this country, and I think
Speaker 1: it's one of those rights that we dearly embrace and
Speaker 1: love and appreciate. But if the reality is that the
Speaker 1: state's going to force you to sell your home because
Speaker 1: you can't pay the tax bill, then you really don't
Speaker 1: own anything. And adding insult interest you meant to mention
Speaker 1: the budget. I can't allow that comment to go without
Speaker 1: pointing out adding insults injury. Giving six hundred million dollars
Speaker 1: of the Ohio taxpayer money to the Cleveland Browns, I
Speaker 1: think is a slap in the face to the Ohio
Speaker 1: taxpayer who can barely afford to stay in their home.
Speaker 1: You know, I deal with this as a suggestion, some suggests,
Speaker 1: and even I said it out loud. Get rid of
Speaker 1: this whole property tax thing and just increase the state
Speaker 1: tax on purchases. That way, everyone is responsible for sharing
Speaker 1: in the burden of any service. But that forces the
Speaker 1: money to go to Columbus and then be redistributed to
Speaker 1: the various jurisdiction. And you point out in your article
Speaker 1: about this thing that there are four thousand local taxing authorities.
Speaker 1: They're going to be scrapping over that money.
Speaker 2: And they're going to be arguing.
Speaker 1: I mean, some police departments they pay their officers more.
Speaker 1: They choose to do that. Others don't have the money,
Speaker 1: they don't play the police as much. How do you
Speaker 1: allocate the pile of money. If you went in a
Speaker 1: different direction, there's a multitude of problems with that.
Speaker 2: Oh, it really would be. And I think actually this
Speaker 2: is one of a lot of downsides too to getting
Speaker 2: rid of property taxes. I mean, because again all the
Speaker 2: services is a big hole and everything else. But the
Speaker 2: other thing that I think some folks aren't necessarily thinking
Speaker 2: all the way through is if that were happened, there's
Speaker 2: something like what you just described but probably need to happen.
Speaker 2: There would probably be some sort of state tax and increases.
Speaker 2: They would have to do some sort of a redistribution
Speaker 2: out of Columbus back to locals. There'll be the all
Speaker 2: and they'll brike them up with some formula and things
Speaker 2: like that. But the problem is that then the Columbus
Speaker 2: is going to be in more power than ever before
Speaker 2: because part of the reason they have property taxes because
Speaker 2: it's local, it is mostly voted on by local residents,
Speaker 2: although there are some exceptions, and that's actually been one
Speaker 2: of the big problems here is how property tax are
Speaker 2: so complicated. There are some situations where school districts in
Speaker 2: particular are essentially getting increased taxes without votes of the people,
Speaker 2: and that's needs to absolutely be changed. But we'll happens
Speaker 2: if you get rid of the property tax. Is Columbus
Speaker 2: is going to take more power because it's going to
Speaker 2: have to, because it's the one who's going to be
Speaker 2: redistributing all the donors exactly.
Speaker 1: And you know, we're better off having local control over
Speaker 1: that money and a local say over whether or not
Speaker 1: we choose to vote for any given levee. But the
Speaker 1: levees are in and of themselves a problem because a
Speaker 1: lot of times you have more people who do not
Speaker 1: own property voting for levees because oh I love the
Speaker 1: parks or I love my schools, and they're not sharing
Speaker 1: in the burden. It's the property tax owner. I know
Speaker 1: that ignores the reality that rent does ultimately increase to
Speaker 1: cover the cost increased costs of taxes on any given
Speaker 1: rental property. But in the final analysis, it just it
Speaker 1: allows these levees to pass, I think, without more scrutiny,
Speaker 1: and and your property tax goes up as a consequence
Speaker 1: of it. But I mean what I know you mentioned
Speaker 1: some solution like requiring county commissioners to prove local levees,
Speaker 1: but they're subject to the same political pressures you just
Speaker 1: mentioned in connection with what's going on in Columbus right now, Well.
Speaker 2: They are, and that's why, you know, the nfortunate situation
Speaker 2: here is there aren't silver bullet solutions. This whole situation
Speaker 2: didn't happen overnight. This is decades of things that have happened,
Speaker 2: and I kind of call it the layering effect. We've
Speaker 2: seen a proliferation of different sorts of local taxing authorities
Speaker 2: over the course of literally decades, and so this whole
Speaker 2: situation with the property tax spikes is kind of like
Speaker 2: a unique confluence of events, the perfect storm, because we
Speaker 2: have some real structural issues and how local government and
Speaker 2: local taxing authorities are structured at Ohio that has been
Speaker 2: being built up again over the course of decades. Then
Speaker 2: you had sort of a unique inflation air environment coming
Speaker 2: out of COVID that it has been a massive impact.
Speaker 2: And we had housing shortage in the sense that we
Speaker 2: haven't been building as much housing to keep up in
Speaker 2: certain key places. So that keeps the supply of housing tighter,
Speaker 2: which creates higher values, which is part of how the
Speaker 2: reappraisals are all, which is why the rates are going
Speaker 2: up too. So you have all of this stuff working together.
Speaker 2: And one thing I'm telling legislators, and one thing I
Speaker 2: try to tell folks, and you know, whether it's an
Speaker 2: off eds that we're riding events that I go through
Speaker 2: to speak about, is that in a lot of ways,
Speaker 2: these costs are downstream of structure. And that's kind of
Speaker 2: a nerdy way of saying it's because of how we
Speaker 2: organize ourselves at the local level to deliver the services
Speaker 2: that people do want, but it's the way it's organized
Speaker 2: and may built up over so many years with these
Speaker 2: different things, instead of figuring out how to make things
Speaker 2: more efficient, how to do more with less, be efficient,
Speaker 2: leverage technology, maybe care services across different political jurisdictions and stuff,
Speaker 2: and consolidation some things that school districts, I mean, this
Speaker 2: is a third rail for a lot of folks. But
Speaker 2: most Southern states, a lot of Western states too, but
Speaker 2: states with really growing populations, a lot of them have
Speaker 2: union based for the most part, with big city exceptions.
Speaker 2: The county based school districts have way less than we
Speaker 2: do be able to six centered school districts. Do we
Speaker 2: find efficiency that way? And I think those are the
Speaker 2: conversations that we're going to have to have because it's well,
Speaker 2: what we do and how the government structure that is
Speaker 2: leading to the costs, and then you got to figure
Speaker 2: out how to pay for those costs. So we need
Speaker 2: to be more efficient, more effective at figuring out better
Speaker 2: ways to deliver things. Or even if you did get
Speaker 2: rid of property tax, you're not really solving that underlying
Speaker 2: issue of what's making it cost mole.
Speaker 1: Well, it would force an analysis of that if we
Speaker 1: ended property texas in Ohio and real quickly without before
Speaker 1: we part company. And it's interesting conversation Greg with real
Speaker 1: no no real answers or quick solutions, Greg Lawson, our
Speaker 1: school funding mechanism was rendered unconstitutional about two decades ago
Speaker 1: by the High Supreme Court, and yet it's still fund
Speaker 1: of the exact same way it was when that's when
Speaker 1: that case came out. Why hasn't that problem been addressed
Speaker 1: by our legislative branch in Ohio?
Speaker 2: Because it's expensive and also because it's the local state
Speaker 2: sort of partnership. The problem with it is we want
Speaker 2: local control through school boards and everything else. So the
Speaker 2: property taxes again kind of like we've talked about before,
Speaker 2: Columbus taking everything over whoever pays pays it or gets
Speaker 2: the funds to redistribute. The funding oftentimes has a lot
Speaker 2: of strings attached to those dollars. The more the state
Speaker 2: would spend, I mean, what a lot of local districts
Speaker 2: kind of want is the state to spend more money
Speaker 2: and they do all the control, and I don't know
Speaker 2: if that's exactly how it's going to work. So there's
Speaker 2: sort of this push and pull between who's got all
Speaker 2: the control, combined with the fact that if you had
Speaker 2: the state do all of this, you know, the state
Speaker 2: would probably be raising taxes. There're ably in set of
Speaker 2: cutting taxes, which is happening in the budget here. There's
Speaker 2: an fighting come tax and things like that, and that's
Speaker 2: just how it would work, and so it would be
Speaker 2: a pastor not expensive from the state's perspective. That's definitely
Speaker 2: a lot of it.
Speaker 1: I guess that just ignores the Supreme Court edict that
Speaker 1: it's unconstitutional. The way they're funded right now sounds to
Speaker 1: me like you might be running the teachers' union problems
Speaker 1: and pushback because the control would then rest in Columbus.
Speaker 1: Not that that's necessarily a good thing, but they would
Speaker 1: have control over how money is spent and how much
Speaker 1: money is spent, which would take away local union and
Speaker 1: control from the teachers.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's definitely per there's no question about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I kind of thought so, Greg Laws and Buckeye
Speaker 1: Institute final online and learn more about what they do
Speaker 1: and what they're on top of each and every day.
Speaker 1: Buckeye Institute dot or Greg. It's always great having on
Speaker 1: the program. And if you come up with a quick
Speaker 1: fixed solution, come right back and let's talk about it.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, my pleasure. Seven to twenty. Right now,
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