By Brian Massie, A Watchman on the Wall, An Independent Populist
We met Mr. Andrew Tobias, a senior reporter for SIGNAL STATEWIDE at the Columbus rally on November 20th protest rally.
Anyone that wants to join our growing movement, please send us your contact information at Stoppropertytaxes@gmail.com
Could one man’s crusade spark a property tax ballot issue?
Gerald Bruce may have lost the first battle in his effort to radically overhaul Ohio’s system of assessing and collecting property taxes.
But the 64-year-old Groveport maintenance worker isn’t giving up his crusade – the first step of which involves trying to personally get 1,000 voters to sign his petition for a constitutional amendment that, among other things, would cap a property’s taxable value until it’s transferred or sold.
“I don’t go around to houses now, especially after dark. Some people just are really jumpy,” Bruce said.
In an interview, Bruce said he got turned on to the issue after two properties he owns – including his self-constructed house – saw their taxable values go up dramatically last year following the regular revaluation in Franklin County. He researched the state rules for constitutional amendments and got working. His wife, Debra, wrote the language.
“I work so hard. I try to keep up the house nicely and everything. The thanks from the state I got was, ‘Thanks for improving your property. Now you can pay us more rent,’” Bruce said.
Bruce is hoping to spur a grassroots movement to support his amendment, if he can just get past Attorney General Dave Yost’s office. His chances of ultimate success are very low – it typically costs $3 million to $5 million just to make the ballot, since state rules require citizen-proposed amendment campaigns to eventually collect around 442,000 valid voter signatures, including a minimum number in half of Ohio’s 88 counties. Getting past Yost’s office is the first step in the process.
Bruce was tripped up in July, when Yost’s office rejected hundreds of his signatures on technical grounds (they failed to comply with a state law requiring petitioners to separate voter signatures by county.)
Before, Bruce said he got help from others collecting signatures. Now he’s just doing the work on his own. He views it not as a retirement project – a project that will allow him to retire.
“It’s a sleeping issue. It’s really hunting people who are retired. It’s really hurting them a lot. I want to retire in three or four years, but I won’t be able to if my property taxes keep going up like this. It’s too much,” Bruce said.
More on property taxes
I’m interested in Bruce’s story not because I think he’s likely to succeed but because I’m keeping an eye on broader grassroots efforts focused on property taxes and the real-world impact of property-tax increases.
There’s an ongoing property tax revaluation happening in phases around the state, which will be the first since the low interest rates of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic helped send home values skyrocketing. That means that, depending on where they live, Ohio property owners are likely to see significant increases in their tax bills soon if they haven’t already.
Around 12 people – representing several different anti-property tax groups from the Cleveland and Cincinnati areas – held a rally at the Ohio Statehouse on Wednesday, calling on lawmakers to either reform property tax laws or eliminate them altogether.
“We’re going to become a voting bloc, I know it,” said one organizer at the rally, Sarah Wolf of Cincinnati. “This is changing across the country. …. We’ve been mad by ourselves for far too long.”
There are a bunch of bills pending in the Ohio legislature to limit property taxes. Some apply to certain groups – like military widows or senior citizens – while others are more broad. Some would require the state to pay to offset property tax hikes while others would reduce revenue for schools and other local government entities.
There’s even a proposal from lawmakers to amend the state constitution – which would require voter approval – to freeze annual tax increases at 4%. This proposal got its first committee hearing on Tuesday, roughly six months after it was introduced.
The bills seem unlikely to pass, given the disagreement over whether state or local government should foot the bill, so to speak. But I’ll be writing more on this topic soon.
Categories: Community Activism, Real Estate Taxes, State of Ohio