By Brian Massie, A Watchman on the Wall
https://fox8.com/news/the-push-to-eliminate-property-taxes-in-ohio-gets-lawmakers-attention
The push to eliminate property taxes in Ohio is gaining the attention of lawmakers
by: Dave Nethers
Posted: Apr 13, 2026 / 03:49 PM EDT
Updated: Apr 13, 2026 / 04:00 PM ED
LEVELAND (WJW) — If organizers are successful in Ohio, a question of whether voters want to eliminate all property tax across the state could be on ballots in November.
The effort was started by Brian Massie of Concord Township, and Leonard Gilbert of Mentor Ohio, both of whom are on the Committee to Abolish Ohio Property Taxes.
“When I saw that my property taxes increased 40% in the 10 years I had been in the home, I said, ‘Well, if we stay on this path of ever-increasing property taxes, they’re going to price me out of my home,’” said Massie, who tells Fox 8 his and Gilbert’s efforts started by trying to convince state lawmakers to eliminate property taxes just for senior citizens.
Massie says after lawmakers brushed them off they decided to expand the effort to eliminate all property tax across the state.
The effort does have the attention of state lawmakers including Representative Bill Roemer of Richfield, chairman of the State House Ways and Means Committee.
“There’s two issues that have been really important to me. One is property taxes, and as we have talked, we authored through my Ways and Means Committee that I chair, we did $3.8 billion in tax reductions for property taxes,” said Roemer.
Roemer helped co-sponsor five tax relief bills that were signed into law by Governor Mike DeWine in December.
Roemer also led a property tax study commission in the state legislature.If Ohio abolishes property taxes, how would it impact schools, Metroparks?
“We made 21 recommendations. The governor originally vetoed four of our recommendations that we had done. The governor did his own property tax study commission, and guess what? They said the exact same thing that we did,” he told Fox 8.
The bills that DeWine signed into law in December include:
- House Bill 124, which reforms property evaluation
- House Bill 129 which is intended to prevent high increases in school levies
- House Bill 186 which, in part, ensures school tax increases do not exceed the rate of inflation
- House Bill 309 which gives more authority to local governments to reduce voter-approved property tax levies deemed “unnecessary or excessive”
- House Bill 335, known as the ‘Property Tax Relief NOW Act’ which, in part, prohibits or limits most local government bodies from imposing, unvoted ‘inside’ millage for schools and local governments
“It’s going to reduce property tax increases and give credits to people of about $3.8 billion across the state of Ohio over the next three years. That’s significant amounts of money. The other thing it does, it stops those spikes so we have limited property tax increases other than those that are voted, and one of the things we wanted to do was to make sure people had the right to vote,” Roemer said.
“We also made some modifications to increase the homeowner credit. If you are living in your home you are going to get an additional 3% credit over and above the 2.5% percent credit that you already receive,” said Roemer.
But, Roemer says the effort to eliminate $24 billion of property tax across the state would not help the average homeowner as much as it would benefit large corporations.
“The biggest beneficiaries are not grandma and grandpa, it’s corporations. It’s Target, it’s Walmart, it’s Ford, it’s Honda, because that means corporations in Ohio won’t be paying property taxes and over a third of the property taxes are paid by corporations,” Roemer told Fox 8 News.
Supporters of the effort to abolish property tax in Ohio say the concerns about funding of schools and public safety amount to nothing more than “fear mongering.”
Roemer says he understands that people are frustrated with the trajectory of their property taxes across Ohio.
“People are rightly upset. Rather than property taxes increasing gradually, something that you can expect and budget for, we have seen in many cases property taxes significantly increase.”
Roemer said state lawmakers are not done working to provide relief.
There’s a lot more that needs to be done. We are going to look at the valuation process. We are going to look at when levies can be on the ballot. People have said we should only have levies in general elections, I tend to agree with that. There’s more work that is definitely going to be done, we continue to work on that,” said Roemer.
Editorial comments by Brian Massie, A Watchman on the Wall
I spoke at Representative Roemer’s Committee to Review and Reform Property Taxes and they censored my speech. They played classical music over what I was saying. I was told that it was a “computer glitch”. Telling the truth is a foreign concept in the Ohio statehouse. When I contacted my representatives and senator and Representative Roemer to get my speech on the record, they ignored my requests. Our “representative democracy” is just an illusion.
If the legislators had listened to us and abolished property taxes for citizens 65 and older, it would have cost $3.0 billion or 3% of the total State of Ohio budget. Their attempts to mollify the citizens cost $3.8 billion by making complex changes to an overly complex, immoral system of taxation is far too little, too late .
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Categories: Community Activism, Real Estate Taxes, State of Ohio