By Brian Massie, A Watchman on the Wall
We were very impressed by Lake County Auditor Chris Galloway’s display of leadership when he discussed the Ohio property taxes with the three Lake County Commissioners at the September 18th Commissioners’ meeting.
Here is the complete video: https://www.youtube.com/live/qqz4iCcMRWg
We have edited the Commissioners’ meeting video to highlight Auditor Galloway’s and Commissioner Plecnik’s salient comments.
Here are some of the more memorable quotes from Auditor Galloway:
“Ohio has the second most taxing authorities and districts that can levy property taxes in the entire nation.” “Somewhere around 3,600 taxing authorities.”
“We are drowning in local and county government agency, jurisdiction, layers of government in the state that have taxing authority.”
“It’s a bad model.” “If you were starting a State from scratch today, you sure as hell wouldn’t build it that way.”
To have meaningful property tax reduction we must focus on:
“School funding and State, local, county government redundancy reduction.” “We must address labor which is 70% of any budget.”
“To lower taxes, we must reduce the size of government.”
Commissioner John Plecnik is spot on when he states that citizens are “sick and tired” of waiting for the state legislators to provide them with property tax relief. He reminds the legislators of their constitutional duty to fund public schools.
The Ohio Constitution (Article 6, Section 2) “The General Assembly shall make such provisions, by taxation, or otherwise, as, with the income arising from the school trust fund, will secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state; but no religious or other sect, or sects, shall ever have any exclusive right to, or control of, any part of the school funds of this state.”
To date, House Speaker Matt Huffman and Senate President Rob McColley have not agreed to meet with the Committee to Abolish Ohio Property Taxes, and have stated that nothing will happen based on the Governor’s new committee’s recommendations. Huffman and McColley have decided that the citizens will eventually drop the issue, and will have to accept what the legislators give them.
We have aging socialists running our State government, and they focus only on the needs of their donor base, thereby disregarding the needs of the average citizens.
The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples’ money.”…Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Note to Huffman and McColley:
You will reap what you have sown!
Any citizen that votes for any property tax levy is funding their own demise.
Any tax causing a citizen to become homeless is immoral.
Categories: Lake, Real Estate Taxes