Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com.
Amid skyrocketing local property taxes, the Republican clique that runs Ohio’s House of Representatives will return to Columbus July 21 to try overriding “line-item vetoes,” by Gov. Mike DeWine, a fellow Republican, of parts of the state’s new 2025-27 budget (House Bill 96).
True, the House (65 Republicans, 34 Democrats) and state Senate (24 Republicans, nine Democrats) could have comprehensively addressed the property-tax mess before fleeing that Statehouse for their hometown hammocks.
But that’d be asking too much of a well-paid legislature that, year by year, yaks more and works less, while taking potshots at fellow Republican DeWine, who is often the only adult in any room full of GOP insiders.
DeWine can veto not just entire bills but also parts of any bill that lets Ohio spend public money (an “appropriation”). A governor’s veto of an entire bill, or of an item in a spending bill, survives unless three-fifths of the Ohio House’s members (60 of 99) and three-fifths of the Senate’s (20 of 33) vote to override a veto.
Ohioans gave the governor veto power by a constitutional amendment OK’d in 1903, then weakened in 1912, to rein in a legislature that had repeatedly passed bills that picked the pockets of taxpayers and consumers. (Sound familiar?)
Some term-limited newbies in today’s General Assembly shrieked that DeWine’s vetoes were an insult to the legislature. Those gripes provided more proof, were it needed, that a shocking number of today’s General Assembly members are clueless about checks and balances.
In theory, all 67 of DeWine’s line-item vetoes are in House Republicans’ crosshairs, but these three, which would make it harder for school boards to fund Ohio’s public schools, are said to be House Republicans’ crosshairs:
Tomorrow’s debate will flood the Statehouse with dreck from anti-public-school legislators, who are gambling dangerously with Ohio’s future.
The Committee to Abolish Ohio’s Property Taxes is asking voters to sign petitions proposing to place, on next year’s statewide ballot, a ban on all Ohio property taxes, current and future.
Should that make 2026’s ballot, there’s a chance that voters — fed up with legislators’ failure to genuinely reform property taxes without hurting schools — might repeal and ban property taxes. If so, a new picture, a thumbnail map of Ohio, will appear in Mr. Webster’s dictionary, alongside the definition of “chaos.”
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Lawmakers playing dangerous game by overriding DeWine property tax vetoes | Opinion
Reporting by Thomas Suddes / The Columbus Dispatch
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