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You know, Ohio Education Association representing 120,000 educators who are united in their mission to create the excellent public schools.

Every child deserves more at o h e talk.

A conversation with the leaders of the Ohio House speaker Matt Hoffman.

And Minority Leader Donny Isaacson.

That's this week in the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

More than a thousand bills have been proposed in the first year of the two year session, with a little over 30 of them, including the four state budgets signed by governor Mike DeWine, who has not been afraid to issue vetoes.

He struck 67 items in the state operating budget alone.

I looked ahead to what's next on the big issues with House Speaker Matt Hoffman and Minority Leader Donny Isaacson.

So I want to start out by talking about probably the biggest issue we've been talking about all year, which is property taxes.

Republicans have claimed the four most recent property tax bills will offer $2 billion in property tax relief, and the most significant modernization of the property tax system in decades.

But they don't translate to a lot of big cuts for most people in terms of their property tax bills.

So, speaker, I want to ask you, why do Republicans continue with income tax cuts in the budget?

Which constituents weren't saying they were clamoring for instead of going for property tax relief?

Well, yeah, I mean, first of all, how real estate, property taxes and income tax work, it's really a completely separate ball game.

The real estate property tax system had grown, out of control almost to the extent where people didn't understand that there was no incentive.

Other than, well, I like my school, so I'm going to vote.

Yes.

Well, I'm mad about something, so I'm voting no.

People just didn't understand that.

In addition, there was these extraordinary increases, 30, 50, 70% in some cases, really, with no explanation.

The same house suddenly valued twice as what it was before.

So that's one thing.

The the false connection of income tax to real estate taxes.

In fact, low flat income tax rates create more revenue for government.

We've gone from, over 9% and several, 7 or 8, brackets in the last 20 years down now to just one rate at 2.75.

Every one of those cuts and the changes, the way that we did income tax actually produced more revenue for the government.

The answer to that, of course, is when people get to keep some of their money, they spend it.

That economic economic activity creates more revenue through other taxes.

So those two things really aren't unconnected.

Lior Isaacson, I want to ask you to weigh in here, not only on that, but also on how some Republicans have said that school districts are sitting on billions of dollars in reserve compared to their operating revenue, and that school districts could spend their money more wisely.

Let me ask you about both of those things.

Sure.

Well, thanks for having me.

My first time, doing this, I appreciate it.

And, you know, this is, I think, one of the most fundamental issues we have in the state, which is that there's no doubt people's property taxes in Ohio are way too high.

And it's part of the broader affordability crisis that we're seeing for families all over the country.

But certainly in our state and I think you nailed it.

It's sort of it's been a choice over the last decade or two decades of how to balance public education funding and the role of the state property tax rates and income taxes, and the choice that the state has made over the last really decade has been to bring income taxes down, particularly for those at the top of the income scale.

Property taxes have gone way up, and part of the reason driving those increased property taxes is that the state's contribution to public education, as a percentage has fallen dramatically.

So instead of the state contributing around 50% of all K-12 public education, which would put 50% on local communities, it's moved closer to 30% from the state, which puts a much heavier burden on property taxes.

So until we address that core issue, which is the state share of public education, we are going to continue to see high property taxes, regardless of how we tinker with the language, because it continues to put the pressure on local communities to fund their public schools and other public services.

So those are some of the choices that the legislature has been weighing in on.

And, you know, the trend over the last decade or so has been lower income taxes for the highest earners.

We've seen skyrocketing property taxes, in large part because of the pressure put on the funding for K-12 education.

Speaker Hoffman last month was pretty good for tax levies in terms of I mean, in spite of the anger of property taxes, 65.5% of school levies passed, almost 90% of library levies passed.

You have some Republicans, including Representative David Thomas, who's been involved in a lot of these property tax bills, saying we can't protect taxpayers from tax hikes, that they are choosing at the ballot box.

So bills have passed to eliminate replacement and emergency levies is a bill that would require 60% voter approval for levies.

If one were suspicious.

One might think that you're trying to limit the things that voters can vote on.

Yeah, well, we're not going to do the 60% thing.

People introduce bills, but that doesn't mean that that they're going to pass.

And, you know, the answer is most people, if they're happy and they have money, they don't really understand what this may happen in the future, not necessarily to their property tax bill, but they like their school.

They like their library.

But in many cases, the people who are voting in favor of those are the people who use it and can afford it.

There are a lot of people who don't use it and can't afford it.

And it's if you pass with 51% of the vote, well, it doesn't make any difference with the other 49%.

Think of or the people who didn't vote, or the people who don't get to vote for a variety of reasons.

So, we need that.

The answer really is that, property taxes have gone up so much, and you know that if we pick a point in time and said, well, it's 5050, that's what the state and, local property taxes, other revenue sources are doing.

We have given record increases from the state to public school districts, especially in the 21 and 23 budgets, the highest ever.

Okay.

And so if that amount goes up this much, but property taxes go up even higher.

Well, it looks like the percentage of the state has gone down that much.

And so that's simply you can see how the math has happened.

So there are school districts that are carrying over I think the total number is $10.7 billion that went unspent.

While most taxpayers would rather see that money in their checking account than a government checking account.

There are a lot of reasons that school districts will give for that.

But I want to ask you, Isaacson, are you and your colleagues taking this abolishment of property taxes effort seriously enough, in your view?

Because that's driving a lot of this conversation.

Is this volunteer effort to try to put that question before voters next year?

I get why people are angry.

They're angry because their property taxes have gone through the roof.

I mean, I've been getting calls now since I started in the legislature three years ago from particularly seniors in my district that are worried about being able to stay in their homes.

The idea that the government would tax a senior who owns their home out of their house is outrageous.

So there's no doubt that we have to bring down property taxes, and we should be providing more immediate relief to the people who need it the most.

Things like circuit breakers, which have been bipartisan in the past.

So there are strategies to provide relief in the short term for those most in need.

But ultimately, the long term fix is that we have to have the state contribute more to public education, pay its fair share of the public education funding.

And, you know, this is something that every family can understand.

If you're earning $17 today an hour, but you used to earn $15 an hour, but everything costs $3 more, right?

That extra bump in $2, you're actually earning less money.

You're in terms of purchasing power because the cost of living has gone up so much.

And so the same is true in education.

In fact, our schools have seen inflation at much higher rates than the average.

And so even though the total number of dollars has gone up from the state, what the schools can actually use that money for has gone dramatically down.

And so that is why you're seeing such a pinch in K-12 education.

And the numbers unfortunately don't lie, which is that we used to have one of the best public education systems in the country.

We were in the top five in almost every metric.

Thankfully, that's when I was in, public schools growing up.

And since then, we're in not only the bottom half, we're in the high 30s out of 50 states on most metrics these days.

So, you know, we do have to ultimately fix how we fund our public schools so that we can get back to having a world class public education system.

Some critics will talk about how vouchers and the expansion of vouchers has been a part of why the state isn't fully funding public education, and you've been a strong supporter of vouchers.

Our vouchers.

Aren't they taking away money that could be going to public schools and dealing with all of this?

We are fully funding public education.

We're giving public education more money than they've ever had.

Just we did a $600 million, increase and go and look at what your individual school district spent and what they spend on that.

And the answer is, yeah.

Every dollar that we spend not on public education, whether it's a scholarship system for the state parks, for the prisons, for helping the homeless, all of the other things that we did, we could use all of those dollars and spend it on public education.

It's not just that program.

And so two things here.

One is the folks who are choosing a scholarship are doing it because they think it's better for their child, whether it's their parents or grandparents.

Whoever's running their their household.

And in many places, I was just at Saint Thomas Aquinas School on East Broadway Street in a very tough neighborhood that, in effect, has become the public school for that neighborhood.

Those kids are walking there, and they're operating out of 126 year old building, by the way, they they're not getting any money from the Schools Facility Commission.

And those folks are choosing that for a lot of reasons.

They have a 93% attendance rate safety.

It's close by and all of that.

But the other point is what the state is paying for those students is probably about one fourth of what we're paying for a public school student in East Cleveland, Ohio.

So it's good for the student and the family, and it's good for the taxpayer.

And why somebody would want to take that system out of the way and say, we're not spending enough money on new public school buildings in places like Indian Hill, in Cincinnati, that it baffles me.

Let's talk about the budget here.

Speaking of vetoes, over 67 vetoes in the budget.

But one of the items, probably the biggest headline item, I guess, besides the flat tax, was the Browns stadium and the $600 million from unclaimed funds that go that now that we know that that transfer can happen.

According to a federal judge's ruling.

Let me ask you later, Isaacson.

The city of Cleveland has dropped its lawsuits, signed on to a $100 million deal.

Cobb County Executive Chris Ronayne isn't thrilled about this.

But if the argument holds that this stadium is going to be an economic generator, is this a good use of state money, especially money that wasn't earning interest?

So I think the question that we have posed and will continue to pose to the people of Ohio is, what can we do with $600 million?

How many more teachers could we have in classrooms?

How many more urgent care clinics could we have in rural areas where it's tough to find, health care professionals?

Right?

How can we help bring down these skyrocketing health insurance premiums that we know are coming from DC?

And so there's so many needs that families have right now.

Child care is the number one expense for most Ohio families with kids under five.

It is so hard to find a place to drop your kid off that you can trust.

They're going to get a high quality, both care and education before they go to kindergarten, when you're on your way to work.

So talk about an economic barrier, right?

That is holding back our economy because so many people can't go to work or can't go to the jobs they want, or can't take the promotion because childcare is too expensive.

Or how many people would love to downsize their house and seniors, but they can't find a place they can't afford, and vice versa.

People can't afford to buy their first home and get started in homeownership because we're not building enough at home.

Prices are too high.

So the question is, were there better uses for the 600 million?

But I take your point that now that the money's been allocated one, it should go to projects that are going to generate growth.

It should go to projects like this one that have a project labor agreement that makes sure that these are good paying jobs for people who live in the area and are Ohioans, so that we can boost the economy.

And more of it should go to places like Cincinnati.

So that is, spoken as a leader from Cincinnati.

Speaker, I want to ask you, I know that and I in full disclosure, I'm a Browns fan, but I know that there are a lot of people who are concerned about the state giving money to billionaire owners who, if they wanted their own stadium, they could afford to build one.

Yeah, well, we shouldn't be doing those folks should be outraged at the Intel project at the end of all project, at the battery project, at the hundreds of projects where both state and local governments give economic incentives to create jobs.

Leaders.

Right.

If we didn't do any of that, we could spend money on a lot of other things, including K-12 education, if we if we wanted to or whatever else it was.

The question is, at what point do we say, hey, if we spend this money, we're going to get more money back.

The people who are working on this project, they're going to be able to afford daycare are there.

And so the question is, do we want economic activity where people have their own jobs, or do we want to say no or limit economic activity?

I think a free market and in good paying jobs that enables people to be financially free.

And so it's always those kinds of balances.

I think in this situation, this will be, the largest economic development project in the history of Ohio.

Now that Intel is not going the way that we thought it would.

And it will be a unique, place that really is, like no other facility, certainly, east of the Mississippi.

So, and I do think, I think the leaders, right, the way this was drafted, allowed other cities, particularly City of Cincinnati, to do substantial renovations to Bengals Stadium and all of that, and done with a money that, frankly, is going to continue to grow by the hundreds of millions.

We had $524 million come to this unclaimed funds last year.

So it's going to be, it will be an exciting time in Cleveland.

We're running out of time.

So I want to ask you a couple more things real quickly here.

Data centers are bringing in billions of dollars to Ohio, but also an enormous need of energy that they're demanding.

There's a concern about an air bubble potentially bursting here.

Is the state dealing with data centers and the energy needs that they have appropriately, should they be doing more?

But well, we are.

Ohio is uniquely situated because of House Bill 15.

We are the only state in the United States that is allowing behind the meter power generation so an AI facility can come to Ohio where there's plenty of water and they can put their facility there and build their own power generation.

You can't do that anywhere else in the United States.

I just met with our chairman, Adam Holmes, who's done a wonderful job shepherding this through.

And, you know, he's he's he said, I came back from a conference.

How did you get this done in Ohio while we you know, that was a bipartisan effort.

I should I should add and, so I'm very excited about that.

So I, you know, we want to have, data centers, of course, we're going to be some local control about where those go.

And I think there's some, some places that they could go that people want to have objections to.

So excited about it.

Is it enough?

So I think this is you know, there's areas where we disagree sort of fundamentally about, you know, do tax cuts for the wealthiest people drive growth or do investments directly in, you know, schools and child care facilities drive growth?

I think those but there are areas where we have really actually a lot of agreement, and we have done a lot of bipartisan work.

I think housing policy is one, generating more housing to stabilize rents and bring down prices and give people more access.

The other, that we've shown this year in energy policy, which is we do need an all of the above approach because utility costs are through the roof.

Right.

We saw it this summer.

We're going to see more of it this winter.

And it's only going to go up.

Right.

And Ohioans are screaming that our costs are too high.

It's too expensive to lead an everyday life.

Utility costs are a big part of that.

And so we do need a bipartisan approach.

And I think we've had one this year.

And hopefully we'll continue to where we need more energy.

It's sort of this, yes, we should have more solar.

Yes, we should have behind the meter generation.

Yes, we should have more nuclear and wind opportunities.

And, you know, if if we can find ways to do, you know, clean natural gas, we should have that too, right.

Because the goal is take advantage of the resources we have in Ohio and bring down costs for people across the state.

And there's a real opportunity for bipartisanship and energy policy real quick, I want to talk about some religious themed legislation.

The Charlie Kirk Heritage Act would permit teachers to discuss the positive influence of religion, and specifically Judeo-Christian values, on American history.

The Historic Educational Displays Act would permit the Ten Commandments to be displayed, along with the U.S.

Constitution and other options.

The Olivia Act would require the showing of fetal development video produced by an anti-abortion group starting in fifth grade.

There's also legislation regarding religious release time.

I want to ask you both is this too much religion, specifically Christianity in public policy?

I'll start with you later.

You know, the First Amendment is first for a reason, because it is fundamental to everything else.

And all of our other rights people came to this country seeking religious freedom.

And that is why the initial settlers came here.

And the First Amendment not only gives us freedom of religion, but there is freedom from religion.

And so that's the Establishment Clause.

The government cannot establish a government religion.

And, you know, as we noted a few weeks ago, any government that is strong enough to impose a religion on people is a government that is strong enough to take a religion away, which is why religious freedom is such a bedrock to everything else we have in the country.

So I think it's both a mistake, and I think it's dangerous, actually, to let religion into our public schools, to let religion into our government, activities, because there's a reason we have the division of church and state, and it's actually to make people more free.

So there's nothing wrong with teaching the role that various religions have played in history.

Of course we should, and we already do.

But there is something dangerous and wrong and frankly, un-American with letting one religion specifically come from the government.

Yeah, there's no, requirement that religion is being imposed on anybody in any of these bills.

So that's number one.

Number two, the Ohio Bill of rights and the Ohio Constitution is article one.

There's a reason why article one has is the Bill of rights.

And I'll come to before the legislature comes before the executive branch.

And article one, section seven of the Ohio Constitution.

The Bill of rights talks about the Establishment Clause, a similar language to the federal Constitution and freedom from religion.

But it also says specifically that the General Assembly shall provide the means of religious education, because that's important to to the moral, community.

And the question is, what is the General Assembly doing to provide the means of religious education?

It doesn't say you can do it.

What if you want, which some people say, oh, you shouldn't talk about religion.

Actually, we're required to in Ohio under the Constitution and we're required to pay for it.

And I don't think we do.

So telling folks in a bill, you know, we're going to talk about Christianity, we're not going to make you go to church.

We're not going to make you go to mass, but we're going to talk about the role of Christianity, which is significant in this country.

That's required by the Ohio Bill of rights.

So and, you know, the other thing is, you know, frankly, we have been very poor about, providing the means of religion.

It's just education, which is the General Assembly's mandate.

Real quick, I gaming good idea or not?

Well, I, you know, at some point the folks who like to gamble have, a lot of people happening anyway.

Yeah, there are people who don't want to gamble.

There are people who do want to gamble.

You know, I think that there's as as one of my friends said, if you want to gamble, there's lots of places you can go gamble.

But, you know, I think also that, we should look at the fact that there if we're going to, if we're going to have gambling in the state of Ohio, it more ought to more directly benefit the taxpayers of the state of Ohio.

So that's a yes.

No, it's not a yes.

It's a let's see how this is going to work out.

You know, we I understand there's the will of the voters when casinos came in, and I know they all you casino folks out there, you hate when I say it's I'm going to say it one more time.

They came in, spent $40 million and created a casino system in the state of Ohio that benefits strictly the people who put on that campaign.

Too bad.

Because if we're going to have casinos and other states like Indiana, many of them use those as economic drivers, sometimes peters out with with that.

But, I think at some point there's a saturation with gambling if it can be adjusted so more money stays locally, can benefit, law enforcement can do other things, then I'm certainly willing to have a conversation.

Let's close with your thoughts on iGaming.

So should Ohio do it.

So it's it goes back to a question we've been talking about all day, which is what kind of place and community do we want to have?

Do we want a community where we are having some of the most addicting activity on people's phones at all times?

We've seen the numbers from other states, right?

Particularly young men.

This is crippling young men at a time when we actually need to be investing in them and supporting them, rather than feeding them access to incredibly addicting behavior.

Right.

They're on their phones.

And so, you know, is it the best way to fund public schools to, you know, have a generation of people addicted to gambling on their phones?

I think we can probably do better than that.

There's a reason why we've said on alcohol, on drugs, on gambling, you should be free to do it if you're an adult and like consenting adults.

And but we're going to carve out you can't drink wherever you want.

You shouldn't be able to smoke wherever you want, and you probably shouldn't be able to gamble whenever and wherever you want.

We have dedicated places because we have seen in places that have allowed this to run rampant and have a really negative effect on families, an increase in suicide, an increase in domestic violence, and particularly for young men with sports, gambling and iGaming.

We are seeing really scary things happening around the country.

So we should be very careful before we let that flood.

The system in Ohio.

And that is it for this week for my colleagues at the statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Media.

Thanks for watching.

Please check out our website at State News Morgue or find us online by searching State of Ohio Show.

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Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah, and please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

Support for the Statehouse News Bureau comes from Medical Mutual, dedicated to the health and well-being of Ohioans, offering health insurance plans, as well as dental, vision and wellness programs to help people achieve their goals and remain healthy.

More at Med mutual.com.

The law offices of Porter, right, Morris and Arthur LLP.

Porter, right, is dedicated to bringing inspired legal outcomes to the Ohio business community.

More at Porter.

Right.

Com Porter Wright inspired every day.

You know, Ohio Education Association representing 120,000 educators who are united in their mission to create the excellent public schools.

Every child deserves more at o h e talk.