(upbeat music) (graphic pops) - Hello, and welcome to "Journal," I'm Steve Kendall.

Ohio has a new budget, but more than a few inside and outside of government aren't overall pleased with it.

Joining us are the host of "The State of Ohio," Karen Kasler from Columbus, and Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes and Dr. David Jackson from Bowling Green State University.

Welcome to you all again.

Karen, talk about the budget process, where we started out, and what's going on now, because as we talk, the legislature will probably get together this week and start talking about overriding what the governor said no to in the budget that came out of the general assembly.

- Actually, it's happening within the hour.

The House is meeting in the Senate chamber because there's apparently air conditioning issue in the House chamber.

So all 99 members or however many actually are able to show up will be meeting in the Senate chamber to override three of Governor Mike DeWine's 67 line item vetoes.

And these three specifically relate to property taxes.

And Republicans who have said that these are important, say that overriding them now will give them time to take effect so that they could potentially positively affect property tax bills that will come out in January.

And so that's why the push is on now, because technically they have until next December, December of 2026 to override vetoes.

But they're doing it now because they say the pressure's on to try to make some changes to property tax bills that will come out in the next six months.

- [Steve] Yeah, and talk about t three things there are, because there's a fourth one they're not going to try an override, but, and I know you interviewed a couple of people, some people who are for the override and then a Republican who was not.

So talk about specifically the pieces they're looking at overriding and the governor said no to.

- Well, and there are four property tax related vetoes in the budget that DeWine identified.

The one that's not being taken up at this moment is one that would limit school districts to having 40% of their operating budget in cash collected from property taxes from voter-approved levies.

The rest of that money would have to be refunded to property taxpayers.

And schools have said that that will send them into financial chaos.

That's what DeWine actually said in his veto statement, that it would create financial instability for schools.

That one's not being taken up, but there's a really good chance that that could be considered later on, maybe not as a veto, but maybe as a separate bill.

The three that are being discussed as we speak today are, they're kind of more technical.

One is about county budget commissions and whether they can lower voter-approved levies.

Another is about, I'm trying to remember all the specifics of it, about emergency levies and limiting districts on power to enact emergency levies.

And then another is about what takes to calculate the effective tax rate, the 20 mil effective tax rate, and all the levies that have to go into that.

So it's complicated to explain, but Republicans keep saying that this is the kind of property tax relief that could really help people.

These are among the recommendations from a commission that looked at property tax reform and property tax law changes last year.

And so we will, as of right now, we'll wait to see.

But I'm guessing if they do meet, then they are going to go ahead and have the votes to override.

- Yeah, and Nicole, when you look at this, because we've seen this with this governor before and the legislature, which is controlled by his party, the override process has been employed a lot it seems, in the last few years of the DeWine administration.

So Nicole, kinda weigh in on that process and why there seems to be this disconnect sometimes between the governor and his fellow Republicans in the general assembly.

- So yeah, that's one of the things that makes this so interesting is the fact that you do have a Republican governor and a Republican majority state legislature, and he used the power of his line item veto pretty heavily here.

And members of his own party are pushing back.

They did that earlier on gubernatorial emergency powers kind of immediately after COVID.

And they've done it a couple times since.

And you're seeing it again with property tax.

And I think on this issue, part of the reason that you're seeing DeWine take these positions that's kind of out of step with the majority of his party is even though DeWine is a conservative Republican, the legislature is actually more conservative.

And so they're further to the right of DeWine.

Also, DeWine is not running for re-election.

He's terming out after this term.

So he doesn't have kind of a shadow of future here that he's looking towards to kind of take any political stance.

He's served in every single level of government.

And so he's kind of done after this.

And so he is not that concerned.

The other thing, because we are talking about property taxes here, is the legislature is playing a really risky game.

If you get rid of property taxes, or significantly reduced property taxes in the state, townships will have no funding.

The majority of township funding comes from property taxes., And so if those property taxes are changed in any way or significantly reduced as they're, people are also trying to do through a ballot initiative, townships are going to run out of money.

We also use property tax money to fund emergency services, so police and fire.

And so if you like having emergency services such as police and fire, that comes from property taxes.

And so there's some concern there too, not only about response times, but about what would happen to homeowners' insurance and your ability to get insurance on your home if there are no proximate fire stations.

And then finally, the one we think of most often with property taxes is education, and it would bankrupt schools.

And we've seen what happens to the quality of education when you do get rid of property taxes.

We can look to our good friends in California for this.

They capped property taxes in the early 70s through a citizen-driven initiative, Prop 13, and California went from having one of the best public education systems in the country to much lower down.

And they've essentially spent the last 40 some years kind of trying to claw that back.

And they can't make any changes to that initiative.

Property taxes are very low there, and so the money has to come from somewhere else.

- [Steve] And David, I know, and as Nicole and Karen are both talking about, you have this one potential override, which goes right to the heart of what we've talked about before, which is direct democracy, where a jurisdiction has put a levy on the ballot's been passed by their voters, but then this override would allow the county budget commission to say, "No, no, you don't need that much money after all."

So is this another attempt by the legislature to remove local control and move us a little farther away again from direct democracy?

- Well, the United States was founded in part on a tax rebellion, right?

I mean, we as a country have a unique relationship with taxation, let's say.

Americans, I think, tend to think they're more highly taxed than we are.

And then there's choices that have to be made about what kinds of taxes to pay.

And for some reason, property taxes really seem to rankle a lot of people.

There's number of myths that come out from that.

For example, people will say, "Well, I own property.

And people who don't own property aren't paying the tax, so they shouldn't be allowed to vote on it."

Well, it's not true that people who rent are not paying property taxes.

Where do they think their landlord gets the money to pay their property taxes, except from the rent that people are paying?

Or on the school situation, people will say, "Well, I don't have kids in schools, so why should I have to pay property taxes to keep those schools going?"

So it's, I would argue, from a philosophical standpoint, sort of a refusal to recognize the concept of a public good, that one can in fact benefit from something in a general sense, even if you don't get a specific benefit from it, we're all better off, in other words, having schools and fire departments and functioning public safety.

So, and then the question is, of course, that you mentioned about voting on these things.

Yeah, the idea is that the public voted on it, the turn out that can be pretty low, in some of those elections.

And of course then there's that complaint that says, "Well, only the people who pay the taxes should be allowed to vote on it."

We don't have that in this country.

Everybody is allowed to vote, whether they're officially a property owner, or not.

And so, given that we've got a stalled, I think for now, movement to ban property taxes entirely, and we've got this situation going on with the veto overrides, it really points out the extent to which there's some special characteristics of property taxes that really, really annoy a lot of people.

- [Steve] Okay, well, when we co we can talk about what would happen if you removed property taxes from the equation in the state of Ohio, and what that would mean for funding as a couple of people have noted.

Specific jurisdictions who only have that option.

So when we come back, we can talk about what would happen if we didn't have property taxes as a way to provide funding.

Back in just a moment with Dr. David Jackson, Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes, and the host of "The State of Ohio," Karen Kasler, here on "The Journal."

You're with us on "The Journal."

Our guests are Nicole Kalaf-Hughes, David Jackson from BGSU, and Karen Kasler from "The State of Ohio."

Karen, I know that you were talking with various people in the general assembly down in Columbus.

Not everybody is on board, even people in the Republican party, with some of these overrides.

So talk about your discussions with at least one member of the General Assembly who said, "I'm not, right now, I'm not a yes vote for these three things that are come up for potential override."

- Yeah, I mean, I've said several times that Republicans are planning on overriding these vetoes from their fellow Republican governor, Mike DeWine, but not all Republicans.

There were a handful of Republicans in the House that voted against the budget.

And we'll see what these veto overrides, if maybe the veto override, that the veto or the provisions that DeWine vetoed, if that's the reason that they opposed the budget.

The budget passed by 59 votes in the House and it needs 60 to do an override.

So that'll be interesting to watch.

But then in the Senate, there was one Republican who voted against the budget, and that is Senator Bill Blessing.

And I spoke to him for our TV show, "The State of Ohio," this past weekend about why he was a no vote, and whether he would indeed be a no vote on these veto overrides.

He's got a lot of thoughts on property taxes, and says that there are a lot of things that need to change.

And he's very concerned about overriding these vetoes and what that would happen.

He doesn't think that would make a big difference for most people.

And he thinks that frustration, people not seeing their property tax bills drop, would lead them to call for more changes, and potentially even help them make a decision that a lot of people don't wanna see.

And that is, if indeed a property tax abolition makes it to the ballot next year, there's a group that's trying to abolish property taxes in Ohio, and that he's worried about the impact of people being frustrated with their property taxes and they may vote to eliminate all of them.

And as Dr. Kalaf-Hughes said earlier, that really has an impact on the entire state.

It would be financial chaos for a lot of entities.

- Yeah, and Nicole, if an initiative like that should get to the ballot, I know that when, as I watched Karen's interview with the senator, he was very much of the opinion, he thought that people would understand that that wouldn't be a good idea if it got on the ballot.

How do you feel about that?

Would people understand that, oh, this is a huge step, and maybe not a good one?

Or would they get caught up and they, "Hey, great, I don't have to pay property taxes anymore."

Euphoria.

So we're casting into the future here, but do you think people would react and say, "No, no, this isn't a good move.

I see all the detail here, and I'm gonna vote against relieving myself of all property taxes."

Would human nature actually work that way or not?

- I think it would depend.

I think my guess is probably like the gut reaction is like, "Oh, yay, lower taxes!"

And then you actually think about what that means, right?

No one gets a property tax bill and thinks, "Yes, I love this!"

But you appreciate the fact that you have schools and fire and police, and that if you live in a township, it has funding and you tend to kind of forget about all those things right off the bat.

I think a lot of it really depends on the type of campaigns that would be run.

What I've seen from the group that's kind of trying to get this on the ballot are two things.

One, they've said, "Well, we don't actually really want this.

We just want the legislature to take action."

And I don't know how true that is one way or another.

But also there's actually no kind of plan for where they're going to make up the money.

And so I think if they had a well-written initiative that was like, okay, we're gonna lower property taxes or get rid of property taxes here, the funding is gonna be made up in these ways.

I think you would probably have a little bit greater chance of success.

But essentially what they're looking at is just decimating state money with no plan for kind of how to make that up.

And so it's gonna be on local jurisdictions, and to some extent the state, to figure out how to make that up because the Ohio State Constitution requires a number of these services that are funded by property taxes.

- [Steve] Sure.

- And so if you don't have that money, it has to come from somewhere.

And it could be sales tax, it could be other types of taxes, but it's gonna be a very rude awakening that is really going to be hard.

Other states that have lowered their property taxes have seen this, and when their property values have gone up, the state hasn't made more money.

And so we tend to think of California as a liberal state with really expensive real estate, which to some extent is true, but people end up paying way lower property taxes on a very expensive house there, than they would in a much less expensive house here.

- Hmm.

- And you see the effect of that in schools and communities.

- Yeah, and David, when we talk about sales tax, that's obviously a regressive tax because no matter what your means are, you're paying the same rate as someone who's making 50 times what you make.

And yet when you go to the store, you're gonna be paying the same rate on what you buy as someone who may be much better off than you are.

And that's considered not, that's not the way we've typically looked at some of our pot taxing policies.

- [David] Yeah.

What kinds of taxes we have are choices that we make.

And there are people who know what the consequences are in terms of who it affects negatively, who it affects positively.

I mean, these are not eternal mysteries of the universe.

Economists will tell us what is a regressive tax, what is a progressive tax.

Lost in all of this is the discussion that we used to have about why using property taxes to fund schools was problematic, being the inequality that it produces, where basically, if you want to predict whether or not somebody's gonna succeed in life, just figure out what their zip code is, and it gives you a pretty good indication.

So it might not be a bad idea for us to start thinking about that concept again as well.

Not just the sort of blind hatred of all taxation that seems to be out there among some.

But also thinking about what we want to have as a society, and how we want to pay for it, and who we want to have pay for it.

And the question of the ballot initiatives too.

One thing that I would add in there, because I've been thinking about this with another colleague of mine, looking at the anti gerrymandering vote that happened.

What kind of election, what year the referendum would appear, would be meaningful too.

There has been some discussion that putting the anti gerrymandering referendum on in a general election in Ohio, presidential election in which Donald Trump, well, he carried the state by eight points twice and carried it by 11 points, might not have been the best decision, if you look back and see that the marijuana issue and the abortion referenda passed and those were not in presidential years.

So you have choices to make about when you put things on the ballot too, that have an effect on the success or failure of a ballot initiative.

- Yeah, when we come back, we can talk more about that, because obviously lurking in the background is, as you mentioned, gerrymandering, it's redistricting time again in Ohio, or will be shortly.

And there've been obviously a wide range of opinions on what should or shouldn't be done.

And it's happening around the country too, because the president's weighed in on what Texas should do with their redistricting.

California's talked about, well maybe we'll retaliate if Texas does what they do.

So redistricting is not just an Ohio thing, but it's on the front of our plate all the time as well.

So we can talk a little about that when we come back.

Back in just a moment here on "The Journal," with Karen Kasler, Nicole Kalaf-Hughes, and David Jackson.

Back in a moment.

You are with us on "The Journal."

Our guests are Dr. David Jackson, Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes from Bowling Green State University, and the host of "The State of Ohio," Karen Kasler.

As we left that last segment, Karen, the word gerrymandering, redistricting, came up.

Obviously the state's had its mind on other business right now.

So is there anything going on with the state talking about redistricting and gerry, and that sort of thing at this point?

Or has all their attention basically been working on the budget the last several months?

- Well, redistricting always seems to be lurking in the background.

We were always talking about it, it seems like.

And I think last year there was a hope, the last time the maps were drawn, rather, there was a hope that they would last longer.

But there's a court order that says that our congressional maps need to be redrawn.

So the 15 congressional districts need to be redone by the legislature and they need to be done by December, because that's when the deadline is to file for next year's ballot.

And so you're hearing some pressure from national Republicans that the map should change.

Right now we have 10 Republicans and five Democrats.

I don't necessarily know if the map was drawn to be 10 Republicans and five Democrats, but that's how voters made their choices.

But now Senator Bernie Moreno has been saying that the map should be more like 12 to three.

- [Steve] Hmm.

- Or, and you've even heard some people suggest 13 to two.

And now Speaker Matt Huffman has said a status quo map he thinks would be okay.

But there again is a lot of pressure by National Republicans to make Ohio a very Republican state, and to really, I mean, it's pretty openly talking about gerrymandering when you say the map should be 12 to three, favoring Republicans.

- Yeah, 'cause as we roll up toward the 26 Congressional elections, obviously, the battle's gonna be in the House of Representatives, somewhat in the Senate, but really more in the House of Representatives.

So besides Ohio, other states, David are also talking about sort of, they're not using the G word, but they're implying that, oh, we need to redraw these, so that one side or the other has a big advantage compared to what maybe the congressional representation is in a state like Texas or even California, which is saying, let's retaliate if Texas goes down that road, we'll load up our side with Democrats in California to offset Texas's effort to do the opposite in their state.

- [David] Yeah, looking at the various states, I mean, so the most recent situation was where Texas said, "Okay, we need to think about getting maybe a few more Republican seats."

And then Gavin Newsom, who clearly wants to be president, the governor of California has said, "Well, then, let's see what we can do out here."

In there, we're talking places that have a lot of seats and are probably already fairly gerrymandered, as is say, Illinois, New York.

So what happens with this is the most recent place to say that they're going to do gerrymandering, whatever party controls that place, they sort of get blamed as being the evil ones.

But then they'll say, "Well, no, we only did it because Illinois did it."

And then Illinois says, "We're only doing it because Texas did it."

And California, because the great political philosopher, Machiavelli, once said that the person who does, basically, what he says is that the person who gives up doing things the way they are done, and instead tries to do things as they should be done is likely to bring themselves ruin.

And so states that are out there with people in them saying, "Oh, gerrymandering is wrong, we shouldn't do that, we shouldn't do that."

Well, it is done.

That is the way that the politics in America works right now.

And so, it's helping Newsom's reputation, it seems, among Democrats right now, where he's saying he's willing to push back on this because it looks like Democrats are looking for a fighter or looking for somebody who isn't out there talking about pie in the sky, right and wrong, but is willing to sort of get in the mud and push back and fight back.

It's worth taking a step back from it though, even Machiavelli aside, and thinking about right and wrong a little bit, that there is something just unseemly about politicians choosing their own constituents, predicting with near certainty how elections will go in the vast majority of congressional districts.

So that what ends up happening is the primary decides the winner and turnout in primaries is really low, and turnout in America is pretty low anyway.

So we end up with this situation where you'll forget the argument that I think is compelling, that more extreme people tend to vote in the primaries.

Just the low number of people who are really making decisions for everyone because of things like gerrymandering, can really raise questions about just how well-functioning our democratic republic is.

But then again, people sit around on TV shows and can talk about these abstract ideas.

People who are on the ground trying to win don't have that luxury, because if they don't win, they don't have power, and they can't do the things they want to do, so... - Yeah, and Nicole, as David just said too, if you think about this, that that flies in the face of what we believe American democracy has been, that oh, it's elections are fair and unbiased, and everybody comes to this at the same, it comes to the table at the same level.

And yet, as David just said, primaries start to dictate what the amount of gerrymandering around the country.

If you win a Republican primary in a Republican state, you're almost guaranteed of winning the seat and vice versa in a Democratic state.

So how do we get out of that and how is that, how does that change the way American democracy looks?

- As far as how get out of it, we would actually have to want to.

And while there is definitely a movement of voters that want to, because they realize that their voices are not necessarily being heard, but if we don't have an appetite at the state or the national level to change how we count the votes and change how we draw the lines, in terms of like timing of primaries, who draws the boundaries, all of that kind of stuff, we aren't gonna actually really have a change.

And when you have states so openly embracing gerrymandering and so clearly saying, "Well, we know that we can draw the lines to lock the other party out of power," it doesn't actually matter what the voters want.

Instead, it just matters what, essentially, what the lines look like.

And so that also, right, you run the risk of kind of losing turnout a little bit or maybe kind of less motivation for people to participate.

But really, all so much of our politics right now boils down to is how we draw the lines.

And if we draw the lines to benefit one particular party, whether we're talking about a Texas or a California, you end up with a lot of the state and a lot of the voters who have no opportunity to have their voice heard.

- [Steve] Yeah, and we've just got about 30 seconds here.

In a way, you develop a cycle here, because the more people lose faith in the fairness of their elections, the less likely the vast majority of people ought to turn out, which leaves then, as David said, this core group of, I won't say zealots, but people who are actively involved, and so fewer and fewer people are making bigger and bigger decisions, so, okay.

We'll have to leave it there.

I appreciate you guys' comments today.

And of course, we'll get back together again, and see what's happened in the next 30 to 60 days, and see how things have changed for the good, and maybe not for the good, we'll find out.

You can check us out at wbgu.org.

You can watch us every week at 8:00 PM on WBGU-PBS on Thursday night.

We'll see you again next time.

Good night and good luck.

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