More than two-thirds of voters Tuesday rejected the Columbus schools levy. It was one of several school funding requests on ballots around the state. Amy Hansen of member station WCPN in Cleveland reports voters approved a majority of the issues.
Nearly 200 school tax issues were on ballots across the state.
The majority of voters seemed to side with tax renewals,but voted against levies that asked for tax increases.
Damon Asbury is a lobbyist for the Ohio School Board Association.
And he says that’s typically been the case in recent years.
Asbury: “New money issues are having difficulty passing. Renewals and replacements are passing relatively, well not easily, but they’re passing at a higher rate. And that’s the usual trend we’ve seen over the past several years. Requesting additional, new dollars is a very tough issue for voters to approve.” (:30)
One possible reason for that lower passing rate could be the rollback of a 12.5 percent state property tax subsidy that took effect this election.
Homeowners will now have to foot 100 percent of the bill on these new taxes.
Asbury: “Our speculation has been that it will make it more difficult to pass levies because the voters, the local homeowners, property owners, will be paying the full tax rate as opposed to the state picking up a share of it.”
But, Asbury says, it’s still too soon to tell if this was a deal breaker.