BOARDMAN — The move to abolish property taxes in Ohio is gaining steam and the subject is on the minds of every local official.

On Nov. 20, the Mahoning County Republican Party hosted a bipartisan, round-table discussion on the issue with citizens and elected officials from around northeast Ohio.

“This timing is very critical. Nobody has yet eliminated property taxes as a source of revenue, but Ohio can be the first,” said local entrepreneur and financial adviser Allen Conti, who said signing the petition should be something everyone agrees with.

“Having an initiative on the ballot is not the same as supporting property tax elimination. It’s your First Amendment right to say this is important enough to talk about, and in fact if you’re opposed to it, you should be the first to sign this so you can make your voice heard.”

The petition, started by Timberlake Mayor John Marra and Concord Township resident Brian Massey, under the name Citizens for Property Tax Reform, has secured well in excess of 100,000 signatures. To win passage for a statewide ballot measure on the November 2026 general election, it will need more than 413,000 signatures by July 1.

Marra was part of the roundtable panel. He said the initiative began after 2023 property revaluations drove his property taxes up by $4,000 overnight. He said he tried to fight the increase at the state Board of Revisions but was denied.

“I’m on social security because I’m 65 now, and all my money pretty much goes to property taxes,” he said. “We started talking to different state representatives and they weren’t interested in carve outs, they weren’t interested in taking care of the seniors. So we thought, you know what, we’re going to have to go with total abolishment.”

Marra said he knows the pain many Ohioans — especially senior citizens — are feeling because he’s been taxed out of his home once before.

He moved to Timberlake seven years ago after his property taxes on his Mayfield Village home went from $2,000 to $13,000. His taxes now have increased from $6,000 to $10,000, he said.

“Out of the $10,000 I pay, only $1,700 goes to Timberlake for services. So people say, if you eliminate property taxes, how are you going to pay for services? I say I’m going to send you an invoice. If they don’t pay it, I’ll put a lien on their house, and it’ll gain 18% interest but we won’t seize their home,” he said. “Replacing it isn’t the question. There’s a thousand ways to replace it. It’s just that we need to release our homes from government bondage and seizure, that’s the main thing.”

Conti agrees that there are more than a few ways to replace property taxes.

“Most people are raising fears that this will eliminate schools, eliminate police departments, eliminate services, and it isn’t really true,” he said.

“We’re moving from taxing income to taxing consumption. We’re moving toward AI, toward data centers, toward all kinds of things that are consumption-based fundraising.”

Conti proposed increasing the statewide sales tax to 7.75% and expanding the base to digital goods and services like data centers.

“We’re building those to the tune of 1 gigawatt, which is $50 billion, and that data is not being taxed properly. But we’re going to be building eight to ten of those in Ohio over the next 10 years and that’s going to raise $20 to 22 billion right there. Another $2 to 3 billion goes to permitting for waste companies and that should be earmarked for replacing property taxes,” he said.

Conti said Ohio brought in $19.8 billion in property taxes last year, but not all property taxes are the same. He said real public and utility personal property tax is charged, but then rebated.

“We lose about $2.3 billion a year from that,” he said. “Oil and gas severance tax … that’s $70 to 80 million that is not earmarked that could be used to replace property taxes. Tobacco settlement funds, lottery funds, all were supposed to go to the schools and did not. But we can find $1.4 billion going to the Browns and Bengals for stadiums.”

Elected officials at the roundtable agreed with Conti on that point.

“The tax cuts in the state budget bill, House Bill 96, all went for the people who made the largest donations,” said Lake County Commissioner and tax attorney John Plecnik. “The income tax cut was for people who make over $100,000 a year, not the folks being taxed out of their homes. The major subsidies went to billionaires who own football teams, went to large businesses. Are we here to reward our donors or are we here to save our seniors?”

State Sen. Al Cutrona, R-Canfield, said the state legislature has to take responsibility.

“I don’t want to just sit here and say it’s Columbus’s fault because that’s an easy fall back, but in this case it really is, because the leadership controls the agenda and controls what goes on in the budget,” he said. “The revenue is there, and at the end of the day it’s about transparency.”

Cutrona took legislative leaders to task for what he says is an insulting use of state funds.

“I found it disgusting that there were all these raises for public officials,” he said. “When my constituents can’t pay for their groceries, when my constituents are struggling to make ends meet and then we’re being forced to say let’s give elected officials pay raises, I was against that. Unfortunately, the powers that be jammed it into the operating budget because they just don’t care.”

State Rep. Tex Fischer, R-Boardman, said it’s all about priorities.

“How many hundreds of millions of dollars did we just come up with in the budget corrections bill last night? A couple hundred million? Where did that money come from? I have no idea,” he said. “We’re still making more money off income tax receipts than we were 15 years ago. We keep cutting, the money keeps coming in, we’re just spending it the wrong way. It’s not all that difficult. The money is always there.”

Plecnik, a Republican, was arguably the most dominant voice in the room, and he had no qualms about holding other Republicans accountable for how the state operates.

“It’s all a function of state law,” he said. “Why did we allow property taxes to spike during COVID and through today when we knew that inflation was going to raise property values and we knew that roughly a 30% increase in values across Ohio was going to translate to a double-digit increase in tax bills? I mean, everyone saw this coming and yet nobody did anything.”

Plecnik said the state has habitually misrepresented its plans for tax revenues.

“The lion’s share of our sales tax goes to the state, and it was passed for three reasons — to alleviate poverty, fund schools and support the local government fund. The state kept the money. So, then they passed the income tax, and they said it was going to be for schools, alleviating poverty and the local government fund. The state kept the money. Then they passed the lottery, and they said it would fund public schools. Do I need to tell you what happened?”

Wherever the blame lies, though, local officials say the problem is still immediate, and the prospect of eliminating property taxes is dangerous.

“We have to provide services, provide a jail, and the amount we get is $12 million, and that’s 24% of the budget. You cut those funds out, that’s scary,” said Mahoning County Commissioner Geno DiFabio, a Republican. “Eliminating property tax altogether…you don’t realize that money’s got to come from somewhere because services still have to be paid for and nothing is getting cheaper for anyone. Some people say put on a sales tax or an income tax, well you can’t. If you increased sales tax, you wouldn’t sell a damn thing in Mahoning County. Our rate is already 7.75%. We can’t sustain a huge increase, it would bury our businesses.”

His Democratic colleague, Commissioner Anthony Traficanti, echoed those sentiments.

“Once you start tinkering with all these other things — we’ve done regionalizations, then you’re going to start talking about mergers, and that’s going to take a time period of anywhere from three to eight years,” he said.

Traficanti discussed what many have suggested may be necessary for townships if property tax is abolished. Township budgets are supported almost 90% by property taxes and seeing them become cities or be absorbed by neighboring cities has been floated as a possibility.

“Nobody has done an analysis of how much that’s going to cost or how much it’s going to save for townships to turn into cities. Yeah, they may run more efficiently but they’re going to have to pay for the services. I see everything coming back on the county.”

Traficanti said he’s dealt with massive budget deficits before.

“About 70% of our $56 million budget is eaten up by criminal justice. We’re mandated. If you remove that out of the budget you’ve just created another problem that I had to deal with in 2005 when I became commissioner when the sales tax went down. That was a $15 million deficit and we borrowed against property taxes just to keep three pods open in the jail.”

Traficanti said the shortest solution for now is property tax clawbacks to the pre-pandemic era.

Rep. Lauren McNally, D-Youngstown, said the state legislature, while culpable, also doesn’t have the ground-level perspective of local communities.

“Not everyone has the exact same needs. Just because Lake County has the money to do the homestead exemption, doesn’t mean Mahoning County does,” she said.

McNally said local activists need to work with local government officials to learn what is being discussed in Columbus and prioritize the legislation that would best serve their community and come testify.

“If you don’t tell us what you need prioritized, we don’t know what to do. We should be taking our leads from you, and if we’re not, you get rid of us. That’s what you should do,” she said.

McNally said there are many bipartisan proposals in the General Assembly right now — as many as 37 or more — that could provide tax relief for seniors, veterans and others, but those have not progressed.

She said the bills that do progress are not helping regular Ohioans.

“Bills we’ve recently passed aren’t targeted to just homeowners, they’re for anyone who owns property. So big businesses are getting the benefits, people who own vacation homes here, and landlords who don’t live here, but own a bunch of properties.”