Where property tax repeal efforts stand in Butler County

Commissioner Don Dixon says the county needs to prepare because “I believe there’s a better than 50/50 chance that it will make it on the ballot, and I’m going say better than an 80% chance it’ll pass.”

“What will we do if we lose our real estate tax income? I believe it’s a real deal and the folks in Columbus seem to think if the resolution to remove the real estate tax gets on the ballot it won’t pass,” he said. “I believe they must be in Disneyland, because I believe if it gets on the ballot it’ll pass by big, big numbers and that has a huge effect on our operation.”

The groups have until July 1 to collect the required 413,487 valid signatures from voters in at least 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties to get the issue on the Nov. 5 ballot. If it passes, it will take effect Jan. 1, but since property taxes are collected in arears — taxing districts won’t likely experience revenue loss until 2028.

Alternative funding options

Some have criticized the groups for not offering alternative funding ideas. CPTR spokesperson Beth Blackmarr has told the Journal-News repeatedly it is not their job — it is up to state lawmakers. She said they have displayed “an incredible lack of imagination” since other states provide the same services without overburdening homeowners.

Property tax is the main source of revenue for services including schools, police and fire and county social services. All taxing entities combined collected $681.8 million in 2025, according to the county auditor’s office. Butler County school districts received about $396.5 million, villages and townships got $118.4 million, the county received $101.4 million — including the social service agencies such as Developmental Disabilities — and the cities were disbursed nearly $50 million.

The commissioners have direct control over their own inside millage that feeds the general fund — which totaled $22.6 million last year — and they must approve levies for Children Services, Developmental Disabilities, Elderly Services and Mental Health and Addiction Recovery Services before they go on the ballot. They control BCCS but the other three have independent governing boards.

The social services agencies do receive some outside funding but rely heavily on their property tax levies to operate.

The 2025 levy collections and percentage of revenue derived from local levies include:

County Administrator Judi Boyko said she doesn’t want to be “gloom and doom, but this is a very, very serious situation,” if the ballot initiative succeeds, despite the county being in good financial shape.

“All of those services will go, and right now the statute requires you to fund those programs,” Boyko said. “There’s just not enough money in that pot to be able to fund every social service under the current structure of revenue generation for county government.”

Commissioners need a plan

The commissioners passed a $134.7 million general fund budget for this year and started 2026 with roughly $191.6 million in the bank, according to the finance department dashboard for December. They expect to cull $139.6 million from various revenue sources.

Commissioner T.C. Rogers told the Journal-News he thinks they could run their own operation for roughly 2.5 years without property tax collections, but said that’s just his opinion and he wants some hard numbers. He agreed they need a game plan.

“We need to really make some major changes, not only about the property tax, because the root cause is the cost of government,” he said. “You’ve got multiple jurisdictions and you’ve got overlap.”

Boyko told them she and her team have been running “a controlled experiment” with various scenarios. Those include what the finances look like if property taxes are extinguished and sales tax has to cover expenses and other possible financing options.

A report is coming soon.

Local services are intertwined

Commissioner Cindy Carpenter said she agrees they need to look at the situation, “get an idea what the number would be, how long we would be able support county business as it is and how quickly we would have to shift gears.”

Rogers asked just how far they should go in analyzing the countywide impact, including on schools, police and fire departments and other local services.

“I just wonder, would we be stepping out of our lane?” she said.

Dixon said they can’t just focus on county operations because some services are intertwined.

“Every one of our expenditures is usually connected to another entity, let’s say the sheriff’s department, all the levies operating the police departments will be gone, fire too,” he said. “The sheriff has the authority to go everywhere in the county, so his coverage is going to get bigger.”

With global issues such as this the commissioners have called countywide meetings but Dixon told the Journal-News he wants to get their own house in order first. He said they need to discuss putting some expensive capital projects on hold and other cost-saving measures.

“I want to start in-house and see what we’ve got and move to our different office holders and then we’ll reach out from there,” he said. “It’s just to get something started. I think we need to be starting to conserve cash just in case, because what we’ve got won’t last long.”

County Auditor Nancy Nix said the “anti-tax fervor is very strong here in the county,” and she hopes the commissioners not only gather government entities together but taxpayers.

“I get the anti-tax sentiment, I totally do, I just don’t know how you burn the whole system down and not regret it,” she said. “I think the commissioners are forward-thinking and they should be having these discussions and they should be bringing people in. I think it should be debated, everybody has to have full knowledge of what they would be voting for.”

BUTLER COUNTY 2025 PROPERTY TAX DISTRIBUTION

An effort to eliminate property taxes completely is afoot statewide and if it succeeds taxing bodies would be out $681.8 million collectively, money they use to provide a host of services. Here is how collections were distributed last year, according to the Butler County Auditor’s Office: