by Nicole Piscitani • Dec. 7, 2025
The Ohio General Assembly ramped up the final weeks of its legislative calendar to pass and send numerous bills to Gov. Mike DeWine. Among those bills are four property tax bills, all sponsored by Rep. David Thomas (R-Jefferson), that not only received various changes in the Senate but also bipartisan support.
The Ohio House has completed its legislative work for 2025 and does not plan to return to Columbus until late February. The Senate plans to briefly return on Dec. 9 to vote on a noneducation bill and then will be gone until late January. During that time, the Legislative Reports will offer a deep dive into each of the four property tax bills. This issue will focus on House Bill (HB) 129.
HB 129, known as the “20-mill floor bill,” will change the types of levies that are included in the calculation of a school district's effective millage floor. The bill will require, when a county where a school district has territory goes through a reappraisal or a triennial update, that the current expense fixed-sum levies — emergency and substitute levies — be included in the calculation of a school district’s 20-mill floor or a joint vocational school district’s 2-mill floor. This bill applies to all school districts that have emergency and substitute levies. Districts not on the 20-mill floor that have these kinds of levies will be impacted, too. School districts that are not on the 20-mill floor are subject to the provisions in Ohio’s Constitution that reduce millage rates as property valuations increase. While HB 129 will initially add the fixed-sum millage, the reduction factors, over time, will reduce millage every triennial update or reappraisal.
The bill also creates two different types of fixed-sum levies. As a note, the Ohio General Assembly voted to override DeWine’s HB 96 line-item veto. The override eliminated, as a ballot question, emergency, substitute and replacement levies. School districts that currently have those types of levies will still receive property tax revenue until the levy expires.
The first type of the newly created fixed-sum levies deals with current emergency and substitute levies that voters approved before 2026. While emergency and substitute levies will no longer be allowed as a ballot question, the legislature created a way for school districts to renew emergency and substitute levies when they expire. The emergency levy, at the time it expires, can be renewed as a fixed-sum levy. A substitute levy can be renewed as a fixed-sum levy and can levy an amount up to the sum the levy collected in its final year. Additionally, the fixed-sum levy can only be for five years but will be allowed to continually be renewed by voters. School districts that currently do not have an emergency or substitute levy will not be able to put this type of levy on the ballot; only districts with these levies in place will be able to renew them as a fixed-sum levy.
Going forward, the only way a school district that currently does not have an emergency or substitute levy in place can put a fixed-sum levy on the ballot is in one of these two instances: The first is if the school district is in fiscal emergency, watch or caution as declared by the Ohio Auditor of State’s Office. The second is if the U.S. president or the state governor has declared an emergency in all or part of the district’s territory and the district is impacted by the emergency; then the school district could put a fixed-sum levy on the ballot to address the situation.
HB 129 contains many recommendations from the governor’s Property Tax Workgroup, which analyzed several of the vetoed property tax items in HB 96, the biennial budget bill. That bill included a provision that would have added emergency and substitute levies to the 20-mill floor calculation. DeWine vetoed that item and asked the workgroup to make a recommendation. The workgroup’s recommendations include allowing school districts to renew emergency and substitute levies as fixed-sum levies and creating a fixed-sum levy to use in an emergency situation. The only difference between HB 129 and the workgroup’s recommendations is the timing of when the fixed-sum levy is added to the millage calculation. The workgroup recommended that it is added when the levy is renewed instead of how HB 129 has it being added during a reappraisal or triennial update.
As of the date this article was written, DeWine has not received HB 129 from the clerk’s office. Occasionally, there are delays in getting a bill sent to the governor. Those delays are not an indication of how the governor may proceed but can happen for various reasons.