For decades, the three officials who sit on your county budget commission watched property tax levies pile up and had almost no legal way to push back. They could approve. They could rubberstamp. That was essentially the menu. Ohio House Bill 309 changed that equation on March 20, 2026, and if you own property in Cuyahoga County, this law is now operating in the background of every tax bill you receive.
The commission overseeing Cuyahoga County is not the same body you may have imagined. It is composed of the County Executive, Fiscal Officer, and Prosecutor — and the Fiscal Officer serves as secretary, employing staff to execute the commission’s statutory functions. That body is now armed with something it has never had before: the authority to reduce a levy’s collection rate without asking the voters who approved the levy in the first place.
What the commission could do before — and why it barely mattered
The old framework was blunt. County budget commissions have existed in Ohio since 1911, primarily responsible for reviewing and approving the annual tax budgets of local governments. Over the past few years, they operated differently among counties, which led to questions about what they should be doing and to what extent.
Legally, commissions had limited room to reduce anything. Voted levies — the ones approved at the ballot box — were largely untouchable after passage. The commission approved them, and that was the end of the conversation. If a school district or library was sitting on reserves far beyond what it needed, the commission had no real tool to intervene. As Rep. David Thomas, the bill’s sponsor, put it: “The County Budget Commission has become a rubber stamp at a time when property tax rates are excessively high across Ohio.”
That frustrated county auditors across Ohio who could see the problem but couldn’t legally act on it. Thomas framed the legislation this way: “This bill came to be from auditors across Ohio who would like the authority to reduce tax rates but cannot.”
The mechanism in plain English
HB 309 expands the commissions’ authority to reduce property tax levies to avoid unnecessary or excessive collections. The law defines those two terms precisely, which matters because vague authority is no authority at all.
An “unnecessary collection” means revenue beyond the reasonably anticipated financial needs of the taxing authority for the specific purpose of the tax, after accounting for current fund balances, projected expenditures, and other available funding sources. An “excessive collection” means an amount or rate that exceeds what is required to provide services at a level consistent with statutory obligations.
Both definitions point to the same basic idea: if a government agency is collecting more than it actually needs to do its job, the commission now has legal standing to reduce what it collects. A levy can be reduced if cash balances or service levels show that the revenue is unnecessary or excessive.
The new authority lives in a freshly enacted section of the Ohio Revised Code — Section 5705.60 — which HB 309 created. The bill also amended ORC Sections 5705.31, 5705.32, and 5705.321 to align existing levy-approval rules with this expanded review power.
Who wins, who loses, who gets nothing
The short answer: it depends on where your levy dollars go and whether the receiving entity has been accumulating reserves.
Homeowners stand to gain the most on paper. State analysts projected reductions of $135 million in 2026, growing to $378 million by 2028. Those are statewide projections, not Cuyahoga-specific figures, and the actual savings depend heavily on whether local commissions choose to use this authority aggressively or conservatively.
School districts face the most uncertainty. The law contains a specific restriction that prevents a commission from reducing a school district levy to fall below the 20 mills required to qualify for state funding. Below that floor, a district starts losing state education money, so the commission cannot cut its way into creating a school funding crisis. There is also a second restriction: commissions cannot reduce levy collections so that the district collects less than it collected in the preceding year — unless reserve balance accounts, nonexpendable trust funds, or carryover amounts are sufficient to offset the reduction.
In Cuyahoga County, that 20-mill protection matters enormously. The county’s 33 school districts span some of the most levy-heavy tax rates in Ohio. A Shaker Heights homeowner and a Parma homeowner both face school levies well above 20 mills — those levies cannot be touched below the floor. But levies above the floor, for libraries, metroparks, or certain municipal purposes, are now fair game for review.
New voter-approved levies get a grace period. The law includes a one-year protection for new voter-approved levies, meaning the commission cannot reduce a levy during its first year of collection. That protection disappears in year two.
What’s different in Cuyahoga — and what you should actually watch
Cuyahoga County’s commission audits the budgets of 105 taxing authorities and distributes over $3.8 billion of tax revenues annually to 38 cities, 19 villages, 2 townships, 33 school districts, 9 library systems, and 4 county taxing authorities. That scale means HB 309 gives the commission a wide surface area to examine — and a wide variety of entities that could theoretically face rate reductions.
The entities most exposed are those with substantial reserve carryovers. The law requires a public hearing if a taxing entity’s carryover of levied dollars increases beyond 30% of that fund’s prior-year expenses — the hearing determines whether the revenue is still needed for the following year. That 30% threshold is the tripwire. If a library system or park district ends the year with more than 30 cents in reserve for every dollar it spent, a public hearing must follow.
What most people get wrong about this law: it does not automatically cut anyone’s tax bill. The commission has new power, but it is not required to use it. A research fellow at The Buckeye Institute, testifying in support, acknowledged that guardrails might be necessary “to ensure that levies remain high enough to satisfy their original purposes and that over-zealous commissioners do not substitute their personal tax-cutting preferences for the will of the voters.” Critics at Policy Matters Ohio and the Ohio Municipal League raised the flip concern — that the standard is too broad and could undermine services voters explicitly chose to fund.
The commission in every county will decide how aggressively it exercises this authority. Some will move quickly. Others will wait to see how early movers fare at the Board of Tax Appeals, where taxing authorities can challenge reductions.
What happens next — and what you can do right now
HB 309 is already in effect. The March 20, 2026 effective date means this law applied during the tax budget review cycle now underway for the bills you receive in 2026 and 2027.
Here is what to watch and do:
- Track the commission’s public hearings. Now that carryover-triggered hearings are required, these meetings become genuine news. The Cuyahoga County Fiscal Officer’s office publishes commission actions — check
cuyahogacounty.gov/fiscal-officer/departments/budget-commission. - Look at your 2026 second-half bill carefully. Bills mail around July 13, 2026, with the payment deadline of August 13, 2026. The line items on that bill show you which entities are levying what. Any reduction from HB 309 review would show as a lower effective rate in future years.
- If you have a levy grievance, the Board of Tax Appeals is the right venue. HB 309 decisions by the commission can be appealed there — and taxing authorities will use that avenue to push back on reductions they believe are unwarranted.
- Call the Treasurer’s Office with rate questions at 216-443-7400, Option 1.
The legislature that passed HB 920 in 1976 — the law that stopped tax rates from automatically rising with property values — is credited with the last major structural protection for Ohio homeowners. Some state legislators have argued that the 2025–2026 reform package is the most significant since HB 920, and some suggest it may be the most meaningful package of real property tax protections in nearly a century. Whether HB 309 lives up to that billing depends on whether county budget commissions across Ohio treat this new authority as a real tool or leave it on the shelf.
Cuyahoga County homeowners already absorbed a 32.22% average valuation increase in the 2024 reappraisal. The commission now has the legal power to examine whether the levies piling up on your bill are still justified. Whether they use it is the question worth watching.