Correction appended.
In Ohio, municipalities have the ability of “home rule,” or the ability to make laws and govern themselves — something local officials say is under attack from the state.
According to Coolidge Wall, a legal professional association from Dayton, the Ohio Constitution grants cities the ability to create laws independently from the state, and even conflict with the state.
“Cities can legally establish laws on matters of local self-government that may conflict with state laws as long as the state laws in question are not ‘general laws’ or ‘laws of a general nature,’” the firm’s website says of home rule in Ohio.
A new state plan to collect municipalities’ business income tax and charge them a 1 percent service fee is a direct attack on municipalities ability of home rule, Athens Mayor Steve Patterson said.
“People have been trying to step on all municipalities toes more and more recently,” Patterson said.
Athens collects about $1.5 million a year from the city’s business income tax, and would only have to pay 0.5 percent of that number to the state if the plan is enacted, but called the business income tax collection a “foot in the door” for home rule attacks. The total income tax collection last year was $12.5 million.
When asked what he thought the state’s incentive was for reducing home rule, Patterson had one word: money.
“It could go up in the future to where it becomes 3 percent or 5 percent," Patterson said. "The other issue with that is that's a foot in the door. They could come back and say ‘we're going to centralize individual income taxes.’ ”
On Monday night, Athens City Council members passed an ordinance allowing the mayor to join a coalition of municipalities suing the state over the centralized business income tax collection.
“This is another power grab by Columbus,” Councilwoman Chris Fahl, D-4th Ward, said of the income tax collection during the meeting. “They have tried doing this several times.”
The city has been successful in suing the state before, Patterson said. Earlier this year, Athens joined several other municipalities in suing the state over a communication law, according to a previous Post report.
“There was basically language that said AT&T can come into a municipality and start putting small cell antennas on city infrastructure,” Patterson said. “They were taking away our ability to regulate and control things.
The law, which allowed companies to put equipment on light posts and other city infrastructure without the city’s permission, wasn’t held up by lower courts, Fahl said.
Patterson said the state has been reducing home rule for years. In 2006, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that Cleveland’s regulations against predatory lending laws weren’t home rule because they interfered with Ohio’s general rules — conflicting with state regulations and setting a precedent for other municipalities to loser power throughout the state.
Additionally, in 2007, the Ohio legislature adopted a new general rule that stated anyone could own a firearm or its components if they complied with state law, effectively banning municipalities ability to regulate firearms within their limits.
More recently, in 2015, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that Ohio municipalities cannot regulate oil and gas regulations within their borders.
In 2016, Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed a bill that invalidated municipalities’ local hiring laws, like Cleveland’s, which required contractors to include local residents in their workforce.
Correction: A previous version of this report incorrectly stated the amount of money the city collects in income tax and the percentage of the administrative fee. The article has been updated to reflect the most accurate information.
