Fair Share Lobbying for the Common Good: NBI Submitted to Ohio Education Association
A millionaire’s tax has worked wonders to fund public education elsewhere; why not Ohio?
On Sunday, April 26th, CORE organizers submitted a New Business Item (NBI) for Ohio Education Association (OEA) delegates to discuss and vote on at the upcoming Representative Assembly (RA) on Saturday, May 9, 2026. If passed, the NBI would direct OEA to begin lobbying state lawmakers to enact a tax on incomes over a million dollars per year in order to fund public education, libraries, and transportation.
On the heels of a dramatic entrance in OEA’s fall RA, CORE organizers have spent the last several months researching and connecting with other education unions across the nation who have successfully reformed school funding in their states through the power of rank and file union organizing. The Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA), for instance, organized with other public workers to pass a millionaire’s tax in response to the trends of privatization and disinvestment, and the results have spoken for themselves.
CORE seeks to emulate their success by unifying working Ohioans behind the common sense rallying cry for the common good: Tax the Rich!
Ohio once had the Fair School Funding plan to fix our inequitable and insufficient school funding formula. However, the most recent state funding bill, HB96, effectively killed the bipartisan six-year plan just before its final phase of implementation, throwing public schools across the state of Ohio into budget crises. Meanwhile, groups have started pushing for the abolition of local property taxes, which have disproportionately funded Ohio’s schools for the last forty years.
A tax on incomes over a million dollars per year would correct Ohio’s overreliance on local taxes and local wealth, helping to ensure adequate and equitable funding for all public schools and their students, regardless of their zip code. Our state has a responsibility to fully fund public education, and if it will not, our education unions must step up to fight for what the public deserves.
CORE exists to make sure they do exactly that, and we look forward to presenting this NBI at the spring RA. The NBI has been put up by Nat Geer of the Delaware City Educators Union and Jacquia Hearn of the Columbus Education Association.
Read the full language of the submitted NBI below.
New Business Item: Fair Share Lobbying for the Common Good
The Ohio Education Association will use its existing resources to lobby at the Ohio Statehouse for a millionaire’s tax that will be used to fund public education including universal pre-kindergarten programming, public libraries, and public transportation.
A report on the ongoing progress of this NBI will be given at the subsequent OEA Representative Assemblies.
Rationale:
Current funding structures in the state of Ohio are inadequate to provide for the necessary services provided to the citizens of Ohio. Ohio’s income tax had multiple brackets, with rates ranging from about 1.5% to 7.5%. The highest rate applied to individuals making the most income. In 2005, Ohio implemented across-the-board income tax cuts, reducing tax rates for all income brackets and reducing the top rate from 7.5% to 5.8%. By 2013, the top rate had dropped further to 4.9%, and the number of income tax brackets was reduced. At the same time, the state increased its reliance on sales taxes (which are regressive) and property taxes. Sales and property taxes disproportionately affect lower-income residents. In 2023 top income tax rate was reduced to 3.99% (as of 2023), with only four tax brackets ranging from 0.5% to 3.99%. Beginning in 2025, the highest tax rate in Ohio dropped again to 3.25% for the highest bracket.
These policies have resulted in a budgetary crisis which targets cuts toward public education, public libraries, and public transportation. As these tax burdens have shifted to lower-income Ohioans, the strain has become unsustainable and the continued upkeep and funding of public services such as public education, libraries, and transportation have seen deep cuts to their budgets and increased levies. Levy issues are failing across the state to fund our schools because the financial burden has become too great. Districts serving higher concentrations of poverty are being asked to do more with comparatively less while districts with stronger local tax bases are able to maintain more stable and consistent support for students. A 2024 report from The School Finance Indicators Database ranked Ohio 39th out of 48 states in equality when examining per pupil spending differences between high and low income schools.
Efforts in Massachusetts, Washington, and Maine have been successful in creating a form of Millionaire’s Tax. These progressive tax policies have been effective in restoring funding and even expanding public services such as extending public education funding to include pre-k. Ohio once prided itself on its education system, but then moved to an unsustainable and burdensome funding structure which has run afoul of our Constitution’s mandate to “secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state.” The creation of a similar tax in Ohio is a simple and effective measure that can reverse decades of bad policy and return Ohio’s public schools to their exemplary status and provide quality education that equitably addresses the needs of children and communities.