Ohio schools lost over $125M from tax abatements in 2017

Staff report

Property tax abatements caused 180 school districts across Ohio to forgo $125.6 million in revenue, according to district financial reports issued for the 2017 fiscal year.

For the first time, under a new national accounting standard, school districts in Ohio and across the country had to report how much revenue they forgo to tax abatement. Policy Matters Ohio, assisted by the national nonprofit Good Jobs First, reviewed financial statements for 464 of the state’s 608 school districts to produce the numbers in a report released Tuesday.

Youngstown City Schools is No. 23 of the top 25 districts with forgone revenue, giving up $976,774.

With a little more than a third of the losses reported, Ohio schools could refill the positions of 662 librarians eliminated between the 2005-06 school year and 2016-17, said Zach Schiller, Policy Matters research director and lead author of the report.

Read more about the report in Thursday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.