How you can help create fair districts in Ohio
This year, help Ohio become a Beloved Community by working to pass the Citizens Not Politicians constitutional amendment to create fair, truly representative electoral districts. Go to www.fairdistrictsohio.org to learn more and sign up.
This is a bipartisan initiative supported by the League of Women Voters, Common Cause Ohio, the Ohio Environmental Council, and many people of faith because previous reforms were subverted by the Ohio Redistricting Commission in 2021-22 and we are holding elections under maps ruled unconstitutional for partisan gerrymandering by the Ohio Supreme Court (see a recap of this recent history below).
“The Episcopal Church reaffirms that one person one vote means that the votes of all citizens of all races and ethnicities are fairly represented, counted and accounted for,” says Resolution 2018-D003 passed by General Convention. “We oppose any form of partisan gerrymandering which has the same effect of racial gerrymandering.”
We need volunteers immediately to help circulate petitions, validate signatures, help plan events, or serve as speakers. Many parts of the state – especially in rural areas – still need people to serve as county coordinators (see list, below).
The first step is to collect enough valid signatures by July 3 to qualify the amendment for the November ballot. Petition training is easy and fast on Zoom. This initiative is my top 2024 priority as a member of the diocese’s Becoming Beloved Community team. Please contact me if you can help: 513-236-9872 or arielmillerwriter@gmail.com
I can connect you to Fair Districts city or county volunteer coordinators – most in or around urban areas including Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, Springfield, and Athens. We also need county coordinators in Muskingum, Guernsey, Washington, Meigs, Gallia, Lawrence, Hocking, Clermont, Highland, and Darke County.
Why does it matter? Ohio has extreme partisan gerrymandering, creating non-competitive districts which sustain our General Assembly’s veto-proof supermajority and skews our Congressional delegation. The policies passed or stalled in Ohio’s General Assembly and Congress often misrepresent the views of the majority of Ohio voters on matters including voter access, gun safety, environmental policy, immigration reform, and curriculum on race, as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Gerrymandered, “safe,” uncompetitive districts means our elected officials only need to court primary voters, often the most ideological in either party. Primary voters – a small minority of Ohio voters – determine who gets elected. After that, reps only need to pay attention to their ideological base and to lobbyists. We are seeing the consequences of corruption in the federal and state investigations of the HB 6 scandal. The disconnect between Ohioans’ views on gun safety and the laws passed by our General Assembly, cited later in this post, are another example.
Our Congressional and state electoral districts have repeatedly been ruled an illegal partisan gerrymander by the Ohio Supreme Court, but the Redistricting Commission, made up entirely of elected officials, defied seven Ohio Supreme court orders to make the districts fair and representative. Drafted by a bi-partisan team of Ohio citizens including former Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, Citizens Not Politicians makes essential reforms. If Ohio voters pass it in November, we would together create new maps in 2025 to be used in 2026.
Citizens Not Politicians reforms:
- Creates a 15-member Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission representing both parties and independents who broadly represent the different geographic areas and demographics of Ohio
- Ban current or former politicians, political party officials, and lobbyists from the Commission
- Prohibit districts that discriminate against or favor any political party or individual politician.
- Require the commission to operate under an open and independent process.
Ohio legislators introduce gun safety measures supported by vast majority of Ohio voters
On Feb. 15, the Ohio Democratic Caucus held a gun violence prevention summit at the Ohio Statehouse and highlighted bills to enact gun safety measures supported by over 70% of Ohio voters, according to a 2023 poll by USA Today and Suffolk University. The legislators held the summit the day after the 6th anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland and the day after the mass shooting at the Super Bowl victory parade in St. Louis. “This is the day after,” said State Rep. Jessica Miranda (D-Forest Park). “This is the day we get to work.”
The Rev. Meribah Mansfield, who launched our diocese’s Becoming Beloved Community Initiative, now serves a congregation in Toledo. She attended the Summit with the Rev. Rosalind Hughes, the Diocese of Ohio’s Missioner for Peace. We’ll be tracking these bills and keeping you posted.
The summit comes in the wake of the General Assembly’s passing many laws over the last few years removing gun safety requirements and preventing local governments from passing ordinances to prevent gun violence. After the mass shooting in Dayton the legislature defeated even the modest reforms proposed by Governor DeWine. This is probably another consequence of gerrymandering, which preserves power by creating noncompetitive and unrepresentative districts and allowing whichever party holds a majority to disregard public opinions while advancing the interests of lobbyists and major donors.
The Democratic caucus goals are to reduce the risk of suicide, domestic violence, and crime through changes such as:
- Universal background checks
- Commonsense concealed carry legislation. In 2022, the General Assembly removed any requirement for training or a license, and ended the requirement that people with concealed weapons notify the police of their weapon if they are stopped. Law enforcement officers reported how this has increased the danger they face on duty and deprived them of the ability to prevent crime by denying or revoking licenses to felons.
- Prohibiting people with domestic violence convictions from owning guns (SB 187), because Ohio law does not prevent these people from buying weapons or require them to surrender them when convicted of domestic violence. Federal law already covers this, but is so poorly enforced in Ohio that guns are used in the vast majority of domestic murders and most gun owners convicted of domestic violence maintain possession of their weapons.
- Holding gun owners accountable if a gun is not safely stored (HB 175). “This is our third attempt to introduce safe storage in Ohio,” said Rep. Miranda, citing the horrific recent example of a one-year-old who found a gun in his home and shot himself in the head. Panelists cited the alarming number of thefts of guns from cars in cities like Cincinnati and Columbus as another reason for this bill.
The 2023 USA Today/Suffolk poll found that almost 75% of Ohioans support laws requiring safe storage of guns and red flag laws allowing family or police to seek removal of firearms from individuals who pose a risk to themselves or others. Almost 90% support mandatory background checks for gun buyers, as well as training to get a concealed weapons permit. 57% of the respondents said they or a member of their household own a gun.
“Public polling is unlikely to change the minds of Ohio’s Republican majority in the state legislature because many of them view restrictions on gun ownership as “constitutionally questionable,” wrote Jim Weiker and Anna Staver in the Columbus Dispatch last year. “’Polls are interesting, but they’re not helpful in policy making often,” Senate President Matt Huffman, R-Lima, said. “They’re not a good way to govern.”
Panelists included Columbus City attorney Zach Klein, Franklin County Judge Carl Aveni, law enforcement officers and veterans, and the lead sponsors of the bills, including Rep. Willis Blackshear of Dayton, as well as policy experts from the Brady Campaign and Everytown for Gun Safety. They emphasized that they have no intention of prohibiting gun ownership – some are gun owners – but they want to prevent gun violence, and note that every right in the Bill of Rights comes with responsibilities and the need for limits to protect the public. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia acknowledged this in his opinion the Heller case which defined the right to keep and bear arms as a right for individuals, not just militias.
Ohio non-profits, hospitals, and county agencies provided information on domestic violence, trauma recovery, and resources from safe gun storage to Stop the Bleed training.
How Ohio’s tax structure burdens the poor and weakens vital services. A new bill would make it worse
As homeowners on fixed and low income opened their 2024 property tax bills with shock, the nonprofit Ohio Newsroom reported Feb. 15 that Ohio has the 15th most regressive tax structures in the United States. The poorest 20% of Ohioans pay 12.7% of their income on taxes, while the wealthiest 1% – those with income over $622,800 – pay 6.3%, according to data released by the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
Ohio’s General Assembly has passed several income tax cuts since 2010 which led to a corresponding declines in state funding for vital services (see the Policy Matters Ohio chart “State-source GRF expenditures by major area, 2005-20”, below). A further cut in 2023 reduced income tax rates, and cut the income brackets from 4 to 2. In 2023, the General Assembly ‘s budget resulted in an estimated 90% of Ohio businesses being exempt from the commercial activity tax.
The General Assembly now considering a bill to phase out the state’s income tax completely by 2028, as well as eliminating the commercial activity tax, the main tax on Ohio businesses. I’ll keep you posted on opportunities to testify on this bill.
Since the state started reducing income taxes in 2025, state spending on K-12 education, higher education, local government, corrections, transportation, and health and human services have all fallen significantly, as the Policy Matters Ohio chart shows. For example, the state legislature cut the local government fund from 3.68% of the budget before the 2008 recession to 1.66% in 2022, leading to a $1 billion loss of annual funding for police, public health, children’s services and other county services. Cuts in total state funding for higher education was accompanied by an increase of 47.55% in undergraduate tuition at Ohio State from 2013 to 2023.
Eliminating state income and CAT tax would deprive the state of an additional $13 billion a year.
The state’s steep cuts in the local government fund since 2008 has forced counties to raise sales taxes, which disproportionately burden people with lower incomes. Inflation in housing prices added to the burden with a huge rise in appraised value and property tax for many parts of Ohio this year. The Rev. Debbie Gamble, who lives in rapidly-gentrifying Northside, reports an elderly neighbor whose mortgage is paid off but whose property tax tripled – a cost she cannot possibly meet. She does not have any hope of keeping her home. She has reached out to state legislators, who offered no solutions.
Previous income tax cuts and housing inflation have already created a major financial burden for typical Ohioans. Having to pay almost 13% in taxes “can really make it hard for families to pay the rent, to keep food on the table, to pay the bills,” says Carl Davis, research director for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. “It’s quite a lot to ask of someone who’s in a vulnerable economic situation. And it’s really not necessary. If you’re levying low tax rates on people who have very large amounts of income, you’re really restraining the ability of the overall tax system to generate revenue,” Davis adds. “So there’s real impacts here for how well Ohio is able to fund schools and parks and infrastructure and all these other services.”
Advocacy briefings are compiled by Ariel Miller, a longtime community advocate and member of Ascension & Holy Trinity, Wyoming. Connect with her at arielmillerwriter@gmail.com.
