When we looked back over the Roundtable shows from last year, it was abundantly clear that one topic was prioritized above all others: property taxes.
Property owners are howling as their property values, and their taxes keep going up. And the howls are loud enough for legislators to hear. They passed a number of measures aimed at providing property tax relief. But a grassroots effort to eliminate property taxes persists with the goal of qualifying a constitutional amendment for the 2026 ballot. Local governments and schools say that would be devastating.
We will begin our lookback on the Statehouse and statewide news of 2025 with the push to reform property taxes and why any reforms from lawmakers may not be enough to stall a driver to abolish the taxes.
Senate Bill 1, a higher education overhaul that targets what supporters call “liberal bias” on college campuses, went into effect in June. The bill, whose main architect is Sen. Jerry Cirino of Kirtland, targets most diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives on campuses and bans faculty strikes, among other measures.
Legal marijuana will be more tightly regulated, and intoxicating hemp like the kind sold in corner stores and gas stations, will be banned after the legislature late in 2025 addressed those issues.
Voters approved recreational marijuana in 2023 in a statute, not a constitutional amendment, allowing lawmakers to make changes.
The Ohio Redistricting Commission redrew the state's congressional district maps in 2025 because the map adopted in 2022 did not have bipartisan support, meaning it had to be redrawn instead of being in place for a decade.
The new map gives Republicans an edge in 12 of Ohio's 15 districts. The current map delivered 10 seats to Republicans. But this one did get bipartisan support on the commission because Democrats said they feared if they opposed it, and it went to the full legislature, the map would be even more lopsided in favor of Republicans.
The months-long negotiations over Ohio's new two-year operating budget dominated the work of lawmakers for the first half of 2025.
In the end, lawmakers handed off to the governor a $60 billion spending plan that flattens the state income tax, restricts the kinds of levies schools can ask voters to approve and changes the funding formula for libraries, eliminating the set percentage they received each year.
Can Ohio produce enough power to keep up with demands from both consumers and data centers? That was a big issue in 2025, as the governor signed House Bill 15 in May, addressing power generation and grid reliability.
Ohio voters approved an amendment to the state constitution, in place since 2023, protecting abortion rights and reproductive health.
That doesn't mean lawmakers opposed to abortion were going to halt their efforts to limit it. Last year, they continued to introduce legislation opponents say conflicts with the voter-approved amendment.
It's 2026 and that means big races in Ohio -- from the governor's seat with no incumbent to the Senate seat that will likely break fundraising records again -- are on the clock.
Midterms will be a huge story for 2026, and races started taking shape in 2025 with the emergence of Vivek Ramaswamy on the Republican side and Dr. Amy Acton as the apparent Democratic candidate.
Guests:
-Karen Kasler, Statehouse News Bureau Chief, Ohio Public Radio/TV
-Jo Ingles, Reporter, Ohio Public Radio/TV Statehouse News Bureau
-Sarah Donaldson, Reporter, Ohio Public Radio/TV Statehouse News Bureau
-Clare Roth, Managing Editor, The Ohio Newsroom
