Ohio Senate Passes CAUV Bill

Ohio’s Senate has settled on its solution for fixing Ohio’s CAUV formula. The Senate unanimously passed S.B. 36  yesterday after the Senate Ways and Means Committee adopted two amendments to the bill.  The legislation aims to stem recent increases in property taxes for farmland enrolled in Ohio’s Current Agricultural Use Valuation (CAUV) program.   The Senate’s bill will ensure that the CAUV formula “sticks to valuing farmland based on agricultural production,” stated the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Cliff Hite (R-Findlay).

In addition to including new factors in the CAUV formula,  making changes to the capitalization rate calculation and addressing rates used for conservation lands (explained in detail in our earlier post on S.B. 36), the bill passed by the Senate yesterday contained two new provisions:

• A three year phase-in of the changes to the CAUV formula, which would begin the first tax year after 2016 in which a county’s sexennial appraisal or triennial update occurs.  The purpose of the phase-in is to reduce the financial impact of lowered property valuations on school districts.

• Replacement of the seven year rolling average determination of the equity yield rate with an equity yield rate that equals the 25-year average of the “total rate of return on farm equity” determined by the United States Department of Agriculture but that cannot exceed the loan interest rate used in the debt factor of the capitalization rate computation.

Last week, Ohio’s House passed legislation containing different solutions for revising the CAUV program in H.B. 49 (see our summary of H.B. 49 here).  Senate leaders yesterday indicated a willingness to work with the House to resolve the differences between the two bills.  H.B. 49 is now before the Senate Finance Committee.

Read S.B. 36 as amended here.  The Legislative Service Commmission’s summary of the bill is here.