Ohio has pressing needs for public investment, from stemming the drug epidemic to preventing infant mortality; fixing the unconstitutional school funding system to making college affordable. Taxpayer revenues should be used for public services that benefit everyone, not for special tax breaks. The House is right in eliminating this tax break. The Senate should concur.

This report lays out a set of policy and political interventions that cities, regions, and states can make to increase municipal revenue and to make their collections more progressive. Cities have historically suffered enormous budget shortfalls and after the Great Recession, available funds depleted even more drastically. There is a desperate need for more municipal tax revenue and for a more just system for collecting it, instead of the current practice of cities collecting their revenue in regressive ways. Across the United States, there are major political obstacles to raising any kind of revenue. And yet, although different, the obstacles at the municipal level are in some ways even greater than they are at the state and federal levels. Nevertheless, there are meaningful strategies that cities and counties can adopt. And there are political strategies that may be effective at generating state-level reform. This report lays these out in detail, discussing the political and policy strengths and weaknesses of each.

PILOTs are voluntary payments made by tax-exempt nonprofits as a substitute for property taxes. These payments typically result from negotiations between local government officials and individual nonprofits, but the exact arrangements vary widely. PILOTs can be formal, long-term contracts, routine annual payments, or irregular one-time payments. The payments can go into a municipality's general fund, or be directed to a specific project or program. PILOTs are most frequently made by hospitals, colleges, and universities, but also by nonprofit retirement homes, low-income housing facilities, cultural institutions, fitness centers, and churches. Some such payments are not even called PILOTs, but are known as "voluntary contributions" or "service fees."

Ohio's charter-closure law requires the automatic closure of charter schools that fail to meet academic standards. However, closure law has a loophole that it places no penality on CMOs which causes "closed" schools to reopen. The report lists eight cases that shows the loophole on closure law and suggests that the government needs to take off CMOs and sponsors to ensure the qualiy of the closure law.

This report outlines the landscape, identigies challenges that limit families access to preschool, and looks at the costs that constrain programs in delivering top quality early education; concluded with policy reconmmendations

The property tax is the oldest major revenue source for state and local governments. At the beginning of the twentieth century, property taxes represented more than eighty percent of state and local tax revenue. While this share has diminished over time as states have introduced sales and income taxes, the property tax remains an important mechanism for funding education and other local services. But property taxes are regressive, and because these taxes are usually collected at the local level, the unequal distribution of wealth between rich and poor school districts can lead to inequitable school funding.

Tax abatements makes Ohio schools lost revenue, causing spotty reporting in forgone revenue with government compensation. The report provides recommendation for better tax abatements report.

A city thrives when its residents thrive. Yet many families, even though they are employed fulltime, continue to struggle to meet their families' basic needs. Local elected officials across the country have discovered a way to strengthen working families while bringing more federal dollars into the local economy: by connecting eligible workers to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).

The new GOD federal tax law allow rich Americans who send their childrento private school a tax cut to save money for their higher education. However, the report states that the government should expand opportunity for all Ohioans not just rich people. Tax deduction are costly and does not make college more affordable to Ohioans. Such tax break will benefit the extreme wealthy but not benefit about college. The government should not use contribution to 529 plan to pay for K-12, but use to support public education.

Almost 22 percent of children are poor. In 2012, over 16 million children in the U.S. were living in poverty according to the official measure, defined as living in families with income under $19,090 for a family of three. This is almost identical to figures for 2011, but an increase of nearly three million and 4 percent over 2007 (the last year before the Great Recession). Children are more likely than adults to be poor.