Will Medina County Start a Trend in Passing Sales Taxes for Schools?

Terry Oblander of the Cleveland Plain Dealer has an article in this Sunday's edition in which he raises the question of whether Medina County will start a trend of counties enacting sales tax increases to fund schools. The article suggests that it probably won't happen, although it is possible that the county commissioners' organization will seek legislation to raise the amount of money counties can collect in sales taxes.

Right now counties can collect up to 1.5% on top of what the state charges. What Medina County did was to pass a sales tax for capital improvements with the understanding that only schools will benefit from the sales tax. There are legal questions as to whether you can require that a county capital improvements board just fund school projects with the funds.

Right now, this problem won't come up because the people appointed to the new Medina County board are pledged to use the money just for school projects. The question remains, though, whether future county commissioners will only appoint such members. The thinking is that they will, but thre is no legal requirement that they do so.

The article also points out that Medina County has shopping districts that bring in residents from other counties. One selling point was that other counties' residents will be helping fund Medina County's schools. Since we live in Medina County we are all for that, but how many counties can effectively make that argument?

Oblander's bottom line seems to be that while this tax increase is good for Medina County, and could lead to lower property taxes in Medina County, it is not likely to be adopted by a lot of other counties.