Greater Ohio Policy Center's Senior Director of Government Affairs and Policy, Gene Krebs, recently presented testimony as an interested party on SB 90, the repeal of the estate tax.   Greater Ohio's goal is to illustrate some facts and perspectives that have not been brought out, and also to suggest a formula, that if adopted, could allow for the bill to proceed with a minimum of negative impact for the local governments, and perhaps even be better for them and the citizens in the long run. "Do no harm" is one of the first instructions given to freshman entering the General Assembly. Keeping the estate tax does harm, and abolishing it too quickly also does harm. Greater Ohio is seeking political common sense by giving you two options to pursue, either separately or in common.

Our advice is to reduce the estate tax take by half for local governments, put one fourth into a revolving loan fund for economic development projects that are locally determined and the terms of the loan set locally in a regional frame, and have the remaining fourth placed into a mutual fund pool where the locals determine the formula for aiding communities who are lower wealth, and once again in a regional frame.  Then phase it out over eight years.

To read more of the details from Gene Krebs' testimony, see the full text here.