Ohio House Development Committee - 3-18-2026

The House Development Committee will come to order. Will the clerk please call the roll?

Okay, we do have a quorum, so we'll proceed as a full committee. Members, I invite you to look at the minutes on your iPad. Are there any objections to the minutes? Seeing none, the minutes are approved. Before we begin, I'd like to get an update, Rep. Matthews, on what's happening at home.

I don't know if you had time you were watching it, but you probably had other things.

You were not?

Can you give us an update?

All right. That's good. Congratulations.

So that's great. I'd also like to welcome, as you notice, there's a group of young, our future leaders from Liberty Center High School. And some of them are on the football team. And they were here a couple weeks ago because they won the state championship. So they loved it so much they came back, and it's a government class, and teacher Ryan Miller, wave your hand, Ryan. And so he's in charge of all these young leaders, and I'm sure they're well-behaved. And I think a lot of, how many of you, it was the first time you're here at the Statehouse? How many? So there's quite a few here, so that's pretty neat. And welcome to this committee, the Development Committee, and you're going to see government in action. And so, you know, I'm glad you're here today and glad you, sorry you had to miss a day of school, but I'm sure you won't be too sad about that. So they're going to take a tour of the statehouse afterwards and just get a chance to see what goes on down here in Columbus. So thank you for being here. We'll begin with House Bill 109. and as a committee, you notice 109 and 161 kind of deals with the same issue. So I thought let's just bring them both in and let's try to see what we can do with these two bills because there's some good things in both of them and I know there's some things that people don't agree on so I thought this would be the best way of just bringing the things out and have them here on the same day. So this House Bill 109 for its third hearing, and I'd like to welcome Nathaniel Welch with the Portsmouth Scioto County Visitors Bureau.

Pressure's on, right? Is that how that works?

Okay, thank you, Mr. Welch, for your testimony. Are there any questions? I have one because how much should the local governments be involved with this as far as, because there seems to be a concern of, you know, the local governments having the ability to kind of be involved with what can be built, what can't be built, some of those things. What's your thoughts on that? Should, like zoning, for instance, should zoning play a part in this? I mean, I can understand what you talked about with the local taxes collecting that, but what about, you know, how involved should the locals be involved so they have some say in what's being built or available? You're talking short-term rentals?

In particular? Okay.

Right.

Okay, well, I'm talking more about what people are able to build and what's out there, you know, in the community itself. And that if the community had some say in, you know, what's available, is that something that you would be for or against?

Okay. All right. Thank you. Rep Segras, question?

It's a very good question. So for me in particular, growing up in the Cedar Point area, I grew up on a farm. So it was very much a very different type of avenue. But my parents took me around to all the different national parks and monuments when I was a kid. And that's sort of why I became a park ranger at that point. but using that experience kind of has shaped how I see economies and how it grows. I've lived in places that that is the true and only way of economic development is travel and tourism versus, you know, a place like here, Columbus. It's a little different. Yeah, you've got travel tourism, but you have more of the businesses. You have more of the industry that's shaping the city. So I suppose for me, the idea of travel tourism and the importance and the use of how that drives the local economies, in particular in the rural areas, has really shaped me to what I'm doing here today.

Yes, please.

So you're advocating today in the bigger picture for structure, a greater structure around this economic, and I think you're maybe underplaying a little bit the educational impact that this has to draw people to places they're not used to. You know, I've never spent a night in Portsmouth, Ohio, okay? And yet that's what changes this world is these experiences to bring you to where you're at today to advocate in a different space, and you're locked in on economic. But it all started with education and transforming your life. So to feed that to the future, you want a little structure. So this whole idea of a bed tax and a kind of circular economy, if you will, of feeding back into promoting it, isn't that the big picture? I'm thinking of why you're here today.

Okay. Rep. Brownlee. Another follow-up?

Can I see a show of hands? Who's ever been to Portsmouth, Ohio? Okay. So thank you.

That's all. I'm gone.

For the record, I saw one hand. Okay. Yeah. I don't think I saw. Was that more of a comment than a question, I would think. So, okay, ranking member Brownlee.

I don't have the data for the housing, but I can give you the data behind the numbers with the lodging tax itself. we're probably losing a good chunk of money for the marketing budget for us. Ballpark, give or take, I'd say maybe at least $10,000 with all of the, at least the Portsmouth side of county. I can only really speak upon my county for that reason. But, you know, $10,000 is a lot for my budget. But, you know, 10 grand gives me some guides to distribute throughout the state and the region. It gives me opportunities for digital advertising. It gives me opportunities to meet with the community members and support them with any event they have. In particular, this year being America 250, I will just say that part of my budget actually is going towards local support. I'd like to be able to provide more of that in my community, and I'm sure I can speak for the rest of travel tourism bureaus that we'd like to do more of that. So, you know, while we're advertising outside of our local economy, and it's very important, I also see it as local support. So, again, I can't speak on the data as far as the housing is concerned, but as far as how it impacts us and the local economy in general, what I can provide, it greatly would be a benefit if we had that extra money.

Thank you. Representative Matthews. Thank you, Chair. Full transparency, I'm not really sure where I'm at on just pushing this tax on to more of these short-term rentals. But that being said, if I can ask a little bit of a meaty question here, and if you do not know the answer to this, no worries at all. There's a lot of House bills out there. And whoever else is giving testimony today, just to tee you up, I'll be asking the same question. But we're also deliberating about House Bill 161, if you're familiar with it. Are you familiar with it by chance?

Okay, that's totally fine. Just so we hopefully progress in this committee, I would love to hear the input from potentially anyone else up here today of the pros and cons between 109 and 161, aiming to do a similar thing. Thank you, Chair.

I appreciate it. I appreciate the time.

Well, glad to be here. Adams County is a small rural county. And anyways, I'm the director of Adams County Travel Visitors Bureau. Visitors Bureau have been for 18 years, have been associated with it much longer than that. As treasurer, one of the primary struggles we always have, of course, is lodging tax runs the Bureau, which is paid by a county resident. So anyways, as director of Adams County Travel and Visitors Bureau, we struggle with the collection of lodging tax continually. Last time I checked, we were the fifth smallest travel bureau in the state of Ohio, funded entirely by a 3% lodging tax paid by guests staying overnight in Adams County, not by local residents. And our annual budget is right at $50,000 per year. Since the Travel Bureau's inception and the lodging tax resolution signed by the Adams County Commissioner in 1998, it has been an ongoing struggle to collect lodging tax from the lodging facilities to fund the Travel Bureau. Now, with online reservations through Airbnbs and Vrbo, the collection of lodging tax is voluntary at best. Keeping up with new lodging that simply lists a place on Vrbo or Airbnb is time-consuming and labor-intensive. Our small county auditor's office has the manpower or the time to chase down these facilities. The online listings have neither address nor contact information regarding the owners of these facilities, which require additional time to track down and inform the owners of the 3% lodging tax in the county. It also comes down to a matter of fairness. Last year, 24 lodging establishments in Adams County paid lodging tax to the county. These consist of two small hotels. The rest are B&Bs, small cabins, cottages, and retreats that readily support the Travel Bureau. By some local estimates, there are probably that many more operating under the radar screen, dodging the lodging tax requirement that the others pay. Passage of this House bill would help even the playing field. I have been Chairman and Director since 2007. in the travel bureau 28 years of existence the board the county and the county auditors has wrestled with the ongoing problem of collecting the 3 lodging tax Every travel bureau I won say everyone but every travel bureau in the state has these same struggles This bill, if passed, will help fund travel bureaus across Ohio in a fair and equitable way. Funding through lodging tax is the ideal way to financially support the Convention and Visitors Bureaus, as it places financial burdens of running such an operation squarely on the out-of-town visitors that stay overnight and not on the local residents. Our whole Travel Bureau system is set up to be self-sufficient, supported totally by people who come to visit the area and spend the night. I will admit I do not know the mechanism by which the lodging tax monies collected by Airbnb and Verbo will find its way to the Local Visitors Bureau, and honestly, I did not read all 128 pages of the bill. But if this bill will equal the playing field and generate income for these small travel bureaus like ours, I'm all for it.

I feel they should. I mean, I live in a zone town, doing zone township in Adams County. And that is basically to, it's zoned agriculture. And if somebody wants to open a business there, they have to go before the zoning board. Okay. Get all the approvals. You ask the neighbors, you know, what do you think? And if the neighbors are okay with it, then generally they'll okay it. I was on that, in fact, I was one of the ones that got it started, really. And I was on that zoning board for probably 10 years, you know. But I don't know, I don't understand that part of it, because if you've got zoning regulations in place, I don't know how you can, you know, how do those zoning regulations are set to, you know, basically control the growth or whatever you want to call it, you know, in that particular township. So, I mean, any new businesses coming in would have to pass, I believe, you know, the zoning commission. So, you know, I don't quite get, you know, now maybe, now in our county, we welcome the, by and large, it's all these B&Bs and mostly cabins in the woods people produce. You know, most people welcome those. I mean, there's never been an issue about them. I mean, most guys, they'll have 150 acres or something like that, maybe put a couple cabins back in there. And lodging's really growing in Adams County. I mean, our lodging tax continues to increase. This year, $58,000. That's the highest we've ever received as far as lodging tax. And our lodging tax is collected by the county auditor. We get about 88% of it. A little bit of that goes to each township that has a lodging facility in it. They all get a couple hundred bucks here and a couple hundred bucks there. Although we do get the lion's share. That's what runs our travel bureau. And, you know, I'm the only full-time person I have. And I work and I basically have no benefits, no nothing, really. But I love Adams County. And because my job is previously rider, I mean, I graduated with, you know, mass communications and that sort of stuff. So I was able to kind of get the word out to our markets, which basically a lot of it's a Cincinnati area market. But it's, lodging does not, lodging, growth of lodging in Adams County is kind of welcome, really, because it brings a little cottage industry in there. We have an Amish community that thrives on out-of-town visitors. Murphan Ridge Inn, Adams County was home to the first quilt barns. I'm sure you're aware of all that, you know. We have a large nature preserve down there, which provides a lot of hiking, several nature preserves. As a matter of fact, we're buying hiking trails, have a state park down there, Adams Lake State Park. So a lot of people come to Adams County to recreate and just kind of get away from it all, just kind of get, you know, escape the city life for a weekend.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you for your testimony. It sounds like from the chairman's question also, Rep. Matthews, that House Bill 161 might be more fitting because that bill would only pertain to the tax portion. This bill would also regulate the local governments. It does circumvent the zoning. So you talked about zoning a little bit. This bill would kind of circumvent those zoning regulations because it prohibits them from using zoning to limit short-term property rentals. So it feels like the ranking member said, you know, we're kind of putting the cart before the horse because this would limit local regulation. Plus the tax, while House Bill 161, which I urge you to look into it, only has a tax portion where you would benefit from the taxes on short-term rentals.

Okay. All right. Well, thank you. Any other questions? Okay. I noticed.

The ones that pay are aware of the Logitech, and I think they support the Travel Bureau. But, I mean, it is a state law. It is a county law to pay that. And I think, you know, we have – I think we have pretty good compliance across the board for most of them. Sometimes they're late a quarter, but then they pick up on it on the second quarter, so we don't really worry too much about that. But, no, what it is, I think a lot of people are just unaware. It's not really or unaware there is a 3% lodging tax in the county. You know, I don't know that they're willfully trying to evade it. I just think it's a matter of, well, I did not know this, you know. And so people that have a place, they think, you know, there's a lot of deer hunters coming in this fall. I think I'm going to put my little cabin up there on Airbnb and generate a little extra income. Really, probably not knowing that there is a 3% lodging tax. I will say, though, on Airbnb or Virgo, if you look on there and you just see this nice little cabin in the woods here in Adams County, you almost have to go to the auditor's office, look up that parcel of land to find out who owns it. Because on that listing, the owner's name is not there. Their address is not there. And as soon as we figure out who that is, then the auditor will send them a tax resolution thing, you know, the regulations. And generally at that point they comply. But it's really just trying to track down people that don't really know about the lodging tax. I will say that everybody that knows about it, from my point of view, pretty much pays it.

Well, if I'm going to be held up to you or wherever. Well, the county is responsible for collecting the lodging tax, not us. And if they – as I said earlier in this thing here, I do not know the mechanism of which – see, when you reserve a room on Airbnb and you put your credit card in and all that kind of stuff, Up front, when they make that reservation, right up front, those people are going to know that there's going to be a 3% logitech added to their stay. Now, how that money is going to find its way to the county auditor, I don't know. That's a mechanism I'm not sure about, but I'm sure it's been worked out. So that's kind of where, but by and large, like I said, it goes to the, and the county's been real good about collecting and everything. And, you know, like I said, they write us a check every quarter for some amount. But any collection by which we had an extra $4,000 or $5,000 put in our fund, we would be pretty happy to be honest about it. You know, we'd have some wiggle room. You know, we're so tight on everything. And anything that would generate extra income. But people in Adams County, they're investing in these lodging facilities because it's a growing market. They see somebody up the road there. And, you know, to do that, this is what I tell them. I say, you know, it takes a considerable amount of expense to build one, maintain one. Then after you've done one, after you've got one, then you become an innkeeper because that means you got to go in there after they leave clean the place up wash all the sheets to sanitize the place clean up all the beer cans or whatever you know So I mean you really becoming an innkeeper at that point All right Thank you

Thank you very much, Chairman Hoops, Vice Chairman Lorenz, I rank a member of Brownlee, members of the committee for the opportunity to come in and testify today on House Bill 361. I'm not going to read the whole testimony. I just want to pull a couple of real overarching perspectives here. We've been working quite a bit at the Buckeye Institute over in the Senate with Senator Brenner on Senate Bill 109. And I represented, well, you just heard the bill on 109 right here. And obviously 161 is essentially a tax bill. It's a tax-only bill, obviously, with the application of the visitors or the lodging tax. And, you know, Buckeye Institute is typically not overwhelmingly favorable to new taxes being placed on things. That said, I also do understand some of the reasons why we have that, why the visitors' bureaus obviously exist. how they're funded, things like that. One of the things that I think is absolutely critical is that if there is a push to apply this tax on a going-forward basis, there really needs to be kind of an appropriate balance. And I think the balance here comes back towards the issue that we're seeing in a lot of communities around the state, which is prohibitions on short-term rentals. I know, you know, we're a home rule state within the state constitution. There's certainly a long tradition and pride in that, but I would say that our perspective is that this is also violative of private property rights. If you do banning of basically Airbnbs, Vrbos, and things like that. If you're going to apply a tax, we need to also make sure that the private property rights of individuals are protected. And if they choose to utilize the property they have in order to engage in the business of renting it out through a short-term rental, we think they should have the right to be able to do that. without being explicitly prohibited by their local governments. Now, you know, we don't need to go into a ton on all of that. Obviously, we know there's local rules and regulations that can be done for nuisances and to be protective of other people's property rights, you know, out of fears of the party houses and things of that nature and legitimate concerns that folks have. But I would just say that if you're going to look at just the tax in isolation, we think that would be a mistake. we think it needs to be looked at within the context of at least a broader policy framework that is recognizing that short-term rentals are certainly something that's important for the state. We want to be able to allow those to flourish. It's a new thing. It's a way for a lot of folks to monetize assets that they have to require additional income. And if it's done right with other certain local regulations, it can be done responsibly. but just applying a tax while many communities around the state continue to pass ordinances that are prohibiting these, we think that would not be the right basic move. So with that, happy to answer questions that members of the committee might have.

Greg, we appreciate you coming in. There's some having one set tax for the whole entire state. There's other areas like Hocking County is the top ten tourist destination in America. And like the gentleman ahead of you said, they've got all kinds of money in their tourism account. So keeping taxes as low as possible. And I understand if I owned a hotel and my Airbnbs in town are not paying bed tax, but I was. I would argue the fairness of it. But anyway, I also have the city of Logan in my district, and, you know, it sits there in Hocking Hills, and it was getting to the point where we had more Airbnbs than we had residents. So they took out, and, you know, they're running their city on a small income tax to pay the police and fire and other employees. So they did regulate the Airbnbs, and that was done several years ago, and that was the reason why. Also in that county where they've got over 2,000 Airbnbs and developers coming from out of state and building these cabins and operating, I look at this as somewhat of a level playing field, but I also would like to have the lowest tax possible in some areas. And if everybody paid, the tax should be reduced. And I think that that should be considered in the way we do things here.

And through the chair and Representative Johnson, I think that you're nailing a number of things on the head. And that's one of the reasons we didn't come in. I didn't come in hot and heavy on the tax aspect per se in isolation. Again, we generally don't love them, but I also do understand we're against tax, quite a lot of tax abatements, partly because they carve out the tax base. When they carve out the tax base, that diffuses the cost of the tax onto those that haven't gotten a special dispensation and are removed from the tax base. So when you have situations happen and you have some people who aren't paying and others that are, that obviously creates that. And certainly in some communities. And I mean, I think Hawking is the area around Hawking Hills is pretty unique in that sense. It is probably not entirely, although some of the stuff up on Lake Erie probably has similar kind of dynamics from an economic standpoint, too. So we didn't come in hot and heavy for that very reason. And I think that the biggest concern, though, is, you know, I was in some interested party meetings on the Senate side more than the House side when we were talking about how do we do this. And, you know, I don't want to speak for the short-term real guys too much, but they were moving in the direction of having certain taxes. There was a registry. There were certain things that was in at least Senate Bill 104 that was dealing with that. And yet we still had a lot of local governments saying, no, no, we don't want that. We still want the ability to be able to ban, not even just regulate or make sure you have the nuisance statutes or things like that, but we want the ability to literally just preclude it in its entirety. And that's where our biggest concern is. So balancing the tax with the ability there is the key thing. But, yeah, we need to be sensitive to these rates, and especially because you want it to be as fair as absolutely possible. That's what good tax policy is. The irony is the best form of taxation is you actually tax a lot, you just don't tax it very much because you don't want the tax to be the thing that is the main driver of why somebody makes a certain type of economic decision. And I think that's something that is a principle that, in general, we try to do with low broad bases and low rates when it comes to taxes. I just tend to agree with what you're saying here. It's a balancing act here, and we've got to take the locals' considerations too. These Airbnbs that don't pay versus, and you run my property taxes up, but for the most part I'm told that a lot of them in Hocking Hills is paying, and that's the reason why your tourism is flush with cash.

I thank you from the chair to the gentleman here. Just want to clarify, the gentleman earlier was talking about 3%, but I believe their localities, if you could just clarify, are allowed to go up to 6% on this, and I have experience where our Grove City, Ohio, we use a lot of that for, I don't think necessarily, tourism purposes. Can you elaborate on what the actual law is?

Follow-up?

Thank you, Chairman Hughes. I think Indiana, just because it's a regional one that has some proximity, obviously it's more similar to us than some of the other states that are from the geographic and sort of the general demographics and stuff like that. I think Indiana does a pretty good job. And I think the key thing, again, is there can be certain parameters around all the safety stuff, all the other things, local ordinances and things like that, because I know why some locals are concerned. And I know there's been some press about bad things that were happening in Airbnbs. I think even violent actions have happened in certain communities. And so there is a reasonableness to having some of those things around. But we've urged, in fact, we just had a policy report. It's, I think, linked into the testimony as well, where we talk about preemption, statewide preemption more broadly. And one of the things that we do support is the preemption against the straight-up bans. And I think that Indiana, I think Arizona is a straight-up man as well. Some of the details are embedded in the links that are in the testimony as well.

Thank you very much.