Ohio’s gubernatorial candidates promise to bring financial relief to state residents with proposals to reduce property taxes and utility costs, among other things. Their plans vary dramatically.
Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, for example, wants to virtually eliminate property taxes, while Democrat Amy Acton proposes a more targeted approach. To reduce medical costs, Acton proposes using state money to buy and forgive unpaid medical debt. Ramaswamy said he will increase anti-fraud initiatives in the state’s Medicaid program to help reduce costs.
What’s lost on the campaign trail is an important caveat: The governor can only propose a plan. The governor has no formal authority to make something happen. So many of these ideas would have to go through the state legislature, which, because of the distribution of the state’s population and partisan political districts, is virtually certain to remain in Republican control, no matter how well Democrats do in the Nov. 3 election.
But Ramaswamy’s and Acton’s plans are worthy of exploration, so we round up their proposals on key issues and dive into them below. Signal Statewide used artificial intelligence tools to compile economic data from government and other nonpartisan sources that were verified by a reporter.
Why are gas and diesel prices up?
Gas prices didn’t reach their all-time high this year. But the price of diesel did. The cost of a gallon of diesel in the Midwest – the region that includes Ohio – reached $6.68 a gallon the week of Sept. 21. That prompted state Republicans to quickly suspend the state’s 38.5-cent tax on gas and 47-cent tax on diesel. The measure passed with some Democratic support, and Gov. Mike DeWine signed it into law on Oct. 1.
Prices dropped almost immediately. But prices are almost back to where they were pre-tax holiday. As of press time, a gallon of regular gas cost $4.38 in Ohio and a gallon of diesel in the Midwest cost $6.48.
Gas prices are influenced by a complex set of geopolitical and economic factors. But they went up and stayed up following the Feb. 28 attack on Iran by the U.S. and Israel.
What can the governor do to lower gas prices?
There’s really little that a governor can do to push down the price of gas.
But Acton and Ramaswamy this year supported pulling the one major lever the state has at its disposal – suspending the state’s gas tax.
Acton and Ramaswamy both called for a gas tax holiday on Sept 21. This led to a political dispute over whose idea it really was. Regardless, Ramaswamy’s plan was more detailed. It also had the backing of the Republican-controlled legislature, which quickly put together an impromptu legislative session and passed it the following week.
The pause means that for 90 days Ohio won’t collect its typical taxes on gas and fuel. That amounts to about $725 million that would normally flow into a fund for road projects. The state is tapping its reserve funds to make up the difference so not to defund infrastructure projects.
The tax is set to resume in early January, which presumably will cause prices to immediately spike.
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What’s being done about rising property taxes?
Ohio Department of Taxation data shows homeowners are increasingly feeling the pressure of rising taxes.
Ohio residential and agricultural property owners – a category that includes homes – were charged about $3.78 billion more in property taxes in 2025 than they were in 2020.
Overall, total state property tax collections – a category that also includes commercial and industrial property – rose from $20.1 billion in 2020 to $25.2 billion in 2025.
State tax data strongly suggests the property tax increase is primarily due to rising property values – not because voters are approving local tax levies. The state’s effective property tax rates – those that homeowners actually pay – have actually dropped during that time. That’s because Ohio has an automatic rate-reduction valve in place meant to limit how much taxes rise when property values go up.
What Ramaswamy proposes to reduce property taxes
When he launched his campaign for governor last year, Ramaswamy initially backed completely eliminating property taxes. But Ramaswamy quickly pivoted instead to saying he’d roll them back to where they were “before the end of the COVID pandemic.”
Assuming that means taking property taxes back to where they were in 2021, this would deliver a tax cut of around $4 billion annually, researchers at the liberal group Innovation Ohio estimate. The same amount would be taken away from local governments.
Local K-12 schools would shoulder most of the cuts, since around 60% of property taxes go to local schools.
Ramaswamy has said he’d call to increase state funding for schools to replenish some of the lost money, but not all of it. As Republicans have argued for years, he’s also suggested that growth spurred by the tax cut, and greater efficiency by local governments, could help make up for the lost revenue.
What Acton proposes on property taxes
Acton’s plan is far more targeted at seniors and middle-income Ohioans – and the resulting effects are far smaller.
One part would expand the “homestead” property tax exemption received by seniors who live in their home. Acton proposed making more seniors eligible by raising the income limit from $41,000 per year to $50,000 per year. Acton said this would translate to a tax cut for an additional 55,000 homeowners. The exemption reduces property taxes by between $400 and $500 for those who receive it.
Acton also has proposed what she calls a “property tax spike rebate.” This would deliver a rebate of up to $1,000 to owners of homes worth $350,000 or less if their property taxes spike by more than 4% over the previous year. Only households that make under $132,000 a year would be eligible. In other words, the plan would help insulate some homeowners against future spikes in taxes, but it wouldn’t undo the recent property tax increases as Ramaswamy’s plan would.
Finally, Acton has said she would crack down on property tax lien sales. These involve county governments selling unpaid tax debts to private collectors, who can assess up to 18% in interest. These kinds of sales have increased in recent years as unpaid tax debts have risen.
It’s worth adding here that unlike Ramaswamy’s plan to cut school funding by reducing property taxes, Acton has said she will push to fund school districts above where they are now in accordance with a bipartisan plan enacted earlier this decade. Doing so would require substantially more state spending.
Why are utility prices in Ohio rising?
If your electricity bill seems higher than ever, it’s not just your imagination.
In September of this year, Ohio electricity bills hit their highest price in Public Utilities Commission data dating back to 2015, averaging $189.19 a month for 900 kilowatt-hours of usage. The number reflects the average of the 16 Ohio cities contained in PUCO data.
That was the third new record high Ohio set in 2026. Before this year, the previous record high was $179.81 a month in April and May 2024.
The reasons for climbing electricity prices are complex. Factors include hotter weather and a data center boom that have increased electricity demand, and backlogs in permitting for new power plants.
The picture for natural gas, which many Ohioans use to heat their homes, is a little more complicated. As a 16-city average, Ohio didn’t eclipse the record high set in 2022.
But some individual cities, which have their own gas providers, have reached record highs. Columbus, Toledo, Dayton and Zanesville all reached a record high of $137 a month in February for 6,500 cubic feet of natural gas usage, a common baseline usage rate.
Cincinnati, served by Duke Energy Ohio, hit its all-time high in August, averaging $142.
Overall, the 16-city average for Ohio in 2026 so far is $98.14 a month, compared to $68.98 for the first 10 months of 2021.
Here’s how the candidates are proposing to fight high utility prices:
What Acton proposes to address high utility prices
Acton has vowed to “restore checks and balances” to state electricity policy. Part of her plan focuses on the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, the state regulatory board that regulates power companies and other utilities. Acton said she would use her authority as governor to fill the PUCO’s five-seat board with commissioners “who put ratepayers first and are not beholden to utility companies.”
Acton also says she will increase funding to the Ohio Consumers Counsel, a state agency that serves as a watchdog for consumers and contests utility efforts to raise prices.
In addition, Acton has said she seeks to reinstate energy-efficiency programs that utility companies successfully lobbied state lawmakers to eliminate in House Bill 6. That is a 2019 law that became the center of a federal corruption probe. Energy programs had paid for consumers to replace old appliances and less-efficient lightbulbs and were meant to reduce prices by reducing electricity usage.
Acton also has proposed a crackdown on data centers that have contributed to rising electricity costs. Her plan includes requiring them to pay for their own electricity and associated electrical grid upgrades.
What Ramaswamy proposes to address high utility prices
Ramaswamy’s initiatives focus on increasing energy supply. He said that, as governor, he’d streamline the permitting process so new power plants and energy infrastructure would be built faster.
He also said he’d promote policies to boost energy production in Ohio, including by drilling for natural gas.
Finally, Ramaswamy has introduced a novel plan to address high electricity prices. He’s proposed forcing data center developers to provide free electricity to their neighbors as a condition of approving new data center construction. Experts have described the plan as highly complex to impossible, although they said it could be more workable if Ramaswamy decided to focus on simply making developers directly give electricity rebate checks to residents.
Are healthcare costs spiking?
Healthcare costs also are on the rise in Ohio. In 2020, an average person with private family coverage through their employer paid $4,906 a year toward their insurance premiums, according to KFF, a health research organization. That number reached $6,453 last year. Data for 2026 is not yet available.
Premium prices for those covered by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, also went up this year. For an ACA marketplace lowest-cost silver plan – a middle-of-the-road insurance option – the average monthly premium for a single 40-year-old person hit $513 a month in 2026, compared to $360 a month in 2021.
How Ramaswamy proposes to bring down healthcare costs
Ramaswamy has said he supports price-transparency laws, which require healthcare providers to clearly list prices for various medications and treatments.
He also has said he will work with the state attorney general to increase fraud enforcement in Medicaid, the massive healthcare plan for the poor and people with disabilities that’s jointly run by the state and federal governments.
Ramaswamy has said that he will ask the Trump administration for permission to keep any fraud savings, and in turn has suggested he may return those savings to taxpayers directly. But he has also said the Medicaid fraud savings could help replenish the road repair fund depleted by his gas tax holiday plan.
Ramaswamy says his anti-fraud initiatives will help with healthcare costs in another way – he said fraud and waste drive all healthcare costs up, so reducing it will help reduce that dynamic.
What Acton proposes to bring down healthcare costs
Acton, who is a medical doctor, has some similar ideas for health care and some vastly different ones. One major initiative is to use state money to buy and forgive unpaid medical debt for some people. Acton has offered a ballpark for what her plan might look like. The cutoff would be those who make at or below 400% of the federal poverty level – $132,000 for a family of four – or whose debt exceeds 5% of their household income. An Illinois plan with identical income criteria saw the state spend about $10 million to retire up to $1 billion in debt. Acton also has said she supports bipartisan efforts to rein in medical debt collection practices.
Acton also has said she will advocate to preserve Medicaid in the face of steep future planned cuts from President Donald Trump’s signature spending plan. This will involve making it easier for those who are eligible to get enrolled and stay enrolled. Acton also has said fighting fraud in the program will be a priority, although she hasn’t gotten as detailed as Ramaswamy has. She’s also backed more pricing transparency as Ramaswamy has.
Finally, Acton has proposed launching “Ohio Rx,” similar to a Trump program that seeks to use federal negotiating power to reduce the price of some prescription drugs. Acton’s version would leverage the state Medicaid program.