By Cindi Andrews
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The Cincinnati Museum Center will seek its first tax levy to help with upkeep of Union Terminal. (Ernest Coleman photo)

HARTWELL - The Drake Center has never lost a tax levy, not even after a nurse's aide confessed to murdering two dozen patients in 1989. Its last tax levy, in 1999, passed with almost 60 percent of the vote.

Nonetheless, a planned request for a levy renewal has been postponed from March until November in the latest sign of an effort to rein in taxes in Hamilton County, one of the highest-taxing counties in the state.

The Tax Levy Review Committee is taking a lead role in county commissioners' efforts to hold down property-tax bills. The owner of a $100,000 home in Hamilton County paid $424.60 in property taxes last year for 11 countywide levies that help support everything from children's services to the zoo.

"There's a bit of an entitlement mentality: 'Whatever I come up with is my bottom line; you have to give me the money,' " said Chris Finney, an antitax activist and member of the county's Tax Levy Review Committee. "In the old way of thinking, you just write them a check for that amount. In the new way of thinking, you look at what the other 87 counties in Ohio are doing."

After doing just that, the Tax Levy Review Committee pressured reluctant Drake officials this month into waiting to ask taxpayers for a levy worth almost $20 million annually. The long-term hospital, owned by the county until 1989 and now run as a nonprofit, provides rehabilitation and other services not offered at typical hospitals. Drake needs the proposed 39 percent increase in funding because of leaps in the cost of malpractice insurance, drugs and nurses' salaries, officials said.

Committee members, however, said they wanted more time to figure out why the long-term hospital's skilled-nursing facility costs at least twice as much to run as nursing homes elsewhere.

Roberta Bradford, president and CEO of Drake, defended her hospital's performance. The question, she said recently, is "'How important is Drake to the community,' and shouldn't the voters get to decide that?"

Still, Drake's board agreed to delay the levy request so the committee can get a better handle on the hospital's needs, Bradford said: "Hopefully with more education and more explanation they will be able to fully understand the value we bring."

The levy, if passed, would still take effect in 2005, but a November vote leaves no wiggle room in case of a possible defeat.

Panel tweaked

County commissioners have the final say on what countywide levies make the ballot. The Tax Levy Review Committee was created in 1995 to advise them whether agencies deserve a shot at voters, but it has been reinvigorated since Republican Phil Heimlich became a commissioner in January.

Heimlich and Commissioner Todd Portune, a Democrat, have pushed through several tax reforms, including giving the committee more tools to evaluate tax requests. All money-seeking agencies are now required to open their books and their doors to a detailed outside review, and they must get their levy requests in much sooner so there's plenty of time for that review.

"Certainly it causes some angst to go through it, but angst isn't necessarily a bad thing," said Chip Gerhardt, a board member for the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden.

The zoo suffered a defeat at the polls in 1997, when a levy that included money for a parking garage was rejected despite the support of the Tax Levy Review Committee. In 1998, the zoo won voters back with a 0.42-mill levy for operating expenses such as food for the animals.

This year, the zoo was the first to seek a levy under the new guidelines. A clean bill of financial health from New Jersey-based consultant A.T. Hudson & Co. helped the zoo's 0.40-mill levy clear the Tax Levy Review Committee, county commissioners and, on Nov. 4, Hamilton County voters.

"Going through it proved that our house was in order," Gerhardt said.

The committee also tried to ensure that the zoo's house stays in order. The attraction will get $6.2 million a year for the next five years, and zoo officials committed to asking for no more than $6.5 million a year when their levy is up for renewal again in 2008.

Next up

The committee will make its final recommendation today on the Museum Center's first-ever request for an operating levy. The center is hoping to seek voter support for a 0.2-mill levy in March that would raise about $3.5 million a year for operations and upkeep of Union Terminal.

A key selling point is President Douglass McDonald's promise that he will only need tax support for 10 years, until the Museum Center can build enough private donations to survive off the interest.

Holding agencies to such promises is not new for the Tax Levy Review Committee. The committee was effective in its early years because it prompted levy-seeking agencies to take harder looks at their own budgets, said Chairman George Vincent, an attorney. The recent push for in-depth reviews has enabled the committee to go a step further.

"With the new levy policy enacted by the commissioners, we've been re-energized," Vincent said.

E-mail candrews@enquirer.com