Columbus City Council voted 8-0 on November 2 to place new limits on how the mayor can use one of the city’s most important budget-balancing tools, a decision that arrives less than two weeks before Mayor Andrew Ginther must present his proposed 2027 operating budget. The measure, a change to city code proposed by Council President Shannon Hardin, requires the city to gradually reduce the amount of money it draws from the Income Tax Set Aside subfund to pay for day-to-day operating expenses.
Councilmember Nick Bankston was absent from the meeting, so the vote was unanimous among the eight members present. The result did not end the argument over Columbus’s finances. It sharpened it, putting on the record two competing views of the same numbers: council leaders describe the change as careful, long-overdue discipline, while the Ginther administration warns that it ties the city’s hands at exactly the moment flexibility matters most.
For residents, the dispute is not abstract. The fund at the centre of the debate helps pay for the borrowing that builds parks, fire stations, roads and other capital projects, and it has also been used to help balance the operating budget that pays for police and fire overtime, community grants and other services. How quickly the city steps back from that second use will shape the choices in the 2027 budget and the budgets that follow it.
What the Income Tax Set Aside fund is
Columbus deposits 25 percent of all income tax revenue into the Income Tax Set Aside subfund, known by the shorthand ITSA. The fund was designed to cover payments on debt the city takes on to build capital projects. When Columbus borrows to build something lasting, the money set aside from income taxes is there to repay that borrowing.
Over time, however, the city has also used the subfund for qualifying expenses that are not debt payments. That second use is the practice the new legislation targets. Under the code change, the city must curb its use of the subfund for operating expenses by 10 percent each year, a gradual reduction rather than an immediate stop.
Finance Director Chris Long told council that the 2026 operating budget will draw about 50 million dollars from the subfund, or roughly 4 percent of the operating budget. He presented that figure as consistent with the city’s position before the pandemic, when federal aid to local governments temporarily reduced the need to tap the fund. For comparison, Long pointed to the last operating budget proposed by former Mayor Michael B. Coleman and passed while Hugh Dorrian was still city auditor, in 2018, which used about 33 million dollars from ITSA, or nearly 4 percent of that operating budget.
Those percentages matter because both sides use them. The administration argues that the current draw is not out of line with past practice. Council leaders argue that the direction of travel, not a single year’s percentage, is the problem, and that a habit of reaching for the fund to balance operations puts the city’s long-term borrowing position at risk.
Why council says the Columbus City Council budget vote protects the city’s credit
Hardin, other council members and City Auditor Jacquelin Lewis framed the legislation as a fiscally responsible step to protect Columbus’s top credit rating. The city holds a triple-A bond rating, the highest available, and council leaders argued that continued reliance on the debt-service fund for operating costs could invite a downgrade. A downgrade would make future borrowing for capital projects more expensive, raising the cost of the very parks, roads and public buildings the fund was created to support.
Lewis has said credit rating agencies have warned that the city’s continued reliance on ITSA funds could lead to a downgrade. That warning carried weight in the debate because it connects a budget technique to a concrete consequence for taxpayers: higher borrowing costs down the line.
Councilmember Nancy Day-Achauer described the legislation in plain terms, saying the council was acting to rein in the practice of taking money meant for one purpose to cover another. She called the approach practical and deliberately slow, a gradual weaning rather than a sudden cut. The point, in her telling, is that the city should adjust over several years instead of waiting for a crisis to force a sharper correction.
Councilmember Melissa Green pushed back on the administration’s warning that community grants would be the first casualty. She said it was absurd to suggest that the first cuts would fall on grants for community partners that shelter and feed vulnerable neighbours. Green pointed to recent occasions when the administration sought additional council funds for wealthy investors in a women’s professional soccer team and for upgrades to Nationwide Arena, arguing that the city’s priorities, not the new legislation, would decide where any savings are found.
Why the mayor’s office pushed back
The Ginther administration has accused City Council of politicising the issue. Finance Director Long expressed alarm about the legislation during the meeting, warning that limiting the flexibility of one of the city’s fiscal tools could hamstring the city. The administration raised concerns that the city could be forced to cut grants for community partners or lay off city staff in order to protect core services.
Green disputed that framing directly, saying the administration should invest more in social safety nets rather than using them as leverage in a budget argument. Day-Achauer added that council itself would decide where cuts are made, and suggested that savings could be found within City Hall rather than in neighbourhood services.
The disagreement reflects a deeper difference in how the two sides read the city’s books. Long has testified that the city will end the current year with a 21 million dollar operating surplus, because revenues are coming in above what the previous auditor projected for 2026. Lewis has pushed back on that characterisation, saying that when spending in the current year outpaces revenue in the current year, that is essentially a deficit in her view, whatever the year-end accounting shows. Both readings were aired again in the run-up to the November 2 vote, and neither side conceded ground.
That dispute over language matters because it shapes what residents are told about the city’s health. A surplus suggests room to manoeuvre. A deficit suggests urgency. Council’s legislation, in effect, sides with the more cautious reading, building a rule that forces a gradual retreat from the fund regardless of which description of the current year turns out to be closer to the mark.
What changed before the vote
Before calling for the vote, Hardin said the council was attempting to partner with the administration on the issue. Council made amendments to the legislation based on concerns and feedback from the Ginther administration, and one of those changes is significant: the final legislation gives the auditor so-called break-glass authority to tap into ITSA in an emergency.
That provision answers one of the administration’s central objections, that a firm cap could leave the city unable to respond to an unexpected expense. With the emergency authority in place, the rule is a gradual constraint on routine use, not a lock on the fund in a genuine crisis. Supporters say that distinction is what makes the legislation responsible rather than reckless. Critics in the administration remain unconvinced, and Long’s alarm during the meeting suggests the amendment did not settle the argument.
The presence of the emergency provision also tells residents something about how the legislation is meant to work in practice. The 10 percent annual reduction is a path, not a cliff. Each year, the city will be expected to rely a little less on the subfund for operating costs, finding other savings or revenues to close the gap, while retaining a route to the fund if an emergency genuinely requires it.
The longer budget fight behind the vote
The November 2 vote did not arrive out of nowhere. It is the latest step in a budget fight that has been building through 2026, centred on public safety overtime and on how honestly the city’s finances have been described.
On October 19, council voted 9-0 to approve legislation, also introduced by Hardin, that inserts Auditor Lewis into the budget process by requiring her to estimate how much police and fire overtime will cost next year, to inform the 2027 operating budget. That vote followed concern about unaccounted public safety overtime costs. The city is projected to go over budget on police and fire overtime by at least 23 million dollars this year, and the administration has tapped an additional 10 million dollars from ITSA to offset millions in police and fire overtime overages.
At the October 19 hearing, Ginther’s chief of staff, Elon Simms, accused the council of putting the auditor in the middle of a political fight, calling the move a gotcha. Lewis responded that her role is to be objective and apolitical when examining the city’s finances, and that sometimes that historically means standing between council and the mayor. She also gently pushed back on the administration’s characterisation of city finances, warning that one of the three major credit rating agencies, S&P, had signalled that continued reliance on city reserves could lead to a future downgrade of the triple-A rating.
The administration has pointed to steps it is already taking, including a hiring freeze for non-critical, non-safety personnel and the elimination of a few hundred vacant positions, and has said it is moving from a one-year budgeting framework to a three-year framework. Long has said the administration agrees it is best not to put too many short-term expenses on the subfund, and that it is taking steps to avoid relying on it in the future. Council leaders reply that agreement in principle is not the same as a rule that binds future budgets, which is what the November 2 legislation provides.
Politics runs through the dispute as well. Hardin is challenging Ginther for mayor in 2027, and the two have publicly disagreed over the city’s finances as that race takes shape. The administration says council is politicising a technical question. Council leaders say the mayor’s office is resisting oversight that any responsible council would seek. Residents will have to judge that argument for themselves, but the policy consequence is now fixed in code: the gradual reduction begins regardless of the campaign.
The stakes extend beyond the operating budget. In September, Ginther pitched a 2.8 billion dollar capital budget, including record investment in Division of Fire apparatus, plus money for parks, recreation centres, roads, sidewalks, bike lanes and water infrastructure. Hardin has argued it would be irresponsible to rush large new debt-financed capital spending while questions remain about the operating budget. The November 2 vote does not decide the capital budget, but it sets the terms on which the operating side of the city’s finances will be judged when the mayor’s 2027 proposal arrives.
What happens next for Columbus residents
The immediate next step is the mayor’s 2027 operating budget proposal, due within about two weeks of the November 2 vote. That proposal will be the first test of the new rule. Residents, council members and the auditor will be watching how much the proposal still relies on ITSA for operating expenses, and whether the administration’s plan shows a credible path to the 10 percent annual reduction.
Council will then have the power to amend the mayor’s proposal, as it has in past years, and the auditor’s overtime estimate, required under the October legislation, will inform that debate. If the administration’s warnings prove accurate, the pressure will fall on grants, staffing or services, and council members will face the choices Day-Achauer described, including whether savings can be found within City Hall first. If council’s account proves accurate, the gradual reduction will proceed without drama, and the triple-A rating will be protected at little visible cost.
Either way, the November 2 vote changes the default. Drawing on the debt-service fund to balance operations is no longer an open-ended option in Columbus. It is now a practice the city has committed, by an 8-0 vote, to wind down year by year, with an emergency exception held by the auditor. That is a modest change in wording and a significant change in direction, and it will shape every budget debate in Columbus until the weaning is complete.
Sources
USN reviewed reporting from multiple outlets for this story. Read more from The Columbus Dispatch, The Columbus Dispatch and The Columbus Dispatch.
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