Candidate Q&A: Jeff Lehner, Ross County Auditor

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CHILLICOTHE, Ohio: Jeff Lehner is running unopposed for a second term as Ross County Auditor, so in our candidate question project, his answers run on their own.

Heritage Headlines is sending the same six questions to every candidate for local office in Ross, Pickaway, Pike, Scioto, Gallia, Vinton and Highland counties ahead of the November 3 election. The questions went out Saturday morning. Lehner’s complete answers, plus two photos, were back in about two and a half hours, answered on a weekend, outside office hours. Fair to say that is not the response time we usually get.

Lehner, a Republican, was first elected in 2022. His answers run below as he sent them. What he describes, the state-ordered reappraisal, the tentative values posted online ahead of time, the in-person reviews, and the local tax rate cuts that followed, matches the public record. Election Day is Tuesday, November 3, and early voting is already underway.

1. Who are you, and where are you from?

I wear many hats as we all do. Husband, Dad, Football & Basketball Coach are probably my biggest hats. Born in Akron, grew up in Michigan and Germany before moving back to Akron in high school. Met my wife at Ohio State and moved to Ross County from Columbus in 2011. Local insurance & financial services professional prior to becoming Auditor.

2. Why are you running for this office?

I’m running for another term as Ross County’s Auditor to build on what we’ve done in this term — lower local tax rates, more efficient local government, clear communication with the people of Ross County on the challenges and opportunities in front of us.

3. A lot of people here say they feel more unheard than ever. Forgotten, or even betrayed, by the people in office. So forget plans for a second: what have you actually DONE in this office? Not promises, not the future. The here and today, things you can point to.

What I’m proudest of in my time as Auditor is the level of transparency and accessibility we’ve brought to the office. Clear communication on initiatives through various channels on issues of importance, including social & traditional media. Probably the best example is our handling of the Ohio Department of Taxation’s mandate to increase residential values by 29% in our last revaluation. We posted tentative values online for the first time in Ross County history four months prior to adoption and then hosted hundreds of in-person meetings with individual taxpayers to review — nobody was turned away. Then when values went live in January we held nearly 400 more formal board of revision hearings with individuals. Personal attention in every meeting and a thorough, consistent approach to each. We did the best we could in a very flawed state system for revaluations.

Separate from our approach to the reappraisal I also coordinated nearly three dozen local tax rate cuts for the county, city and townships — basically all of the rates we were permitted to cut under existing law — to offset the impact to local taxpayers of the state’s valuation mandate. The rates we couldn’t adjust under law, the school taxes, are the source of higher property taxes in Ross County as they are throughout Ohio. These are a matter of the state’s school funding formula and I’ve communicated this consistently.

I agree with people who say that too many politicians have forgotten the people they’re elected to represent. Increasingly it seems that the higher the office, the greater the influence of special interests at the expense of regular people — both parties. Probably my favorite part of serving in local government is that it’s about the work we do — we don’t have big donors and lobbyists at the local level trying to steer outcomes. What that leaves is a clear opportunity for people to assess the effectiveness of local elected officials on actual outcomes rather than the noise machine associated with higher level politics.

4. Honest question: when would you NOT complete a task or goal you promised? Under what circumstances would you let something you committed to go unfinished, and what would your reaction be when it happened?

I can’t see a scenario where I would ever be OK with not doing what I said I would. If I commit to it, I do everything I’m able to make it happen. For example — my first year here I took a plan to the commissioners to cut Ross County’s general fund tax rate. They rejected it. Instead of giving up I researched the topic and asked for a legal opinion on the authority of the budget commission to cut that rate independent of the commissioners’ cooperation. The prosecutor advised that the budget commission could cut the rate from 3.1 mills to 2.4 so we convened the budget commission and did so in 2024 for 2025. Then in 2025 I worked with the commissioners to further cut the rate to 1.68 mills as an offset of our state revaluation mandate for 2026, this time with their cooperation.

For as long as I am Ross County’s Auditor I will press everywhere I’m able to do what I said I would, even when it means fighting with my own party. My record proves it and Ross County will always come before my party.

5. Your office sets the property values that everyone’s tax bill is built on. Homeowners say their values shot up and their bills followed, and plenty say the value put on their home is just wrong. What will you do to keep values fair, and how does a homeowner who thinks you got it wrong get a real hearing?

To anyone who believes their property has been overvalued I would encourage them to call our office. We can correct errors at any time and state law provides for Board of Revision applications for formal review annually from January 1 through March 31. Everyone who wants a meeting gets one and every meeting gets personal attention. If someone believes their property has been overvalued but will not participate in the means to address the situation there’s not much we can do for them.

In the end, the market speaks for itself and there’s no question that property values are much higher than they were five or six years ago. We will continue to aggressively cut rates we control locally to every extent we’re able. The school taxes are still a problem that only state officials can fix, because Ohio’s school funding formula is a function of state law. School funding in Ohio is broken for the burdens it imposes on local property taxpayers as property values rise in the form of unvoted tax hikes. While recent state-level reforms have produced marginal benefits, there’s still a lot of work to do on this in Columbus. I think most people understand this by now.

6. In two sentences: why should our readers vote for you?

I will keep doing this job as I said I would in 2022 and as I have since. We’ve saved Ross County taxpayers more than $5 million in local taxes and fees since I got here and my approach to this job will not change.

Photos provided by Jeff Lehner.

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