FREMONT — Dr. Amy Acton brought her “My Promise for Ohio” tour to a Front Street coffee shop in Fremont this week, sitting down with Sandusky County small business owners to pitch an affordability agenda built on property tax relief, new tax credits for working families, and lower energy costs.
Acton, the Democratic candidate for governor, met owners and residents at Outpour Coffee in downtown Fremont as part of a swing that also took her to Vermilion and Columbus. The Fremont stop put her face to face with the costs business owners here say are squeezing them from every direction — electric bills, fuel prices, and taxes.
The centerpiece of Acton’s pitch is an immediate homestead exemption, worked out with the legislature, aimed at cutting property taxes so seniors can afford to stay in their homes. “We’re working on lowering property taxes through an immediate homestead exemption I’ll be working on with the legislature,” Acton said during the visit. “I’ve worked with people on both sides of the aisle my entire career, have worked with five different governors. So we are going to work immediately to lower the property taxes for folks so they can age in place.”
Alongside the property tax plan, Acton is proposing a state earned income tax credit and a child tax credit, both aimed at working families, and she has said she wants them moving in her first 100 days in office.
At Outpour Coffee, co-owner Michael Hasselbach described sales growing while expenses grow faster. “As we grow, we’re getting more business sales, but at the same time, costs are rising,” he said, pointing to electric bills at home and at the shop. “We’re definitely looking for a solution of some sort, somebody to help make that ease.”
Acton tied those bills to diesel prices and to the electricity demands of rapid data center growth. “If our cars run on gas, this economy runs on diesel,” she said. “Our farmers are struggling with the price of diesel right now, and even small business owners are being often charged surcharges because of the fuel prices right now.” In Vermilion, Hometown Bakery co-owner Tracy Adkins told her the bakery’s electricity bill had recently doubled and that more than half her staff, including her business partner, works a second job.
“We are absolutely open for business in this state, but we’re not for sale and we are not to have our communities exploited,” Acton said of her economic growth message during the Northwest Ohio swing. She pointed to Ohio’s roughly one million small businesses as the foundation of the state’s economy and said her administration would expand programs to help them while working to bring electric bills down.
Acton faces Republican Vivek Ramaswamy in the Nov. 3 general election to succeed Gov. Mike DeWine, under whom she served as state health director. With early voting underway, both campaigns are working Ohio’s smaller cities — and in Sandusky County, the race is being decided one electric bill and one property tax bill at a time.
