Ohio State University Airport’s Tax Exemption Upheld by State Supreme Court

COLUMBUS, Ohio—Ohio State University’s airport northwest of campus should continue to remain exempt from local property taxes, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

The 5-2 decision means the state’s largest university will continue not to have to pay a significant amount of tax revenue (the lawsuit didn’t place a number on it) to schools in Dublin, already one of the wealthiest cities in the state.

The suit was filed not by Dublin schools, but by Worthington property owner John S. O’Keeffe. He argued that when Ohio State secured a property-tax exemption for the 326-acre airport in 1943, the facility was used solely for the university’s flight-education program. But today, O’Keeffe noted, 90% of the airport’s property is used not for educational purposes, but rather by private airport customers.

O’Keeffe asked the Supreme Court to lift the tax exemption and send the case back to the Ohio Board of Tax Appeals to “split-list” the property – that is, determine what exactly percentage of the airport is not used for educational purposes and charge Ohio State a proportional amount of property taxes.

But, writing for the court, Justice Melody Stewart held that operating an airport furthers OSU’s educational and research mission, and it’s “tenuous” to argue that airport use and educational use are different. In addition, Stewart stated, public airports in Ohio can be exempted from property taxes under two other provisions in state law.

“The airport use itself qualifies as an exempt ‘public purpose,’” she wrote.

Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor and Justices Pat Fischer, Michael Donnelly and Jennifer Brunner concurred with Stewart’s opinion. Justices Sharon Kennedy and Pat DeWine dissented in separate opinions.

Kennedy, in her dissent, argued that Ohio State failed to show how the airport was meeting the terms of its tax exemption when “the primary and dominant use of the property is to operate the third-busiest towered airport in this state to service private customers and businesses who are not affiliated with the university and who do not use the property to advance the university’s academic mission other than provide revenue for the airport.”

DeWine agreed with Kennedy, though in his dissent he urged “split-listing” the property.

At the time the lawsuit was filed, OSU’s airport was the third-busiest airport in Ohio with an air-traffic control tower, behind John Glenn Columbus International Airport and Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport. In 2016, the airport supported over 76,000 flight operations, ranking it 186th out of 517 air traffic control-towered airports in the nation.

Read the full opinion here: