Some Ohio lawmakers are taking inspiration from the federal government and setting up a new caucus to help make the Buckeye State’s government more efficient.
A group of Ohio House members has created the Ohio House DOGE Caucus, inspired by the federal Department of Government Efficiency.
“What we want to do at the Ohio level is actual legislation that gets vetted by the House and the Senate,” state Rep. Ron Ferguson, R-Wintersville, told WTOV. “So, we’re encouraging people to reach out to their state legislators to propose where government can be more efficient in the state of Ohio.
“...What I keep hearing from residents is, more than anything, we need to fix the property tax system,” Ferguson added, according to the station’s report. “We need to roll back taxes, and the best way we can do that is finding some other places to save money. So, if we can make government more efficient, if we can save that money, we can look at getting rid of the property tax and giving that money back in the pockets of hard-working Ohioans.”
According to a WOSU report, about half of the House Republicans have joined the caucus. However, the group doesn’t expect to email state employees about the five initiatives they worked on during the week, which Ohio’s federal DOGE counterpart did, much to the chagrin of its opponents.
“I think there are a lot of things that maybe the state of Ohio does that may not be necessarily best done at the state level,” state Rep. Tex Fischer, R-Boardma, told WOSU.
“I think wasteful spending and mission creep of what government does is a bipartisan issue,” Fischer added, per the station’s report. “This isn’t meant to be a super hyper-partisan thing. I think that both parties share a good bit of the blame for what’s going on at the federal level, and we’re certainly not immune.”
The caucus creation follows Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s more than $219 billion budget proposal for the next two years—$108.6 billion in spending in fiscal 2026 and $110.7 billion in fiscal 2027. Based on the proposed budget, the state could increase spending by 78.5% between fiscal 2016 and fiscal 2027.
“We can always do better, we can always find efficiencies,” NBC4i quoted Republican Gov. Mike DeWine as saying when asked about the DOGE caucus.
“I think it’s always something that we can, you know, find things… we’ll see,” the governor said when asked whether he thinks it is a good use of time, per the report.
As a starting point, DOGE caucus members could look to The Buckeye Institute’s 2025 Piglet Book, which examined Ohio’s proposed two-year budget and offered specific savings lawmakers should consider. The group found that Ohio could use a Department of Government Efficiency of its own and that Buckeye State lawmakers could save at least $9 billion if lawmakers cut the pork from the biennial budget under consideration.
“I look forward to joining many of my colleagues to build upon … President [Donald] Trump’s America First momentum with the DOGE Caucus,” state Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Loveland, said in a constituent newsletter. I believe this caucus will help bring forward common sense legislation that will better the lives of Ohioans and fight back against the administrative state.”
While the Ohio Senate does not have its own DOGE caucus, Senate President Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, told WCMH that he supports the idea.
“I believe we can always look for more efficiencies in government,” WCMH quoted McColley as saying. “And certainly, if members of the House and/or the Senate want to take a deeper look at how we can become more efficient and how we can increase cost savings in government, I think there’s nothing but good that can come from that.”
