Hamilton County’s Child Placement Costs Doubled Before Issue 10

Key Points

• Issue 10 renews 4.51 mills and adds 1.1 mills, costing $121 per $100,000 annually.
• Hamilton County’s out-of-home placement spending roughly doubled from 2021 to 2025, mostly on a per-child basis.
• Issue 10 would raise $116.9 million yearly; PCG’s minimum-service scenario assumed $145 million.

Three county reviews show rising placement prices and single-source contracts drove Hamilton County’s children’s services costs. Issue 10 would raise less levy money than the consultant’s leanest scenario assumed, and the reviews contain no multiyear record of children’s outcomes.

Hamilton County’s children’s services levy fund spent about twice as much on child placements in 2025 as in 2021.

The average number of children in placement rose just 19% over those same four years.

That gap sits at the center of Issue 10, the children’s services levy on the Nov. 3 ballot. The ballot asks voters to renew the current 4.51 mills and add 1.1 more for four years. The county auditor estimates the combined 5.61 mills would raise $116.9 million a year. That money pays for Hamilton County Job and Family Services’ child protection work, from abuse investigations to foster care. Commissioners Denise Driehaus and Stephanie Summerow Dumas voted Aug. 3 to put it on the ballot, and Commissioner Alicia Reece abstained, WVXU reported. The Exchange laid out the combined tax hit from Issue 10 and the Cincinnati Public Schools levy in August.

The county didn’t hide the problem. Three county reviews this year walked through it in detail: placement prices up, more care bought through individually negotiated contracts, and a reserve that shrank by more than $100 million. Those reviews also show something the county’s levy pitch doesn’t lead with. Issue 10 raises less levy money than the county’s own consultant assumed in its leanest budget scenario. And the materials the Exchange reviewed don’t include a multiyear record of whether kids in the system are better off now than when spending was lower.

What Issue 10 Costs a Homeowner

Start with the bill. The ballot asks for “a renewal of 4.51 mills and an increase of 1.1 mill,” which “amounts to $121 for each $100,000 of the county auditor’s market value.” The current levy cost $81.15 per $100,000 in tax year 2024, according to the county auditor. HCJFS puts the increase at about $39 per $100,000 a year on its levy page. The math checks out. Ohio taxes homes on 35% of market value, so 1.1 new mills comes to $38.50.

Why the Issue 10 Percentages Disagree

You’ll see several percentages attached to Issue 10, and they don’t match because they measure different things. The voted rate rises 24%, from 4.51 to 5.61 mills. But Ohio’s House Bill 920 trims a levy’s effective rate as property values rise, so it keeps collecting about the same dollars from existing property. By 2024, the current children’s services levy collected just 2.51 effective mills on homes. A renewal keeps that reduction. New millage starts at full strength. Put those together, and total collections would rise roughly 41% to 43% over the $81.6 million to $83 million the levy raised in recent years, by Exchange calculation.

Then there’s the county’s number. Driehaus called the chosen option a 38% increase, close to half of what the Tax Levy Review Committee recommended, WCPO reported. WCPO described the committee’s plan as a roughly 71% increase. The Exchange couldn’t reproduce 38% from published county figures, and the county hasn’t published its method. A homeowner’s percentage also depends on how tax credits apply to each piece of the levy, and Ohio’s 2025 property tax relief package reworked those credits. So stick with the auditor’s dollars. Driehaus’s “half” does hold up. Commissioners chose 1.1 added mills, and the committee wanted 2.06.

Placement Prices Were the Biggest Driver

Public Consulting Group, the county’s consultant, traced the money in a February 2026 report. Spending from the children’s services levy fund rose from $98.4 million in 2021 to $180.4 million in 2025. Clark Schaefer Hackett’s separate accounting review landed on the same 2025 total. After inflation, that’s a 54% increase, by Exchange calculation using the Consumer Price Index. In PCG’s category table, out-of-home care accounts for $49.3 million of the $82 million rise and contracted services for $28.5 million. However, Clark Schaefer Hackett puts 2025 out-of-home care lower, at $93 million, so the split varies by source.

Here’s the part that matters. The average number of children in placement rose 19%, from 1,759 to 2,089. Spending per placed child rose roughly 63% to 70%, depending on which total you use, by Exchange calculation. The Exchange split that growth into price and volume, and about three-quarters came from higher cost per child, not more children. That makes placement prices the biggest single driver of the increase, roughly $33 million to $37 million of the $82 million. From 2021 to 2024, Hamilton’s average group-home rate rose 63%, to $403.73. Its independent-living rate nearly tripled, to $285.94.

One county decision pushed the other way. Kinship placements with relatives grew from 29% to 37% of children placed. Kinship care runs about $7,000 a year per child, compared with roughly $41,000 in a foster home, PCG estimated. That shift pulled the average cost per child down, and the county deserves the credit.

Where Placement Costs Climbed Fastest

HCJFS Director Bob Anderson says the kids coming in are different now. “We’ve seen a 19% increase in children in our custody, and a lot of the children coming into custody have more complex needs than in the past,” he told WVXU this month. Residential placements, he said, “can range anywhere from $400, $500 a day to well over $1,000 a day.” PCG’s data back him up partway. Assessments recommending a qualified residential treatment program rose from 147 in 2022 to 193 in 2024.

But the same report points to a second cause, and it’s about how the county buys care. HCJFS seeks placement agreements through open requests for proposals, PCG wrote. Yet “since 2022, the use of single source contracts to place children has increased drastically among most placement setting types.” Single-source deals covered 29% of group-home placements in 2022 and 72% in 2025. In independent living, the share jumped from 10% to 61%. Single-source independent-living placements averaged $364.98 a day in 2025, while the competitive RFP rate was $180.84.

Those numbers don’t adjust for differences in kids’ needs or services, though. They show what the county paid under each method, not what it could have saved.

Local Money Covers Costs Above the Ceiling

So who pays the difference? PCG answered that, too. “Providers are able to negotiate single source contracts much higher than the state Title IV-E ceiling for high acuity youth,” the report says. Reimbursement stops at the lower of actual cost or that ceiling, and local money covers the rest. Under Ohio’s Title IV-E state plan, PCG found, independent living draws no Title IV-E reimbursement. Yet Hamilton places 9% of its children there, compared with 3% statewide.

The County’s Reviewers Flagged Single-Source Contracts

This isn’t only the Exchange’s read. All three county reviews raised it. “Heavy reliance on single-source contracts, which have higher rates than competitive procurements, limits cost control,” the Tax Levy Review Committee wrote in its May 18 report. Its recommendation was blunt: “Reduce reliance on single-source contracts.” PCG’s recommendation went further: “Convene a review panel to assess justification for single source contracts when above local ceiling.” The consultant also found HCJFS can’t tell “at a granular level” which services it pays each placement provider for.

Clark Schaefer Hackett found the money concentrated. From 2022 through 2025, the top six of 258 placement vendors drew $141.7 million, half the category. Lighthouse Youth & Family Services led at $38.8 million. Its chief operating officer urged commissioners this summer to put the levy on the ballot, Signal Cincinnati reported. None of the reviews alleges wrongdoing. Still, the accountants concluded that “procurement and service delivery warrant a closer look.” Meanwhile, the HCJFS procurement page links to open bids, not to awarded or single-source contracts.

Hamilton County Keeps More Children in Custody Than Its Peers

PCG estimated Hamilton’s yearly spending per child in custody at about $83,800, near Cuyahoga County’s $80,200 and well below Franklin County’s $147,600. The consultant didn’t identify sources for those estimates, so that comparison only goes so far. The custody count, however, is firmer ground. Hamilton had 15.4 children in custody per 1,000 during state fiscal 2025, according to the Public Children Services Association of Ohio. That’s the highest rate among Ohio’s six most populous counties, by Exchange comparison of PCSAO’s county profiles. Franklin posted 8.2 with the same 20% child poverty rate, PCSAO data show.

Look at where the kids live. On July 1, 2025, 62% of the children Franklin served stayed at home with in-home services. In Hamilton, 21% did, down from 26% a year earlier, according to its county profile. The county’s reviewers noticed. The committee wrote that Hamilton “has a higher rate than some urban counties for bringing children into the system,” and PCG recommended comparing its screening-in rates with similar counties. “We’re really looking at our intake model and making sure that we are only bringing kids into care that absolutely need [it],” then-interim director John Nelson told WVXU in July.

How Hamilton Compares With Ohio’s Largest Counties

Two things keep Hamilton’s custody count high. Kids enter care here at 4.86 per 1,000, second among the six behind Summit’s 6.57, in state data. They also leave slowly, with 28% reaching a permanent home within 12 months. That doesn’t make Franklin the model, though. Franklin children moved between placements more often, at 5.2 moves per 1,000 days in care against Hamilton’s 3.1. And 40% of Hamilton reports carry multiple allegations, double the state share, PCG found.

Children’s services in Ohio’s six most populous counties

County	Children in custody per 1,000, SFY 2025	Child poverty rate	Share of children served who were at home, July 1, 2025	Permanency within 12 months of entering care	Placement moves per 1,000 days	State vulnerability tier
Hamilton	15.4	20%	21%	28%	3.1	Stressed
Franklin	8.2	20%	62%	37%	5.2	Stressed
Cuyahoga	12.0	23%	39%	25%	2.7	Strained
Montgomery	11.1	22%	65%	42%	4.7	Strained
Summit	13.5	18%	35%	44%	3.2	Very Good
Lucas	13.2	25%	38%	34%	3.2	Good
Ohio	n/a	n/a	n/a	36.4%	3.76	n/a

Sources: PCSAO county profiles, June 2025 edition, for custody, poverty and in-home figures. The permanency, stability and tier columns come from the Ohio Department of Children and Youth’s 2026 federal progress report, whose county table prints no reporting period. Statewide figures in the Ohio row cover periods between 2022 and 2024.

Spending Outran the County’s Own Plans

The county planned to spend down some of its reserve after voters renewed the levy in 2021 with 58% support. Annual plans “had anticipated a cumulative $68.6M shortfall across 2022-2025,” Clark Schaefer Hackett found. Instead, the real gap hit $103.9 million. Spending beat plan by $28.2 million in 2024 and $41.4 million in 2025, when it reached $180.4 million against a $139 million plan. The children’s services levy fund absorbed it, falling from $149.7 million in 2022 to $41.9 million. That 2025 balance still landed inside the range PCG projected in 2021, near its $32.4 million low end.

Could anyone have seen it coming? “I can’t say one way whether it should or could have been predicted when the consultant did this initial report,” County Administrator Jeff Aluotto told WVXU in January. Reece, by contrast, thinks the board should have known sooner. “So you’re telling me, that we’re just finding out that children’s services is in trouble?” she said Aug. 3, according to Fox19. She tied the timing to the county’s Bengals lease and its stadium renovation commitment, which runs on a separate sales tax. A county memo concluded that borrowing against future stadium sales tax revenue for children’s services would be illegal, WVXU reported.

Cuts, and Costs Moved to Other Funds

The county also bought the children’s services levy fund some time. In January, commissioners approved about $35 million in 2026 changes. Nelson had proposed $22 million in spending cuts and $14 million in costs shifted to the general fund and other levies, WVXU reported Jan. 13. In December, Driehaus named those levies as indigent care and family services, WVXU reported.

HCJFS’s levy page calls the package “approximately $36 million in reductions.” About $14 million of that didn’t cut anything, though. It moved the cost to other county funds, and the review committee later recommended clawing back $3.2 million of it. Even after the cuts, the 2026 budget spends $26.6 million more than it takes in, Clark Schaefer Hackett found, leaving $15.4 million for 2027.

What the Children’s Services Levy Buys in Results

So what are taxpayers getting? HCJFS makes its case for the children’s services levy mostly with service counts and placement shares. Its levy page says the services “provided vital support to 13,252 children” last year, and that more than 80% of children in care live with relatives or foster families. HCJFS doesn’t define the 13,252. Custody is a much smaller group: about 2,750 children spent time in county custody during 2024, PCG reported.

Federal child-welfare measures track whether kids stay safe and how quickly they reach a permanent home. The county’s three reviews document costs in detail, but none presents a multiyear trend on those measures. PCG did recommend “clear performance benchmarks for group homes,” including youth outcomes. Ohio’s 2026 federal progress report has a single-period county table. In it, 28% of Hamilton children entering care reached permanency within 12 months, against 36.4% statewide. Still, Hamilton beat the state on placement stability and maltreatment in care. It roughly matched the state on repeat maltreatment, at 9% against 9.4%.

The state’s vulnerability index, which ranks counties on those measures, labels Hamilton “Stressed,” the third of six tiers from the bottom. In state fiscal 2025, 88% of Hamilton children leaving custody went to a parent, relative, guardian or adoptive family, by Exchange calculation from PCSAO data. That backs up HCJFS’s claim that nearly 9 in 10 exits reach permanency. But PCG also reported that 13% of youth leaving care in 2024 aged out without a permanent family, against 9% nationally.

If Issue 10 Fails

County officials say the work doesn’t stop either way. “If the levy fails, dedicated levy funding for Children’s Services would go to zero,” HCJFS says. Even so, it adds, “The County would still be legally required to provide most of these services.” Driehaus warned that “the general fund would be devastated,” WCPO reported. Juvenile Court Administrator Liz Igoe told commissioners in July that mandated services “will have to be absorbed through the county through the general fund.”

PCG also classified part of what the children’s services levy pays for as non-mandated. The consultant concluded that “approximately $26.5M could be removed from the Children’s Services Tax Levy (either funded elsewhere or remove service).” Its list of non-mandated children’s services contracts includes an estimated $3 million a year for the county prosecutor and $1.6 million for Juvenile Court magistrates, though the report doesn’t say which fund pays each one. PCG’s own chart for those categories adds to about $23.5 million, so the exact figure is unclear. Separately, PCG reported that HCJFS won’t renew prevention contracts worth about $2.7 million.

The Case for the Children’s Services Levy

Supporters’ best argument is that this isn’t just a Hamilton County problem. Placement costs climbed across Ohio. Angela Sausser, executive director of PCSAO, told state senators in 2025 that Ohio placement costs had risen 68% in five years. Ohio counties pay 47 cents of every child-welfare dollar, her testimony said. The state pays 19 cents, against a 42-cent national average. Hamilton fits the pattern. Local money supplied about 70% of its children’s services revenue over five years, PCG found, and federal revenue fell from $40 million in 2021 to $21.9 million in 2025.

The county can point to real management gains, too. Investigation caseloads and caseworker vacancies fell from 2021 to 2025, PCG reported. Meanwhile, administration dropped from 29% of spending to 18%. Hamilton leans on kinship care more than Franklin, Cuyahoga, Montgomery or Lucas, PCG found. And Clark Schaefer Hackett’s review of the county’s 2022 through 2024 single audits found no findings or questioned costs affecting the levy fund. Those audits checked compliance, not whether placement prices were reasonable.

Where the Commissioners Split

Driehaus said she wanted a levy “as low as we can go for the taxpayers,” WVXU reported. After the Aug. 3 vote, she said of the committee’s larger request, “We cut it in half.” Reece abstained. Her objection is to the property-tax model behind the children’s services levy, not to the services. “We will not be able to fund everything on the backs of the homeowners,” she said, WCPO reported. The Exchange found no organized campaign against Issue 10.

How Issue 10 Compares With the Consultant’s Scenarios

Here’s the comparison worth making. In February, PCG gave the committee three five-year scenarios, each one an increase on top of the current levy. Keeping 2025 service levels would take “an additional $123,417,635” a year. Keeping the 2026 cuts in place would take an additional $74 million, for levy revenue of about $154 million in 2027. Even a scenario PCG titled “Minimum Service Levels” called for about $145 million in 2027 levy revenue. A March CityBeat report described the $74 million and $65 million figures as total levy amounts, but PCG’s slides label each one an increase.

That leanest scenario comes with conditions. It starts 2027 with about $15 million in reserve and counts $35 million a year in other revenue. It assumes slower hiring, less kinship support and a gradual end to placements for youth 18 and older, while rebuilding the reserve over five years. Under those terms, PCG projected 2027 spending of $163.3 million. The committee’s $144 million recommendation sits close to that scenario’s levy figure.

What Issue 10 Would Cover

PCG’s scenarios are financial models, not requirements. Any comparison with them describes a projected gap, not a certain deficit. The county could cut more, find other revenue or catch a break on placement costs.

With that caveat, use the same yardstick on Issue 10. Its $116.9 million plus the same $35 million in other revenue comes to about $152 million a year, by Exchange calculation. That’s roughly $11 million less than the leanest scenario’s 2027 spending, before any reserve rebuilding, and that spending figure already assumes the staffing, kinship and older-youth cuts above. It’s also below the roughly $158 million the county budgeted for 2026 after its cuts, based on Clark Schaefer Hackett’s figures.

The committee’s numbers have a loose end of their own. Its report puts JFS’s total need at $161 million and other revenue at $35 million, then recommends $144 million in levy money without showing how those figures connect. Summerow Dumas said Aug. 3, “I do not want to take more money from the property owners.” Driehaus said commissioners will look at other ways to close the gap, Fox19 reported.

Questions Issue 10 Leaves Open

Voters can weigh the children’s services levy on the record that exists. Several questions still sit outside it:

• How would HCJFS run on less levy money than PCG’s minimum-service scenario, and what would shrink?
• What did HCJFS pay through single-source placement contracts each year since 2022, to which providers, and with what written justification?
• How did Hamilton County perform on federal outcome measures each year from 2020 through 2025, including re-entry into foster care?
• Will the general fund and other-levy shifts continue in 2027, and how did the county calculate its 38% figure?
• Which non-mandated contracts will the county keep funding from the levy?

PCG’s leanest scenario assumed deeper service cuts, $35 million in other revenue and about $145 million in levy revenue for 2027. Commissioners put a $116.9 million children’s services levy on the ballot instead. None of the county’s reviews, and none of the commissioners’ public statements the Exchange found, say what else would change to make that number work. Voters decide Nov. 3.

FAQs

How much will Issue 10 cost, and is it a tax increase?

Issue 10 renews Hamilton County’s existing 4.51-mill children’s services levy and adds 1.1 mills for four years. The ballot puts the cost at $121 a year per $100,000 of market value. The current levy cost $81.15 per $100,000 in tax year 2024. Hamilton County Job and Family Services says the increase adds about $39 per $100,000.

What happens if Issue 10 fails?

Hamilton County Job and Family Services says dedicated levy funding for children’s services “would go to zero” if Issue 10 fails. The county says it would still be legally required to provide most of those services. Commissioner Denise Driehaus warned the general fund “would be devastated.” Commissioners could place another levy before voters at a later election.

Why have Hamilton County children's services costs risen?

Out-of-home placement spending roughly doubled from 2021 to 2025, to $93 million to $97 million depending on the county review cited. The average number of children in placement rose 19%. Spending per placed child rose roughly 63% to 70%, by Cincinnati Exchange calculation. Single-source provider contracts, which carried higher daily rates for group homes and independent living, grew sharply.

How does Issue 10 compare with what the county's reviewers said is needed?

Issue 10 would raise about $116.9 million a year. The Tax Levy Review Committee recommended $144 million. Public Consulting Group’s leanest scenario assumed about $145 million in 2027 levy revenue, alongside deep service cuts and $35 million in other revenue. The materials reviewed do not show how the county would reconcile Issue 10 with those assumptions.

Has Hamilton County shown that outcomes for children improved?

Not in the materials the Cincinnati Exchange reviewed. The county’s three 2026 reviews document rising costs in detail but present no multiyear trend on federal safety or permanency measures. A single-period state table shows 28% of Hamilton children entering care reached permanency within 12 months, against 36.4% statewide. Hamilton beat the state on placement stability.