Ginther says changing Columbus’ capital financing could cost $203 million. Here’s what’s inside the $2.8 billion plan.

On Livingston Avenue, Columbus’ capital budget stops looking like a spreadsheet.

It becomes pavement, intersections and protected bike infrastructure. It becomes the route families take to work, school, the grocery store and home. And, if city officials are right, it becomes a street where fewer people are seriously injured or killed.

Columbus is proposing more than $24 million in local funding for safety improvements along portions of Livingston Avenue, leveraging another $12 million federal grant and $9 million from the Ohio Public Works Commission. The chairman of the Livingston Avenue Area Commission told reporters Friday that the project’s central goal was straightforward: save lives.

But the money behind Livingston is now part of a much larger fight at Columbus City Hall.

Mayor Andrew Ginther on Friday unveiled a $2.83 billion proposed 2026 Capital Improvement Budget, including approximately $2.088 billion in new funding and another $744.7 million carried over from previous budgets.

Ginther called it the largest new-money capital budget in Columbus history.

Then he turned the announcement into a warning.

The mayor said restricting how Columbus uses its Income Tax Set-Aside fund — the financing mechanism underpinning much of the city’s non-utility capital program — could reduce the city’s capital capacity by $203 million and jeopardize $87 million in local matching funds that he says help unlock $134 million in state and federal grants.

That claim goes directly to an escalating dispute between Ginther’s administration and City Council President Shannon Hardin over how Columbus is managing its finances while facing an operating-budget shortfall.

And it raises a larger question for residents:

How much money does Columbus actually have available to build the everyday things residents use — and what happens if City Hall changes the rules governing that money?

The record $2 billion needs some context

Ginther’s description of the proposal as a record amount of new capital funding is accurate.

But the headline number does not mean Columbus suddenly has $2 billion available for recreation centers, fire stations, roads and neighborhood projects.

Of the approximately $2.088 billion in new funding, about $1.792 billion belongs to Public Utilities — roughly 86% of all new money in the capital proposal. The utility system’s total capital budget, including carryover, reaches about $1.94 billion.

Finance Director Chris Long made that distinction during Friday’s press conference, explaining that utility projects are supported by ratepayers and that those revenues are restricted to utility purposes.

One project alone helps explain the enormous number.

The budget includes roughly $935 million toward Columbus’ planned fourth water plant, according to Long.

That is nearly 45% of all new capital funding in the entire city budget.

The Columbus Dispatch reported Thursday that the water-plant project is currently stalled after no contractor submitted a bid to build the estimated $1.87 billion facility, although city officials said national contractors have since expressed interest.

Strip Public Utilities out of the equation, and Columbus has about $296 million in new capital funding for everything else.

That is where the City Hall fight becomes much more consequential.

The $2.8 billion budget is actually slightly smaller than last year

There is another wrinkle in the “record budget” headline.

Columbus’ total 2025 capital budget was approximately $2.856 billion. The newly proposed 2026 budget totals about $2.833 billion.

So while new funding increased roughly $50 million, the overall capital budget is about $24 million smaller than last year because substantially less old funding is being carried forward.

The record is specifically about new money, not the overall size of the capital budget.

And even within that new money, Columbus’ tax-supported capital program tells a different story.

Ginther said $281.9 million of the proposal is devoted to what the administration calls “core programs.”

The budget’s funding tables show approximately $281.98 million in new ITSA-supported funding — money backed by the city’s income-tax system — including funding approved by voters in 2022 and 2025 and Council-supported capital funding.

By comparison, the amended 2025 budget contained about $292.2 million in new ITSA-supported funding.

That means the pool of new ITSA-supported capital money is actually roughly $10.2 million lower than last year, despite the record overall new-money headline.

So what is ITSA?

Columbus collects a 2.5% municipal income tax.

Three quarters of that money goes toward general operations. The remaining quarter goes into the Income Tax Set-Aside fund, or ITSA, which supports the city’s capital program and the debt payments associated with borrowing for capital projects. The city’s own financial policies say maintaining that structure has historically been viewed favorably by national credit-rating agencies.

For 2026, the city originally projected roughly $316.8 million in income-tax deposits into ITSA.

Long explained Friday that ITSA gives Columbus the capacity to make debt payments and issue municipal bonds for large projects.

He also said something central to the current controversy: after current-year debt service is satisfied, remaining ITSA revenue can be used for other purposes excluding personnel, provided the city maintains its targeted 1.5-times debt-coverage ratio.

Long called that flexibility a decades-old financial practice that has previously been used to help balance the city’s budget.

That distinction matters.

Columbus is not simply taking borrowed bond proceeds and writing employee paychecks with them.

The dispute is over what the city can do with income-tax revenue sitting inside the financing structure that supports its capital program once its debt obligations and required financial cushion have been met.

Why City Hall is fighting about it now

The argument arrives as Columbus works to close a projected $18 million operating-budget gap, driven largely by police and fire overtime.

The Ginther administration is relying on roughly $10 million in expenses being supported through the Income Tax Set-Aside structure, combined with an approximately $8 million workers’ compensation windfall, to bring the operating budget back toward balance.

Hardin has argued the administration is leaning too heavily on money intended to support capital and debt.

He has said he intends to propose legislation requiring Columbus to keep roughly one year of debt-service payments available in ITSA and has also raised the possibility of reducing or postponing this year’s bond issuance.

Ginther used Friday’s capital-budget announcement to answer that proposal directly without naming Hardin.

“There are real consequences for our neighborhoods,” Ginther said, before arguing that tighter restrictions would reduce capital capacity by $203 million.

What Ginther did not provide in his prepared remarks was the underlying calculation showing how the proposed restriction produces exactly a $203 million reduction.

That number now deserves scrutiny.

$203 million is the number to watch

Ginther’s warning is substantial.

If the administration’s calculation is correct, the proposed restriction would not amount to a minor accounting adjustment. It could materially reduce what Columbus can borrow and spend on capital projects.

Ginther said it could jeopardize local matching funds connected to projects including Livingston Avenue, fire stations, affordable housing and neighborhood recreation.

But the public needs to see the math.

How much debt service would have to remain untouched under Hardin’s proposal? How much capital borrowing would that eliminate? Which individual projects make up the alleged $203 million reduction? And which $87 million in matching funds would actually be put at risk?

Until those calculations are released, $203 million remains an administration estimate, not a number residents can independently evaluate from the budget tables alone.

What residents do get under the proposal

The debate over financing can obscure that the budget contains significant tangible investments.

The plan includes more than $21 million in new fire apparatus, with money for medics, engines and platform ladders. Ginther said that represents a 115% increase from 2024. It includes about $30 million for affordable housing programs, more than $56 million in new Recreation and Parks funding, and nearly $135 million for Public Service.

Among the projects are $13.5 million for Tuttle Pool, $13.3 million for Southwest Columbus park development, and $5 million to repair Barack Community Center, which was heavily damaged during August storms. Ginther said the city hopes to reopen Barack by spring.

The capital budget also contains $9 million for participatory budgeting, $2.3 million for the first phase of the Linden Green Line and more than $27 million in previously voter-approved funding for affordable housing.

And Livingston remains one of the clearest examples of what all the financial machinery ultimately buys.

The actual capital book contains $24.125 million in new funding for the Livingston Avenue project from 18th Street to Nelson Road, along with previously appropriated money, plus another $2.05 million in new funding for improvements farther east between Alum Creek Trail and James Road.

Those are real projects with real consequences.

So are the financial decisions underneath them.

This is bigger than one budget

Columbus is trying to make two arguments at the same time.

The first is that the city remains financially strong enough to make record new capital investments.

The second is that the same financing structure supporting those investments has enough flexibility to help the city navigate an operating-budget crunch without threatening the long-term capital program.

Long put it plainly Friday: Columbus believes it can meet both its capital and operational needs at the same time.

Hardin is questioning how much flexibility is too much.

That makes the fight over ITSA more than a disagreement about accounting.

It is a debate over how much financial cushion Columbus should preserve today to protect what it can build tomorrow.

And back on Livingston Avenue, that distinction eventually becomes concrete.

A bond becomes a roadway.

A matching fund becomes millions of dollars from Washington or the state.

A line inside an Excel sheet becomes a sidewalk, a fire engine, a recreation center or a safer place to cross the street.

The numbers are complicated.

What residents stand to gain — or lose — is not.