Hundreds of Ohio villages will have to prove they should exist under a bill waiting for Gov. Mike DeWines signature.Ohio House Bill 331, which passed with bipartisan support in December, creates an automatic process to review and potentially dissolve villages. Those dissolved villages would be absorbed into the township in which they are located. This is a good way for voters to assert their power, to create stability," Adam Mathews, R-Lebanon, told WCPO. Mathews said this legislation permits audits that will look to see whether a village provides essential services like police, fire, water and sewer services.If this bill is signed, it will allow counties to audit small villages like Jacksonburg in Butler County every 10 years, or every time there is a census, and then if its found that that particular village isnt meeting the needs of its taxpayers that questions will then be sent to the ballot.I work with a lot of businesses throughout Ohio and one of the things that they often complain about is the complexity of tax law and how more taxing jurisdictions than anywhere else, any other state," Mathews said. Mathews told WCPO that the bill was not only passed to decrease the number of taxing jurisdictions, and therefore the amount of taxes Ohioans pay, but also to allow smaller municipalities to hold their leaders accountable. When asked about the appetite to begin to condense some of Ohio's many townships and villages Mathews said this was a potential first step.I think this is a really good first step towards looking at that," said Mathews. "We definitely have something special here in Ohio where we have cities and villages that predate the state and so they have that power there first; having been organized during the northwest territory before Ohio was formed. So that is a tricky balancing act; having that home rule, as well as creating that simplicity throughout the state.