January 31, 2004

The Tax-And-Spenders Attack TABOR

The Tennessean has come out against a proposal in Wilson County for a local Taxpayers Bill of Rights provision that would require a refendum on future property tax increases. No big surprise - the paper favors higher taxes and bigger government budgets. But the editorial makes it clear the paper's editorial board really hasn't investigated the Taxpayers Bill of Rights concept in depth and learned how it has worked at the local level in places where it has been tried. Here's a snippet of the editorial:

Proponents of the change say that allowing public referendums on property taxes amounts to local control, yet the proposal could lead to local chaos. Every time Wilson County needed additional money for education, roads, employees or any number of services, it would have to hold a referendum with no guarantee that property tax funds would be there. And guess who pays the bill for referendums: county taxpayers.

Referendums are a lazy way to govern. They require no thought, no debate, no energy. Just a ''no'' vote. This is exactly why the founding fathers saw fit to create a representative democracy so that voters choose representatives, like county commissioners, to make government decisions.

For more than a decade, Colorado's state constitution has included a Taxpayers Bill of Rights that applies at both the state and the local level - making Colorado a laboratory for how such provisions actually impact local government finances and politics.

Let's consider the data, first.

According to the Colorado Municipal League, since the Taxpayers Bill of Rights became law in Colorado in 1993, there have been 413 local referenda across Colorado - in big cities, suburbs and rural towns, on raising taxes, and voters have voted 224 times to allow their local government to raise taxes - a 54.2 percent pass rate.

Futhermore, voters have approved increases in public debt and allowed their local governments to keep and spend surpluses well more than half the time, as I documented a few days ago in this post.

A decade and hundreds of local elections acorss Colorado prove the people will allow government to increase spending and taxes more than half the time if they are given the right to vote on it. A a provision requiring refendums on tax increases in Wilson County does not mean taxes won't go up. It WOULD mean, however, that the county commission would have to make a strong case to the people for such a tax increase. And that brings me to the political impact of a Taxpayers Bill of Rights. Again, we should look to Colorado to see how it has worked there.

A few years ago, when a Taxpayers Bill of Rights was on the ballot in the state of Washington, the Rocky Mountain News - which had initially opposed Colorado's amendment back in 1992 - published an editorial urging Washington staters to support their amendment. The reason: by giving voters a say in tax increases and such, it fosters more grassroots political involvement.

Here's what the Rocky Mountain News said on Nov. 7, 1999:

Maybe it's time that opponents looked on the bright side. If they will give their new tax initiative a chance, they might find it actually strengthens the political process, rather than destroys it. That's clearly what has happened in Colorado since the passage of TABOR. Here, shifting responsibility for taxes from politicians to the public hasn't resulted in automatic rejection of every spending plan.

But while TABOR hasn't straitjacketed government, it has accomplished a number of good things. It has heightened interest in elections and government policy; it has given public officials mandates they otherwise would have lacked; it has shrunk voters' sense of helplessness over the use of their hard-earned taxes; and last, but hardly least, it has strengthened the fiscal responsibility of state and local government.

I can't help but believe The Tennessean's editorial board would agree that heightened interest in elections and government policy and more governmental fiscal responsibility would be a good thing - and that it would be good for politicians and public to be on the same page on taxes and spending.

That's what the Taxpayers Bill of Rights creates.

Before they write about the Taxpayers Bill of Rights again - and they will as the movement to enact such provisions at the local and state level is growing - the paper's editorial board ought to learn more about the Taxpayers Bill of Rights - how it really works and why it is right for Tennessee.