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« Blogging A Story About Blogging | Main | The Rocky "Gets" Blogging » March 2, 2004Taxpayers Bill of Rights Meeting ReportI was only able to catch the panel discussion portion of the Town Hall meeting on the proposed Tennessee Taxpayers Bill of Rights. The meeting - which drew a large crowd I'd estimate at around 200 people - was not audiotaped by the event organizers. I won't be filing a report on the event because I was in a staff meeting at work during much of it. If any of my readers were there and took good notes, please send the good stuff and I'll compile a report. There was some media there and I'll be posting reports of media coverage as they are published or broadcast. If you see media coverage online, in print or on TV and I've failed to note it, please alert me via an email to bill I must say I very much enjoyed meeting and speaking with John Andrews, the libertarian-at-heart Republican president of the Colorado state senate who was nice enough to offer to introduce me to Colorado Gov. Bill Owens - a fiscal conservative, staunch defender of the Taxpayers Bill of Rights (read his 2004 State of the State address) and my early favorite for president in 2008 - should I ever be in Denver. Sen. Andrews, I just may take you up on that. It has recently gotten a lot less expensive to fly between Nashville and Denver... Andrews - who has a very good website, AndrewsAmerica.com - co-founded one of the first state-level free-market think tanks, the Independence Institute, located in Golden, Colorado. The Independence Institute was instrumental in helping pass the Taxpayers Bill of Rights in Colorado back in 1992. If you visit their website, their "Fiscal Policy Center" has reams of information on the Taxpayers Bill of Rights and tax-and-expenditure limitation laws, including a very good paper, Tax and Spending Limits: Theory, Analysis and Policy, by Dr. Barry W. Poulson, an economist and professor of economics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, published in January of this year. Finally, for more information on the Taxpayers Bill of Rights, you can always rely on my Taxpayers Bill of Rights page. Posted in Taxpayers Bill of Rights
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Very good meeting. Couple of things though: I went with a relative to see Ben West afterwards (my relative's Representative). West (a Democrat who is also a strong pro-second amendment legislator) said that he likes TaBOR, but he seemed to think the lack of bi-partisan effort may hurt it. Unfortunately, the reality of this is that it's going to be a struggle mainly being fought between Democrats and Republicans. A strong effort needs to be put forward to get as many Democrats on our side so that it can be a true bi-partisan effort. I know it's not just a Republican effort, but that's how the press will portray it. Secondly, I think one of the audience members brought up a good point about this TaBOR not including local governments. The General Assembly does do a good job of passing the buck, and they could push a lot of things onto the local governments making them raise taxes thus making TaBOR look bad to the citizenry. Plus, I doubt very seriously that cities like Nashville and Memphis would ever follow suit by passing local TaBORs (even after Spring Hill's successes). Overall the meeting was great. We'll see how the press spins it this evening and tomorrow morning. I'll have stories posted on my site as well. The real battle begins now. Posted by: Blake at March 2, 2004 02:51 PMBill: Thanks for coming, even if you had to be a little late.I read your stuff and am glad you do what you do. Not sure when you came in so I don't know if I have anything for you that you don't already know, but I'll throw out a couple of * points. Post a comment
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