May 28, 2005

Busting the Cap 2

On Friday I posted an entry titled "Busting the Cap," about how the Tennessee legislature stands ready to once again exceed the state constitution's cap on the growth of state spending. At this time, it appears they won't do so, though legislation has been filed and has moved through the committee process in both houses of the General Assembly should legislators decide it is necessary to pass the enabling legislation needed to exceed the cap. Such legislation has become routine over the past two decades, as the legislature and governors of both parties have turned a provision meant for fiscal emergencies into a routine method for growing state spending faster than the state's economy is growing. You can read that post here.

Meanwhile, I have written a three-page history of the death of Tennessee's first-in-the-nation constitutional cap on spending, titled Spending Spree: The Bipartisan Assault That is Killing Tennessee's Constitutional Cap on the Growth of the State Budget, which I am making available here in a draft version. If you so desire, please read through the document and offer any questions, challenges, suggestions for improvements, finding of math or other factual errors, etc. If you make changes to the document, please make them in a different typestyle and mark them in bold, and email me your edited version to bill@billhobbs.com.

Thank you.