Voters in Washington State and Maine rejected ballot measures inspired by Colorado’s controversial tax and spending limit, TABOR.
Championed by the Club for Growth and other conservative, low-tax types, the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) is “drowning government in the bathtub” personified.
The Denver-based Bell Policy Center provides a cogent TABOR explainer for the blissfully uninitiated.
Essentially, the constitutionally-enacted law requires any tax increase be tied to the rate of inflation plus population growth (or for school districts student rosters) unless approved by voters in an off-year referendum.
Additionally, TABOR includes a particularly evil “rachet effect” — a provision that determines the allowable annual revenue ceiling by applying the previous year’s total tax receipts or the formula-limited collections, whichever is lower. The net effect is that government spending can never make up for bad tax years or economic downturns.
While an appealing theoretical argument could be made for TABOR forcing elected officials to embrace more fiscally responsible government the effects have been devastating to critical public services.
ColoradoPols writes that Maine and Washington voters have averted the race to the bottom experienced in the fiscally hamstrung Centennial State:
The failure of TABOR-like initiatives to take hold in other states after Colorado’s experience with the law was thoroughly explored is no accident–it’s very easy for voters in Washington and Maine to understand why Colorado ranks 49th in the nation in personal income spent on education, why Colorado faces perpetual fiscal shortfalls and constantly struggles to meet basic expectations of residents for vital services. It’s because of TABOR, and the voters of Maine and Washington state wanted no part of our ‘experiment.’
Despite the well-heeled efforts by outsider conservative activists, like Howard Rich, no state has passed a TABOR ballot measure to date. In fact, with Tuesday’s vote, Maine residents have defeated two such measures since 2006.
