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From the March 1, 2004 West Bend Daily News

GUESTOPINION

We can avoid mistakes made through TABOR

BY RICH EGGLESTON

Dennis A. Shook hit the nail on the head when he wrote in his recent Freeman column that the "Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights" could have the same unanticipated consequences here as it has had in Colorado.

Shook was raising the same issues that have bedeviled legislators of both parties in Colorado as well as Colorado’s Republican governor, Bill Owens. He was raising the same questions that people in local government have raised at the notion that a constitutional amendment from Colorado should be grafted onto Wisconsin’s constitution with little or no study or analysis.

Shook was waving the same caution flag that Republicans waved in the Wisconsin Legislature when they were asked to blithely buy tickets to a theatrical presentation that has never played here and is getting less than rave reviews at home.

While supporters of TABOR, as it is called, suggest that a lack of a such an amendment has held back economic progress in Wisconsin, unbiased economists are searching tirelessly for a scientific link between any state’s tax policy and its economy. The one who finds such a link likely will win the Nobel Prize.

But for now, no one can responsibly claim a cause-and-effect relationship between the 1992 TABOR amendment in Colorado and that state’s meteoric economic rise in the 1990s — or Colorado’s economic debacle since then.

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RICH
EGGLESTON

 The facts speak for themselves. Under TABOR, Colorado:
  • lost jobs at a rate 300% that of the country as a whole;
  • fell to 50th in K-12 spending per $1,000 of personal income;
  • is at the bottom of the barrel in on-time childhood immunization rates;
  • is at the bottom in prenatal care;
  • has the highest rate of uninsured low-income children in the nation;
  • is almost last among the states in high-school graduation rates; and
  • has a list of unfunded highway projects as long as your arm.

The fact that all these things have happened in Colorado under TABOR certainly isn’t an argument against government reform — it’s an argument to do government reform only after careful study and analysis, and with elected officials’ eyes wide open, not shut to criticism.

Emphatically, the fact that Wisconsin — which lacks a TABOR amendment — has been beset by the same sort of budget deficits and service cuts as have befallen Colorado with its TABOR amendment is not a very good argument for following in Colorado’s footsteps.

 The Wisconsin Alliance of Cities is urging state government to treat the causes of rising taxes, not just the symptoms. Our platform is:

  • Revitalize Wisconsin's economy;
  • Reform government;
  • Reduce the cost of government; and
  • Reduce property taxes.

City leaders in the Alliance believe that elected officials should do that job. I hope the Freeman joins us in urging that they act on specific measures to accomplish those goals.

We recognize that to say, "Reduce the cost of government" without having any ideas on how to do so, for example, is irresponsible. That’s why our city leaders in November unanimously endorsed the AFL-CIO’s health insurance plan for all workers in Wisconsin. Generally the plan promises:

  • significant savings in drug costs, even without importing drugs from Canada;
  • a substantial drop in the number of uninsured people in the state; and
  • major reductions in administrative costs.

Solutions like the AFL-CIO’s health-insurance system, patterned after worker’s compensation, of course, are complex in their own right. And since the plan cuts the fat out of the current insurance system, it has the opposition of insurance companies that give millions of dollars to legislators. But it probably would gain widespread support in communities across the state, like Phillips in Price County, where health insurance premiums rose 42% this year and forced cuts in the city's police budget.

The Alliance of Cities also wants to hold down government costs by rewriting mediation-arbitration rules for public employees and encouraging law-enforcement consolidation.

Citizens should look to elected officials for solutions like this, and elected officials should not shirk their duty to advance solutions just because they are opposed by moneyed interests. The Alliance of Cities has constructive ideas aplenty on its web site, at www.wiscities.org. As the sponsors of TABOR look to whose platform to embrace next, we invite them to jump on our bandwagon, roll up their sleeves and embrace positive reform.

(Rich Eggleston is communications and community outreach coordinator for the Wisconsin Alliance of Cities.)