Feb 5, 2004 Update
TABOR RESEARCHER FROM COLORADO
WARNS OF MORNING AFTER
Wisconsin citizens may end up with something other than what they bargained for if they impose constitutional spending and revenue controls on state and local government, a Colorado expert on the so-called Taxpayers Bill of Rights cautioned a radio audience today.
"You wake up one day and say, 'My gosh, what happened, we don't have the best schools any more," Carol Hedges of The Bell Policy Center told Joy Cardin and her listeners on Wisconsin Public Radio.
"There are plenty of tools for changing the size of government if that's what people want," she said. But, under TABOR, Hedges added, an inflexible formula for determining state and local spending, perhaps unintentionally, supplants public desires.
"The constitution can't predict what's going to happen with the economy. Once you have cuts in budgets because of a recession, you can't ever recover," she told Cardin and her audience. "We're just getting smaller and smaller and smaller."
Among fixes to TABOR that The Bell Policy Center is proposing in Colorado are:
Capping the size of the state budget at a fixed percentage of the state's total personal income, and eliminating revenue limits for local governments.
Eliminating TABOR's inflation-based spending limits while still requiring that voters approve tax increases.
She said using the Consumer Price Index plus population growth as the index for allowable spending increases doesn't work well because government doesn't buy what consumers buy.
That sentiment was echoed by a caller from Phillips, where health insurance premiums rose 42% this year, and forced cuts in the city's police budget.
"In Colorado, we have gotten to the point that we cannot provide the services that people want," Hedges said. "...I'm not sure (the constitution) is the best mechanism for solving what's a political problem.
Hedges, senior policy advisor and director of the fiscal project of The Bell Policy Center in Colorado, will address the Wisconsin Counties Association's 2004 Legislative Exchange at 10:15 a.m. on Feb. 11 at the Madison Consourse Hotel, 1 W. Dayton Street.
Two of The Bell Policy Center's proposed amendments to fix TABOR got a boost Wednesday at a hearing in the Colorado secretary of state's office, the Denver Post reported.
Story here:
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~1936022,00.html
By Rich Eggleston