TABOR: Simplistic, Understandable, Superficially Reasonable
By Bill Kraus
The latest issue of Madison Magazine has an article by Val Simson, who is identified as a senior business writer for the magazine. She likes TABOR, which implies that the magazine does as well.
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I have had extended conversations about the
threat that this legislation poses to a lot of things we have historically valued in
Wisconsin: education, good government, an active public sector which buys land for public
purposes among other things. TABOR, or its handmaidens, has taken the K-12 education system in California from the top 10 to almost the bottom. Emigres who have been there report that it has effectively undermined higher education in Colorado. |
God knows what it has done to local
government in these and other places.
The problem, of course, is that it is simplistic, understandable, and superficially
reasonable. Mr. Micawber would love it.
The problem that critics face is that all responses to the movement are complicated and,
worse yet, sound profligate, selfish, and defensive.
It is, in short, a very real threat and possibility.
I have made the point in several columns, which have been
assiduously ignored, that the citizens are not getting an honest reading on public
spending in Wisconsin. The taxophobes make much of taxes and tax rates, ignore fees, and
have nothing good to say about the things that we get for our taxes and fees.
So the response has to be, ugh, educational. Someone has to explain to the beleaguered
taxpayer what he or she is getting for the money. No state that I know of publishes
anything like an annual report which shows in simple detail where the money comes from and
where it goes. That would be a start. If this can be done visually [it can] and
dramatically, one desirable side effect would be that the people and probably many
legislators would learn that the state budget is benefit intensive not labor intensive.
At an even more grassroots level, those who assess property taxes can and should include a
supermarket level itemization of where that money goes instead of the gross divisions that
come with the bills today.
These are mere starting points, but the idea is to improve the knowledge level as a first
line of defense against TABOR. A former governor of my acquaintance once said "Never
underestimate the voter's intelligence or overestimate the voter's knowledge."
I hope citizens concerned about Wisconsin's traditional values are working together or
separately to counter the TABOR steamroller before it develops unstoppable momentum.
Good luck to us all.
Editor's Note: Longtime political observer Bill Kraus lives in Madison, is the former press secretary for Governor Lee Dreyfus, and serves on the board of Common Cause of Wisconsin. The Madison Magazine piece that prompted this column is located here. Reprinted with permission of the author.