Posted by Ed

I’ve put some time into blogging about the right wing/libertarian effort to pass state spending caps based on Colorado’s Taxpayers Bill of Rights.  (For previous posts see here, here, and here).  TABOR, as it stands now, is going to be on the ballot in Maine, Nebraska and Oregon.  Pending legal action, it may be on the ballot in Montana as well.  (Montana’s lower courts have thrown it off, and the supreme court is expected to rule imminently).

There’s a lot at stake in these elections, but it could have been even worse. At the start of the year there were bills to refer TABOR to the ballot in more than twenty state legislatures.  And signatures were gathered to place it on the ballot via citizen’s petition in Oregon, Oklahoma, Ohio, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Missouri, Nevada and Nebraska.  No legislature placedTABOR on the ballot, although Ohio did pass a statutory spending cap. The courts in many of the petition states decided that TABOR’s sponsors had violated the process for placing initiatives on the ballot. For example, the Montana lower court ruled that the signature gathering effort there was “permeated by a pervasive and general pattern and practice of deceit, fraud, and procedural non-compliance.”   The PBS program NOW ran a report about this which is worth watching.   

Its good to know that the money and power of opponents of public services don’t always win the day. But this fight is a long way from over this year in Montana, Nebraska, Oregon and Maine.  And the proponents of TABOR have given signs that they will pursue this campaign with the same fervor that they did the term limits movement of the 1990s.  Which means win or lose on election day, they will be back next year.