Salem, Ore. – Oregon is becoming the next battleground in the fight between people who want to cap government spending and their opponents, who say such a move would put schools and social services at risk.
Tax foes, riding high from crushing a proposed $800 million tax increase for Oregon in 2004, are promoting a spending limit that matches the nation’s most stringent, enacted by Colorado voters in 1992. That cap limits spending increases to population growth and inflation.
Washington, D.C.-based FreedomWorks, which will lead the Oregon campaign, said it expects to begin collecting petition signatures within a month to place the initiative before voters in November 2006.
“We already have our signature gatherers in place. We are ready to hit the streets with it,” said Russ Walker, the Oregon director for FreedomWorks.
In California, a spending-limit proposal advocated by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will be on the ballot this fall. A plan similar to Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights will be placed before Ohio voters in November 2006, and voters in Maine, Nevada and Arizona might look at such measures next year.
Legislators in 16 states considered spending limits this year; some of those plans are pending.
In Oregon, labor unions and other groups are preparing for an all-out fight to try to defeat the spending limit. They say Colorado’s spending limit has damaged education, public health and other public services and would do the same in Oregon.
Oregon AFL-CIO president Tim Nesbitt said the proposal is aimed at ratcheting down state revenue and spending without regard for the harm to programs for needy people and children.
“There’s no government too small to satisfy these people,” Nesbitt said of the tax foes.
Dick Armey, former U.S. House majority leader and now national leader of FreedomWorks, was in Atlanta this month to testify for a spending limit proposed by Georgia Republicans.
“With the typical government budget, they decide how much money they want to spend, then they go out and raise taxes to cover it,” he said. “With the spending limit, we’re saying to government, ‘Make your spending fit our revenues.”‘
Opponents say voters should look at what has happened in Colorado under TABOR.
“Colorado has become the pothole of civil neglect,” said Charles Sheketoff of the Oregon Center for Public Policy, a think tank that supports social- services spending.
In the years since Colorado’s spending limit went into effect, Sheketoff said, class sizes in public schools have increased, health programs have suffered and the state has been forced to forgo basic investments such as repairing roads and bridges.
Measures to relax the Colorado spending limits will be on the ballot this fall, and Republican Gov. Bill Owens is among their bipartisan supporters.
One of the measures would lift the caps for five years and let the state keep $3.7 billion in tax revenue that otherwise would be refunded to taxpayers. The other would let the state borrow up to $2.1 billion for roads, school maintenance, pensions and other projects.
The Oregon proposal doesn’t require the state to refund the excess revenue to taxpayers.
