Oct. 31–Critics are using the 20th anniversary of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights to bash the voter-approved constitutional amendment as something devastating to our state. They talk as if government budgets and the economy are one in the same. Fund governments more, and we’re good to go. Fund them less, and it somehow amounts to an economic crisis.
Take, for example, comments in a Monday Gazette news story by Wade Buchanan, president of the nonprofit Bell Policy Center. Buchanan explained how TABOR causes a “ratchet effect.” TABOR limits growth in government revenues and spending with a formula that is based on spending in prior years. When recession strikes, government spending and revenues decrease. When the economy recovers, governments are limited by a formula that ties them to recession-era revenues and spending.
Advocates of less government think it’s a brilliant way of achieving their goal. Politicians and bureaucrats tend to hate the ratchet, as it prevents local governments — in jurisdictions where taxpayers have not voted to opt out of TABOR restrictions — from benefiting from economic recovery. Continue reading
