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July 16, 2007
Bringing Back TABOR?
A piece of advice to the Maine Heritage Policy Center (full disclosure: I've done work for this organization in the past): Please don't bring back tax reform as "TABOR."
AUGUSTA — Work is under way on a new version of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, a spending limitation measure that failed at the polls last November.Don't get me wrong - I think reforming Maine's regressive and burdensome tax structure absolutely needs to be done. However, it shouldn't be called the "Taxpayer Bill of Rights." The TABOR name has too much political baggage attached to it and will not be particularly useful in a campaign to get it passed. The "didn't we defeat that already?" attitude will doom it.Within the next few weeks, the Maine Heritage Policy Center plans to post on its Web site a revised measure that will be made available to groups for model legislation or a new citizen initiative, said Bill Becker, president and chief executive officer of the center, a conservative think tank in Portland.
"We're not heading in the right direction," he said, noting a Forbes Magazine ranking of states that downgraded Maine from 46th place to 48th in a survey of the best places to do business.
A good first step in any campaign would be to start pointing out Baldacci's broken promises, starting with this one.
Posted by slublog at July 16, 2007 06:04 PM
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Comments
Dunno if I should feel sorry for you that tax reform was defeated at the polls, or feel envious that it reached the people in the first place. Here in Wisconsin, the Legislature, while under full Republican control, killed two different attempts to pass taxpayer reform; first under the TABOR banner, then under the banner Taxpayer Protection Amendment.
Posted by: steveegg at July 16, 2007 06:26 PM
We have a good citizen's initiative process up here, which is the only way you're going to get something like this on the ballot.
I'm hoping this tax reform package is better written than the original TABOR proposal, which I actually voted against because while it had good intentions, it was poorly executed.
Posted by: Slublog at July 16, 2007 06:49 PM
Wish we had that here. The closest thing we have is the ability to petition local governments to adopt ordinances that do not contravene anything else on the books, and, if it is conservative in nature, they either ignore or stall acceptance of the petitions long enough to make it moot and hope they get a friendly judge.
Posted by: steveegg at July 16, 2007 07:25 PM