TABOR'S evil, ugly twin
Trying to save face and say they did something, Assembly Republicans twisted arms until 4:30 a.m. to get enough votes to pass, 50-48, a constitutional amendment that will look even uglier in the light of day than it did at 4:30 in the morning.
It is a terrible piece of work, which will probably become obvious in the next few days as the news media begin to read it and decipher its contents.
The authors themselves think it is so bad that it includes a special fixer-upper provision, allowing that section of the constitution to be amended with a simple legislative vote and referendum. To amend anything else in the constitution requires passage by two sessions of the legislature and then approval by the voters. Maybe they were thinking of the Colorado experience, where it turned out to be disastrous.
There are enough shaky, vague and unusual provisions in the measure to keep an army of lawyers busy litigating for years.
The odds are that it will never come to that, because the State Senate is showing signs of having more sense and may be in a mood to kill this monster next week.
But, it is an election year ...
MARK POCAN ASKS: What can you expect from a plan introduced at bar time?
posted by xoff @ 9:17 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
So WMC is as happy as pigs in…well you know what about this development.
“Assembly Speaker John Gard deserves tremendous credit for having the courage to bring this
issue to a vote in the Assembly and to pass a constitutional state tax cap for the first time in
state history,” said James A. Buchen, WMC vice president of government relations.
“The fight to lower taxes has changed the debate in this state,” Buchen said. “We are finally
debating how to cut taxes rather than which tax to raise. It was only five years ago that Senate
Majority Leader Chuck Chvala pushed through a $350 million business tax increase.”
The amendment would cap only state tax collections, and allow tax collections to grow at 90
percent of the growth in personal income, which has averaged 4.8 percent over the last 20
years.
This is like the Army declaring George Custer the winner at Little Big Horn.
Well, will someone at WMC please tell us just how this does anything more than put a formulaic limit on how much TAXES WILL GO UP? They’re not going down at the state level and they’re sure as hell not going down at the local level…no matter what these doorknobs say.
Apparently it's true. The bills all look better at closing time.
Hey, do you know how many of the enemy got killed at Little Big Horn? (I'm trying, I'm trying.)
Who was the enemy depends on your perspective. In the case of the legislative majority party, it appears they've been "Pogo'd". They've met the enemy, and it's them.
Who do you know in college who did their best work while pulling an all-nighter cramming for an exam?
When ordinary people stay up until 4:30 in the morning, they wake up the next day with a headache.
When the Legislature stays up until 4:30 in the morning, we all wake up the next morning with a headache.
The voters get to grade the exams the Assembly crammed for the other night, and they should flunk every legislator who voted for the hare-brained schemes that were considered.
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