“TABOR” is a fine name as long as it is understood that it means Taking Away Benefits, Opportunities and Rights.
Good acronym
By
Glenn Stoddard
When Wisconsin’s conservative legislators started using the acronym “TABOR,” I thought the nickname was as lamentable and fraudulent as the inappropriately named Taxpayer Bill of Rights itself.
It reminded me a lot of the so-called Job Creation Act of 2003 and its sequel, Job Creation Act II. Just as these measures have nothing to do with creating jobs and everything to do with gutting environmental protection and emasculating the Department of Natural Resources for the benefit of some high-donor corporations, TABOR does not benefit taxpayers or protect their rights. Rather, by strictly limiting the taxing and spending authority of local units of government and local school boards in Wisconsin—which are the governmental bodies closest and most responsive to the citizens—TABOR will actually take away public benefits, opportunities and rights.
This is when it occurred to me that “TABOR” is actually an appropriate acronym: Taking Away Benefits, Opportunities and Rights.
By strictly limiting local taxing and spending authority TABOR will take away the kinds of public benefits that often result from efforts by citizens to improve their own local communities. Such benefits include the development of local parks, recreational facilities like swimming pools and hockey rinks, and local libraries.
Services we have come to take for granted, like well-maintained public sewers and municipal water systems, municipal trash collection services, local recycling programs, and street maintenance programs would all be cut back or taken away by this short-sighted legislation.
By tying the hands of local government officials and local school boards, TABOR would ensure that the inequities that currently exist in local public services and in public schools around Wisconsin will become even more pronounced over time and would rob communities of the opportunity to build a better future.
For example, growing communities with small police and fire departments would find it very hard, if not impossible, to expand and improve their police and fire protection services under TABOR as their populations expand. Consequently, their citizens would be deprived of the right to be safe and secure in their own homes and neighborhoods.
The same principle applies to public schools in growing areas, many of which would be hamstrung by TABOR and find themselves unable to provide the kind of quality education that every child will need in the future. In effect, TABOR would ensure continued--and perhaps even more severe--educational inequality in our local public schools as time goes by. This will likely cause many children to be left behind.
Even more troubling than the loss of public benefits and opportunities that would result from TABOR are the democratic rights this legislation would take away from local citizens. The fundamental right that would be lost is the democratic right of local self-governance.
Many studies have shown that citizens trust their own local government officials much more than they trust their state and federal officials. As former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, “Tip” O’Neil, famously wrote: “All politics is local.” But TABOR would greatly undermine local grass-roots initiatives by reducing the ability of local leaders and local governments to provide public services at the local level.
TABOR really means “Taking Away Benefits, Opportunities and Rights”; nothing more and nothing less. People who really understand the meaning of "TABOR" should spread the word about this fraudulent legislation and make certain that all legislators who support it are held accountable by the voters in the next election.
May 10, 2005
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Glenn Stoddard lives in McFarland and is a partner in the law firm of Garvey & Stoddard, S.C.
