Area officials discuss TABOR at forum
Eddie Glenn, Tahlequah Daily Press
April 28, 2006
From lemon meringue pie, to horse reins, to airplanes, to trains – the analogies were flying at the Armory
Municipal Center Thursday evening.
More than 150 people gathered at the center to hear state and local officials present the pros and cons of State
Question 726, which would implement the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) in Oklahoma.
Panelists for the “Town Hall Meeting,” sponsored by the Tahlequah area Chamber of Commerce, included Rob
Gray from the Alliance for Oklahoma’s Future; Carol Hedges of the Bell Policy Center in Colorado, where
voters passed a similar measure in 1992, then voted it into a five-year hiatus in 2005; Tahlequah City Hospital
Chief of Staff Dr. Deborah Jennings; NSU President Larry Williams; State Rep. John Auffet, D-Stilwell; Sen.
Randy Brogdon, R-Owasso; Sen. Jim Wilson, D-Tahlequah; Rep. Mike Brown, D-Tahlequah; Tahlequah Public
Schools Superintendent Paul Hurst; and Tahlequah Mayor Blake Purdy.
Brogdon, who authored the TABOR initiative after failing to get a similar measure passed through the state
Legislature, was a bit outnumbered, as all nine of the other panelists opposed the initiative. The nine warned the
audience that, should TABOR be passed, government services vital to the Tahlequah area’s economy would
suffer from lack of funding.
“My job is not to tell you how to vote,” Hedges told the audience before presenting a video detailed the
economic damage done by Colorado’s TABOR. “But you have an experiment, and you know what the results
are.”
According to Hedge’s video presentation, TABOR limits state government spending to the rate of inflation
(determined by the Consumer Price Index) plus population growth. But according to the video, the CPI
measures the price of good purchased by consumers, not the cost of goods and services financed by
governments, which tend to increase at a faster rate.
Also, the population growth component of the formula ignores the fact that as populations age (and the baby
boomers are now becoming senior citizens), they require more health care, which is heavily financed or
reimbursed by state governments. However, as they retire, those same baby boomers are no longer contributing
as much to the tax base as they were during their working years. With fewer people paying taxes, and with
TABOR limitations placed on those taxes, health services are underfunded.
According to Colorado residents interviewed in the video, the tax refunds that were also implemented by
TABOR didn’t make up for the increase in costs of state fees and health care. Fishing license fees, court fees,
and inspection fees all increased under Colorado’s TABOR, some as much as 400 percent.
The video shows many Colorado pediatricians refused to see patients because the state’s Medicaid funding
could not sufficiently reimburse them for their services.
Hedges said the Colorado economy was booming during the ’90s, but the cost of private compensation for
previously public services kept most state residents from noticing the boom, especially once the post-9/11
recession kicked in. Higher education in Colorado, she said, suffered a “disinvestment” of state funds under
TABOR. State funding to Colorado’s colleges and universities was cut by more than half, increasing the cost of
tuition, and causing some schools to investigate the option of becoming private institutions.
Also, she added, implementing TABOR as an amendment to a state’s constitution – as the Oklahoma plan
would do – makes it very difficult to repeal if the results are undesirable.
“When you don’t have an effective partner in the public sector, your private sector stumbles,” Hedges said,
comparing a state’s budget to the pie her grandmother used to make.
When only she and her grandmother were eating pie, it could be made in a small pan. When the whole family
was eating, a bigger pan was required (population growth, and increase in tax revenue, under this analogy). As
her dad aged (baby boomers getting long in the tooth), and began eating more pie (requiring more services,
mainly in health care), there was less pie (services funded by tax dollars) for everyone else, because the pie pan
couldn’t get any bigger (TABOR, limiting the monetary pie pan of the state).
Brogdon however, countered with his own analogy, and he even brought props – a set of reins.
Government, he said, needs to be “reined in,” just like Sparky the Palomino at his Uncle Jack’s farm. Evidently,
Sparky bit a chunk out of a young Randy Brogdon’s arm, but Uncle Jack made Brogdon get back on the horse
(government) and show him who was boss (the taxpayers).
(Later in the forum, Wilson suggested that Sparky may have bitten Brogdon because the horse’s statesubsidized
feed wasn’t enough to keep him well-fed.)
“I don’t like Colorado’s Tax Payer Bill of Rights, but Oklahoma’s proposed TABOR is tailor-made for this
state,” said Brogdon. “This Taxpayer Bill of Rights does not cut any government spending. What it does is limit
how fast [government] can grow.”
Brogdon claimed Oklahoma’s TABOR would provide an emergency fund (5 percent of the state budget).
Money from that fund could only be spent with the approval of three-quarters of both houses of the Legislature.
Currently, he said, spending from the “rainy day” fund can be approved at any time. TABOR would also
establish a “budget stabilization fund” (10 percent of the budget), which could be used to fund “high priority”
programs.
Both Gray and Auffet, however, said such measures were redundant, because the state constitution already
requires the Legislature to balance the state budget. Also, voters several years ago approved a constitutional
amendment that requires either a three-quarters vote of both houses or a vote of the people to approve any state
tax increase.
“We already have a taxpayer bill of rights in Oklahoma,” said Gray. “It’s called our constitution.”
Auffet compared TABOR’S spending limits to restrictions put on a family’s budget – for several generations.
“If you think you can plan your budget 20, 30 years ahead, just go ahead [and vote for TABOR],” said Auffet.
“But let’s not hog-tie ourselves (yet one more livestock analogy!). Let’s let people make the decision in the time
they live in. Let’s not make those decisions for them.”
Brown offered yet another analogy: a plane crash. Pointing out that he, Purdy, and some of the audience
members are pilots, he described how the National Transportation Safety Board conducts investigations of
planes crashes. Oklahoma voters, he suggested, should play the part of those investigators.
“Colorado’s airplane, called TABOR, crashed, and we’ve all seen that,” he said. “Let’s not handcuff the pilot to
his seat. We [elected officials] are elected to fly this plane, to adjust spending limits according to our budget.”
Brown pointed out that under TABOR, funding to help fight the recent wildfires in Oklahoma could not have
been allocated without a three-quarters approval of both houses – which, he said, is difficult to get on even the
most mundane measures.
Jennings told the audience the rate of increase of health care costs already exceeds that of inflation, so keeping
up with those costs under TABOR would be virtually impossible.
“We have to be able to keep up with the basic costs, just to provide services,” she said. “If we could limit
[government] growth without limiting progress, that would be wonderful, but I don’t know how that happens.”
It doesn’t, according to Wilson.
“Fifty years ago, a guy could make a living selling paint at Sears,” he said, adding that as women moved into
the workplace, families became more reliant on public services like childcare, public education, and healthcare.
“Now [employers] only pay you half a wage because there are two of you working.”
Limitations on the funding of public services, he said, would only put more financial burden on families.
Both Williams and Hurst told the audience that funding for education – public and higher – was already low.
TABOR, they said, was unlikely to increase it.
“TABOR establishes baselines for growth in state spending,” said Hurst. “And our baseline in teacher pay is
somewhere around 49th in the nation. My goodness, even the Daily Oklahoman has said this is the wrong thing
at this time. That says something.”
Williams said that five years ago, 75 percent of NSU’s funding came from the state, compared to 50 percent
today. The university, he said, received $1 million less from the state in 2006 than in 2002.
“I’m going to be very concerned about anything that will take money away from higher education,” said
Williams, before rolling out his own transportation-related analogy to a round of audience applause.
“I don’t think there’s anyone in this room who will disagree that higher education is the engine that moves, that
pulls, this train (the state of Oklahoma).”
Purdy told Brogdon that while he respected his opinion on how government should be controlled, he preferred
to limit government by another, more proven method: voting.
“I think there are philosophical differences here, a divergence in opinion on the amount of trust we place in
elected officials,” Purdy said. “I’m concerned about the reliance on a formula in lieu of the performance of
those elected officials.”
