I have seen several news reports this week in which various activist organizations are suggesting that they are working on ballot measures for new taxes to support their interests, e.g., education, to get around our “Thou shalt not raise taxes” for any any reason, ever Tea-Publican legislature.
This has been done before for education and healthcare matters, and invariably winds up in court when our Tea-Publican legislature fails and/or refuses to support these programs at voter-mandated spending levels. Our legislature does not even abide by the Arizona Constitution. This has not been a particularly effective strategy. It mostly means full employment for a select few lawyers.
Moreover, tax measures enacted by citizen initiatives can only be amended by another citizen initiative or referendum unless a super-majority vote of each chamber cam be achieved that is “in furtherance of” the intended purpose of enacted citizen initiative. So what do you do when there is a necessary amendment, based upon changed circumstances, that is not “in furtherance of” the intended purpose of enacted citizen initiative?
This is a poor way to enact public policy. I think you are all getting way out over your skis on this. I have explained numerous times over the years what is the necessary prerequisite to any meaningful tax reform in Arizona and to restoring fiscal sanity to our budget process — repeal Proposition 108 (1992), the “Two-Thirds for Taxes” Amendment, Arizona Constitution Article 9, Section 22. This is where tax reform begins. FOCUS! FOCUS! FOCUS!
As I have posted previously:
I consider Prop. 108 the GOP’s “weapon of mass destruction.” Here is why: it only takes a simple majority vote of the legislature to approve cuts to tax rates, or to enact tax exemptions and tax credits (tax expenditures). But these tax revenue reducers become permanent in practical reality because Prop. 108 requires a two-thirds super-majority vote in both chambers of the legislature to increase tax rates, or to reduce or eliminate any tax exemption or tax credit.
Since Prop. 108 was enacted by voters in 1992, the Arizona legislature has not increased tax rates, and has not closed “tax loopholes” as all the pundits decry that we desperately need to do. A tyranny of a minority of anti-tax zealots in the Arizona legislature are empowered to prevent any such tax reforms: 11 members in the Senate, or 21 members in the House.
This is how the anti-government, anti-public education, anti-tax GOP game is played: in each legislature since Prop. 108 was enacted, the legislature has enacted tax rate cuts and/or special interest tax exemptions and tax credits. This has had the intended effect of reducing tax revenues, creating a structural revenue deficit which results in a budget deficit. Because raising tax revenues is always off the table in the ideological GOP, the legislature takes out its meat axe and cuts the budget to essential state services like public education, health care and infrastructure (primarily roads).
The Arizona GOP can manufacture a perpetual budget crisis in Arizona by a simple majority vote for yet another one of their faith based supply-side “trickle down” tax cuts that have not magically produced the unicorns and rainbows they promised us. And because a tyranny of a minority of anti-tax zealots can prevent any reversal of these tax policies, Prop. 108 thus becomes a “weapon of mass destruction” of Arizona’s government, and of sound public policy.
We need to restore democracy to Arizona with a simply majority vote on tax matters. This would restore to a working majority in the legislature the flexibility it needs to adjust taxes to changing economic circumstances. This is sound public policy.
As Thomas Jefferson observed:
“The first principle of republicanism is that the lex majoris partis is the fundamental law of every society of individuals of equal rights; to consider the will of the society enounced by the majority of a single vote as sacred as if unanimous is the first of all lessons in importance, yet the last which is thoroughly learnt. This law once disregarded, no other remains but that of force, which ends necessarily in military despotism.” –Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, 1817. ME 15:127
NOTE: Prop. 108 is the jurisdictional basis for the lawsuit by Tea-Publicans in the Arizona legislature challenging Gov. Jan Brewer’s Medicaid (AHCCCS) expansion plan. Without Prop. 108, there would be no lawsuit. I predict that the Arizona Supreme Court eventually will void the expansion plan based upon Prop. 108 — unless it is repealed before a final decision is rendered.