By submitting a short stack of papers to the secretary of state on Monday, state Sen. Bob Beers fired the first salvo in a political battle that will be unlike any seen in recent Nevada history.

Sen. Beers, a Republican candidate for governor in next year's election, launched a petition that could place constitutional caps on state and local government budgets, bolster emergency reserves, let voters decide tax and spending issues and refund surplus revenue to taxpayers. If his network of staff and volunteers can collect the signatures of 83,184 registered Nevada voters by June, the Tax and Spending Control initiative -- TASC -- will qualify for the November ballot.

And if voters approve the question next year and again in 2008, the era of runaway government growth in the Silver State will end.

Fueled by the state's record tax increases of 2003, general fund expenditures in Nevada have increased 54 percent in just four years; when annual spending hits $3 billion in 2007, the budget will have tripled in just 13 years.

TASC would restrict budget growth to the combined rates of population growth and inflation, unless voters agree to waive the cap. Had this TASC restriction been in place over the past decade, state spending still would have increased 93 percent. Instead, the budget grew by a nation-leading 147.5 percent.

The initiative is based on Colorado's Taxpayers Bill of Rights. But unlike Colorado's cap, which didn't allow governments to retain any reserves, TASC mandates that governments put surplus funds into emergency and budget stabilization funds to guard against disasters and economic downturns. Surplus revenues would be rebated to Nevada taxpayers and businesses in the form of payroll, property and vehicle registration tax relief only when those government savings accounts reach mandated levels.

"I believe it's time for government to live within the same constraints as Nevada families and businesses," Sen. Beers said Monday.

Of course, the idea of controlled budget growth is anathema to longtime lawmakers and bureaucrats, who aren't interested in prioritizing their spending. And modest spending caps are especially troubling for members of public employee unions, who benefit from a metastasizing public sector. These unions and liberal/progressive special-interest groups will mount a massive attack on TASC should it qualify for the 2006 ballot.

Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson and Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, Democratic rivals in the governor's race, already have condemned the initiative as "fiscally risky" and the "wrong solution" for Nevada. Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, already has warned university and college faculty that they should be "scared to death" of TASC because it will lead to "Draconian budget cuts."

That's utter rubbish, and Ms. Buckley knows it. But it's the kind of sky-is-falling rhetoric we can expect in the months to come from those eager to continue shaking down Nevada taxpayers.