Saturday, July 30, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Ex-lawmaker to head effort to restrain state spending

Ann O'Connell 20-year legislative veteran to push measure Sharron Angle Bob Beers

CARSON CITY -- Former state Sen. Ann O'Connell, one of Nevada's most conservative lawmakers in her 20 years in the Legislature, will head a group seeking to qualify a ballot measure to place limits on government spending.

"I will come on board as chair of the group," O'Connell said Friday. "This is something I'm 100 percent in favor of."

The Taxpayer Bill of Rights measure, along with another anticipated initiative petition to limit property taxes even more than the Legislature did this year, is expected to be at the forefront of an anti-tax and anti-spending movement in the 2006 election, which includes a race for governor.

The decision to have O'Connell head the effort was made at a meeting of TABOR supporters in Las Vegas on Friday.

While initiative petitions can be circulated beginning Sept. 1, O'Connell said the group probably will wait until after a special election is held in Colorado for voters there to determine whether to suspend its Taxpayer Bill of Rights for five years. Supporters said polls suggest that the effort to put TABOR on hold in Colorado is failing.

If the measure to suspend TABOR is defeated there in the special election in November, it will be one less argument that opponents can use in Nevada to fend off spending limits, O'Connell said.

The former lawmaker, who lost her re-election bid in 2004, said she will serve as a volunteer. There probably will be at least one paid staff person, however, to keep the effort on track on a daily basis, she said.

The group pushing the Taxpayer Bill of Rights in Nevada is a loose association of conservatives, including several lawmakers. Among them is Sen. Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, a candidate for governor in 2006.

Beers introduced three different proposals to impose state spending limits in the Legislature this year, but none had enough support to pass.

As a result, Beers and others said they would move this fall to qualify a TABOR-type measure for the ballot through the initiative process. Landing the proposal on the ballot will require supporters to collect 83,157 signatures.

Another supporter of the proposal is Assemblywoman Sharron Angle, R-Reno, who will launch a property tax limitation ballot measure styled after California's Proposition 13 on Sept. 1.

Angle, who is running for Congress, sees the two proposals as companion measures, each of which will appeal to citizens.

Any constitutional amendment would have to be approved twice by voters, in 2006 and 2008, before it could take effect.

The TABOR spending limitation could mirror Colorado's plan closely, or it could seek to rein in spending through the use of some other measurement. Colorado's plan limits spending by a state or local government entity to population growth plus the rate of inflation. Any spending above such an amount must be approved by voters.

TABOR was put into effect in Colorado by its voters in 1992.

"What we'll do is get all our ducks in a row first," O'Connell said.

"We need to identify the goals for the measure before we put the final language together."

Beers said O'Connell is the perfect choice to head the TABOR effort in Nevada.

"She has time and energy and commitment and passion," he said.

"She will be a superb choice to pull all the disparate parts together."