The only thing green in the grass-roots efforts behind two statewide ballot initiatives is the flow of cash from a New York City millionaire.

His name is Howard Rich, and he's lived up to his last name thanks to a successful career in real estate development. Now he's plunking down millions of dollars from Maine to California to impart his conservative view of government on states where he doesn't live.

It is fair to say the Tax and Spending Control for Nevada initiative would not have qualified for the November ballot without his financial support. And while the People's Initiative To Stop the Taking of Our Land already had a local attorney bankrolling its eminent domain measure, the matching money from Rich helped make sure citizen anger over the U.S. Supreme Court's Kelo v. New London decision found its way to PISTOL's petitions.

Rich is chairman of Americans for Limited Government, a national coalition advocating smaller government. He sits on the board of the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute and is in charge of U.S. Term Limits, a group that pushes for legislative term limits nationwide.

The TASC initiative owes its survival to $625,000 it received from Americans for Limited Government. Aside from that cash, TASC received just $47,000 in relatively small in-state donations. The bulk of the $625,000 was paid to TASC in May so the Nevada group could fund a professional signature-gathering operation.

"We have 251 donors," said TASC Executive Director Bob Adney.

The 249 in-state donors contributed anywhere from $1 to $5,000, Adney said after filing the group's contribution and expense report with the secretary of state's office last week. But Adney admits collecting signatures and fighting legal challenges would have been very hard indeed without TASC's Rich patron saint.

Both TASC and PISTOL enjoy popular support, although TASC's numbers are beginning to soften in the wake of a concerted campaign against the measure by the AFL-CIO in Nevada. A recent Review-Journal poll suggested 54 percent of voters support the measure, down 5 points from a previous poll.

TASC would limit annual government spending increases to the rate of population growth plus inflation and require voter approval for tax increases and expenditures that exceed the cap. PISTOL aims to prevent government land seizures that transfer property from one private owner to another. Both initiatives need voter approval in November and again in 2008 to amend the Nevada Constitution.

Las Vegas attorney Kermitt Waters first bankrolled the PISTOL initiative, saying he could not sit with the Kelo decision as legal precedent.

"I'd been carrying the main weight of it," Waters said. "Howard offered to help me."

Rich has pledged to match Waters' money 50-50, PISTOL proponent and GOP attorney general candidate Don Chairez said.

Waters has put in $90,000 of his own money already, with Americans for Limited Government making three large donations to the effort. The group wrote checks for $45,378 on Feb. 22, added $32,000 on April 14 and donated $91,000 on June 23.

"Howard's agreed to pay half of everything we spend, except for our expensive Democratic PR guy," Chairez said, referring to the campaign spokesman he and Waters have hired.

Rich's foray into eminent domain in Nevada has been relatively cheap so far. He's also backing initiatives in Arizona, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma and Washington to the tune of $2.5 million and has thrown an additional $1.5 million at one in California, according to an article by Shane Goldmacher in California's "Capitol Weekly."

Rich also has contributed to the conservative Club for Growth political action committee, which has endorsed Republican Sharron Angle in the fight for Nevada's open 2nd Congressional District seat.

Her tireless campaigning aside, Angle's candidacy would be dead without the Club for Growth, which has funded her television ads, attracted donations from around the country and thrown in at least 19 separate direct donations to Angle, according to Federal Election Commission reports.

Angle's own initiative, a California-style cap on property taxes that took a back seat to her congressional bid, never found a sugar daddy like Rich and didn't come close to qualifying for the ballot.

PISTOL, which polls show has the support of more than two-thirds of Nevadans, appears destined for passage in November if the Nevada Supreme Court allows it to remain on the ballot.

TASC is another story, and Rich is sure to be a major character, albeit off the stage, as the plot develops.

Those who support TASC argue the only way Nevadans could decide whether the measure was good policy was to put it before voters. Sen. Bob Beers' attempts in the Legislature to pass spending limits never got out of committee.

For weeks, Adney and TASC supporters have complained the well-heeled labor unions will stop at nothing to block the initiative. But not a peep has been made of the money funding TASC.

Any notion that the initiative is a strictly Nevada mandate has to be weighed against the $625,000 from New York.

The Democratic National Committee is expected to ratify Nevada's second-in-the-nation presidential caucus when it meets Aug. 19. Media will surely cover that momentous occasion for the little battleground state in the West.

At the same time, the Americans for Limited Government Foundation will quietly hold an action conference in Chicago, where Nevada's role in ballot-box national policy will be front and center.

Mr. Rich will probably be there, but it's doubtful we'll see anything other than his money here as he seeks to change our constitution.

Erin Neff's column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 387-2906, or by e-mail at eneff@reviewjournal.com.