Trapped By The Cap

[May 31st, 2006] Kristi Hargrove never imagined she would spend her spare time traveling to places like Oregon to advocate responsible fiscal policy.

A petite 49-year-old mother of four from rural Crested Butte, Colo., Hargrove usually kept busy working at the general contracting firm she owns with her husband and serving on the local school board.

But these days, she's meeting with budget and policy wonks and politicians from across the spectrum, holding press conferences and even starring in a short film by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, D.C.

Last week, she came to Oregon, where her tour included a press conference with Gov. Ted Kulongoski.

Why?

In 1992, Hargrove was one of the 812,308 Coloradans who voted to approve, with nearly 54 percent of the vote, a constitutional amendment to limit annual growth in state and local government revenue to the percentage growth in population plus the inflation rate.

And, man, does she regret it.

Hargrove says the amendment devastated social services so much that she helped run the successful campaign in 2005 to suspend the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights (or TABOR) for five years, getting 52 percent support.

"People didn't understand the consequences of what they were voting for," she told WW. "They just cut everything."

Hargrove came to Oregon to warn against the signature-gathering effort by Don McIntire's Taxpayer Association of Oregon to put a TABOR-like amendment, "SOS Oregon," on the state's ballot in November.

Hargrove also visited WW, flanked by lobbyists from three think tanks and Patty Wentz, communications director for the labor-backed Our Oregon (and a former WW reporter).

Hargrove seemed dwarfed by the experienced activists and shied away from our photographer, but explained clearly how TABOR had strangled Colorado's social services by preventing spending from keeping up with costs.

"Inflation plus population growth only allows you to buy today what you bought, in our case, in 1992,'' she said. "It's just like saying the status quo is good enough."

Funds became so scarce that Hargrove says her children's school district had to stop buying new textbooks. The heating was turned off. Then things started to get surreal.

"The teachers were mandated not to have a hot plate or a coffee maker in their rooms because of the cost of the electricity," Hargrove said. "It was just killing us."

The national groups that backed TABOR in Colorado, Americans for Limited Government and Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, are pushing to get similar amendments on the ballot in Oregon and 11 other states this November.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron Saxton has endorsed SOS Oregon. Kulongoski, a Democrat, opposes it. State Sen. Ben Westlund, trying to mount an independent gubernatorial run, said he will support SOS "when hell freezes over."