For the past 18 months, the national union has been active in a nationwide campaign, working in coalition with other unions and good-government organizations, to stop the spread of laws and constitutional amendments modeled after Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights.

Colorado’s TABOR restricts spending growth for government programs, services and infrastructure and requires “excess” revenue be returned to taxpayers.

Significantly, as the anti-government activists set up operations in an increasing number of states each year, including more than two dozen states in 2006, Coloradans voted to suspend TABOR in November 2005 due to the measure’s deleterious effect on the availability of public services.

Proponents of the restriction are finding, however, that their well-funded operations can’t stand up to grass-roots community activism, which is exactly what led to the defeat of Wisconsin’s so-called Taxpayer Protection Amendment (TPA) this year.

Members of the Wisconsin Senate stood up for good government in May when they rejected the TPA, a repackaged version of TABOR.

AFT-Wisconsin reports that the Senate’s defeat of the proposed constitutional amendment came after intense opposition by citizens, local officials and more than 100 associations and organizations, including AFT-Wisconsin.

Unlike other states where petitions are circulated to get initiatives on the ballot, proposed amendments to Wisconsin’s constitution only go to a vote of the people after the proposal passes in two consecutive sessions of the Legislature.

In related news, at press time, AFT affiliates in other states, including Michigan, Montana and Oregon, were in the throes of anti-TABOR campaigns.

“Sink Our State.” That’s what Montana’s MEA-MFT president Eric Feaver says a proposed ballot initiative to cap state government spending will do.

The proposed initiative, also modeled after Colorado’s TABOR, is dubbed “Stop Over Spending.” It’s also known as constitutional initiative 97 (CI-97).

The union is moving full throttle ahead to defeat the proposed initiative before sponsors can gather the almost 45,000 signatures needed to get it on the November ballot.

In addition to regular communications with members, MEA-MFT has produced a DVD that explains TABOR’s harmful effects on Colorado’s economy and public services—and what Montanans can expect if the initiative is approved by voters.

MEA-MFT, the largest union in the state, also is working with other groups, including AARP-Montana, to build a broad bipartisan, grass-roots coalition of opposition.

Since the initiative surfaced earlier this year, debate over the measure has largely raged in newspapers across Montana. (The Legislature is not in session this year.)

Republican Rep. Bernie Olson blasted the proposed initiative in a Kalispell newspaper:

“The Montana legislators who are behind CI-97, unable to get their anti-government ideas out of committee in past sessions, have now turned to the initiative process to achieve their ends. ...They don’t much like representative government unless everyone elected thinks as they do. They don’t like social programs and vote that way in Helena. They dislike public education at all levels and vote that way in Helena. They don’t like the court system and vote that way in Helena.”

Feaver praised Rep. Olson for expressing “the courage of his convictions.”

Ed Muir, assistant director in AFT’s research and information services department, says a TABOR initiative will be on the ballot in Maine in November 2006, and that barring a pending legal challenge, voters in Oklahoma also will be voting on a TABOR initiative.