Effective restraints on the growth of government can be imposed by citizens. Many are obviously listening. Just as activists in other states were quick to copy Colorado's term limitation measure, taxpayers are busy drafting Tabor-like proposals in California, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, Ohio and Florida. And in Wyoming, a state senator has proposed a referendum calling for spending limits linked, like Tabor, to inflation and population growth. Another 10 to 15 states will have ballot initiatives modeled after Colorado's Tabor and Arizona's Proposition 108 by 1994.
Critics say such movements constrain representative government.
That would be real change. Professor Barry W. Poulson is a research fellow at the Independent Insititute in Oakland, CA and teaches economics at the University of Colorado.