Cracks appear in antitax strongholds

This is a state in favor of small government, fiscal responsibility, and a tight control on spending.

Colorado's Taxpayers Bill of Rights - which places strict limits on how the state can draw revenue - is the mantra of antitax true believers everywhere.

So it's perhaps surprising that a proposal to let the state government keep the people's promised tax refund for the next five years is not only being floated, but doing fairly well in polls.

Even more surprising: One of the biggest proponents of that plan is the governor. Just a year ago, he was denouncing any such easing of the bill of rights, known as Tabor, and called it a tax hike.

Bill Owens isn't the only GOP governor to leave behind dearly held antitax ideals when faced with a particularly dire budget crunch. Mitch Daniels, who as President Bush's budget director earned a reputation for attacking government spending, proposed new taxes just eight days after becoming governor of Indiana. The governors of Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Nevada, and Ohio have also changed course.

Depending on whom you talk to, the trend is either a sign of ideology giving way to pragmatism, or of Republican governors refusing to stand up to their ideals when they're put to the test.

"The fiscal straitjackets a lot of states have been in have the tendency to show the true colors of governors," says Stephen Slivinski, a budget analyst for the conservative Cato Institute.

But taxes, even from ardent conservatives, are sometimes necessary, others say. The idea that all taxes are bad at all times, or that any governor should take such a pre-inauguration pledge, "isn't public policy, it's demagoguery," says Iris Lav, deputy director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank.

"At the state level, raising taxes or not raising taxes has always been less party line than at the federal level," she adds. "It's not too surprising that even someone who'd been very pro-Tabor like Governor Owens looks and says, 'I'm a governor, my job is to make state government work,' and realize he has to do something."

Some of the more conservative critics, however, warn that such actions will have political repercussions.

"Those Republican governors who raised taxes or tried to raise them will never move up in national office," says Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. "Mitch Daniels will never be vice president, not now. [Alabama Gov. Bob] Riley will never be vice president, not now. Owens - who was a presidential contender - will never be a candidate."

Mr. Slivinski of the Cato Institute says that many of the political switches on taxes come from second-term governors, who don't have a reelection campaign looming over them. Owens falls in that category, as does Gov. Kenny Guinn of Nevada, who waited until his second term to propose new taxes. He saw his grade on Cato's fiscal report card drop from an A during his first two years to an D on the most recent report card.

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