Several statewide referendum question campaigns are heating up as election day draws closer.  Today, opponents of a proposed tax cap staged a rally near the front steps of Portland City Hall.  About 50 people showed up to urge the defeat of TABOR II, a taxpayer bill of rights that places caps on state and local spending.  Although its critics maintain that Question 4 would devastate Maine's economy, TABOR II supporters say that fiscal restraint is exactly what the state needs now. 

As a retired school teacher, Dauna Binder thinks she knows her numbers and she says that if spending caps are imposed at the state and local level under a proposed taxpayer bill of rights spending cap, local schools will not be immune from any community's spending priorities.

"What does TABOR II mean to students?  Older textbooks, more students in the classrooms, fewer materials to do our jobs," she said.

Binder was among the more than 50 concerned citizens, legislators and State House lobbyists who showed up at Portland City Hall for a rally against Question 4 on the November ballot, commonly known as TABOR II.  Binder says the local and state spending caps in the plan that would be tied to population growth and inflation could have a chilling effect on Maine's long tradition of home rule.

"TABOR II will require extra statewide votes on referendum questions that will be costly and time consuming," Binder said.  "If you enjoy your town meeting form of government, you can say goodbye to that.  One then wonders why we have gone to the trouble of electing people to represent us on the city council or school committee and make informed decisions?  If we don't like our elected representives and their decisions, don't re-elect them."

"AARP has taken a stand against TABOR.  Actually across the country this battle comes, basically -- it's a national agenda, and we're worried here in Maine --we don't want to be the second state that approves it," says Nancy Kelleher, the state Director of the American Association of Retired Persons. 

Before she accepted that post, Kelleher held several positions within state government. After watching the state of Colorado enact, and then loosen, many of the spending limits under its TABOR bill passed in 1992, Kelleher says it became clear that propositions like TABOR II are simply too rigid to form the basis of a state spending policy.

"Well, it will change everything at the state and local level, in terms of budgetary issue.  It sets an arbitrary one-size-fits-all formula," Kelleher says.  "As it stands now, local municipal people vote on the local budget and if they want to have a spending cap, they can enact one if they want to.  But to force every single town and municipality in the state of Maine to have a cap seems arbitrary and we just don't think it'll work."

Many Republicans across the country like the restrictions on state and local spending that TABOR-style tax caps provide. But Steve Johnson is not among them. A former Colorado legislator who now serves as a county commissioner there, Johnson says Republican lawmakers' excitement over reduced taxes dimmed after their constituents began to complain about cuts in state services.

"And they have to continue to cut, cut, cut services.  That will hurt your state," Johnson says." And I agree, we should have representatives -- I listen to my constituents, that's how I get re-elected.  If I don't listen to them, they throw me out.  That's the system that works.  An inflexible formula that continues to hurt your state, that you have engage in a costly campaign to repeal, like we did is not the way to go."

"I wish Maine had Colorado's numbers," says David Crocker, the state Chairman for the TABOR II campaign.  Crocker says Question 4 differs from Colorado's TABOR law because it makes provisions for a budget stabilization fund to prevent Maine from being caught in a financial pinch. He says if Maine were doing as badly as Colorado was under the law, it would be a banner economic year.

"They are consistently in the top five in the country in attracting and retaining wealth, they have an inflow of population," Crocker says. "According to the American Legislative Exchange Council's recent report, Rich States Poor States, their economic competitiveness, they find they're in the top ten in most every category.  Honestly, if that's what TABOR does for a place like Colorado, then bring it on."

Maine voters rejected similar tax caps in 2004 and 2006.