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June 2004
Celebrating Our Victories: TABOR is Defeated!
Whether you sent an email to your state legislator, made a phone
call, met face-to-face with your legislators, or contributed financially to
TFT, your helped make this victory possible. For that, we thank you. The 103rd
Tennessee General Assembly has come to an end and the so-called Taxpayer Bill
of Rights or TABOR ended with it. While TFT has been focusing much of our energy
on the long-term campaign for real tax reform, the opposition was trying to
use this time to enact constitutional amendments like TABOR that would hamstring
state governments and make passage of tax reform in the future difficult if
not impossible.
To learn more
about TABOR, click here
TFT's Board Chair Dick Williams summed up the campaign, "Fortunately
for us, fighting defensive campaigns like this is much easier than the campaign
for tax reform. All we needed to do was keep the bill from ever getting out
of the Senate Finance Committee to defeat it. Most of the Finance Committee
seemed to understand that TABOR was either unnecessary or undesirable and that
position was reinforced by calls from our members living in their districts.
The sponsor obviously did not have the votes to even call for its passage."
Strategically, the importance of this victory should not be lost. The opposition's
strategy was to get the amendment on the 2006 ballot. By stopping TABOR from
passing in the 103rd General Assembly, we have pushed their next chance at passing
TABOR all the way back to 2010. That's because constitutional amendments must
be passed in two consecutive General Assemblies (There's only one left between
now and 2006, the 104th General Assembly from 2005-2006), and even then can
only be voted on during gubernatorial election years (2006, 2010, etc.). Thanks
again to all those who made this victory possible!
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