A Taxpayer Bill of Rights (commonly known as TABOR) constitutional amendment has been introduced in the N.C. House.
House Bill 188, sponsored chiefly by Rep. John Blust, R-Guilford, would require a 2/3 vote of each house before being put on the ballot for a popular vote. It could not be vetoed by the governor.

If the amendment were to pass, it would require that government not grow any faster than population growth plus inflation. In an emergency, that limit could be exceeded by a 2/3 vote of the legislature. That’s a pretty reasonable proposition, given what’s happened in the past few years and the situation the state, cities and counties, find themselves in.

Given the headlines screaming at us daily about funding, spending, shortfalls, cuts and layoffs in government, you’d think the idea that governments at all levels have pretty much squandered the public treasuries like a Middle Eastern potentate would have sunk in with everyone. But not Democrats in the N.C. legislature, apparently.

“When you start putting artificial limits on what is basically our fundamental responsibility, I think that’s bad,” said Senate Minority Leader Martin Nesbitt, D-Buncombe.

And Nesbitt adds this:

“If we do our job properly down here — and the constitution says we’re the ones who are supposed to write the budget — you face the music, you face whatever the times demand, and you do the right thing for the people of this state,” he said.

Those eight words that begin his last comment — “If we do our job properly down here…” — are the heart of the problem. Governments at all levels have shown in the past 40 years that they simply can’t do their jobs properly, at least where frugality with tax money is concerned.

Our Founding Fathers put a whole raft of limits and obstacles in the way of those in government for the very reason that they understood that doing the job properly is very, very difficult when a person in power learns he can curry favor by throwing tax money at a group, industry, community or individual.

We need that kind of obstacle in North Carolina, where government has grown 1.5 times faster than population or inflation in the past 20 years. Blust is on the same wavelength as the Founders when he says:

“There needs to be a stronger leash by the public on what we do here.”

A TABOR bill would be just the music Nesbitt was talking about. Let’s crank up the band.