Wednesday, June 16, 2004

Susan Fino (Wayne State – Political Science) has published A Cure Worse than the Disease? Taxation and Finance Provisions in State Constitutions, 34 Rutgers L.J. 959 (2003). Here is part of the Conclusion:

Political leaders pretend – and people believe – that we can increase spending and balance the budget without raising taxes if we could just eliminate waste. That is simply not true; yet politicians pledge “no new taxes” and state constitutions limit the ability of government to raise revenue, borrow and spend. Nevertheless, legislatures and courts have to act within this framework, and they do. Do citizens then become even more distrustful and cynical as they observe the latest legislative innovation in taxation and finance? Probably. The resulting distrust and cynicism may lead to even more stringent constraints on the state as citizens seek new nostrums to cure what they have diagnosed as systemic maladies in the operation of government. These constraints can encourage state government to develop new dodges around the latest set of legal trammels, which, in turn, can create greater distrust and cynicism. However, there is the distinct possibility that the people have misdiagnosed the problem. State governments may not be models of health, but neither are they terminally ill. The serious disease is in the body politic – the citizens who choose to remain uninformed and disengaged from public affairs while making impossible demands of their government. No set of state constitutional reforms can cure this disease.