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From this morning’s Washington Post:
DENVER — Gov. Bill Owens (R) has been crisscrossing the country for years promoting the virtues of this state’s strict constitutional limits on government spending. He has repeatedly urged other states to adopt restrictions of their own, based on Colorado’s “Taxpayer Bill of Rights” amendment, known here as TABOR.
Get ahead of holiday shopping this year!Gift 12 issues of 5280 magazine for just $16 »But this summer, Owens says, he’ll be traversing his own mountainous state pushing the opposite message. Midway through his second term, Owens is working to persuade Coloradans to suspend the limits he championed and let the state government spend $3 billion more in tax money than TABOR would allow.
Owens thus becomes another low-tax, limited-government advocate who has found those principles hard to hold onto amid a sluggish economy and a sharply diminished flow of federal money to the states.