an effort to create searchable online databases for government expenditures
a tool to highlight the hypocrisy of tax hikers
Constitutional or statutory requirement to rein in growth of revenues end expenditures
a commitment made by elected officials and candidates for elected office never to raise taxes
Raising the bar for tax increases
Requiring a cool-off period for all bills with a fiscal impact
pork-barrel spending - the broken windows of the budget
Our friends at the Citizens Against Government Waste and the Maine Heritage Policy Center have teamed up today to launch the 2009 Maine Piglet Book. The book details some $2 billion in wasteful and abusive spending by the state of Maine. CAGW puts out a a federal Pig Book each year that illustrates the egregious pork-barrel spending in Congress. The Maine Heritage Policy Center runs MaineOpenGov.org, a transparency portal they credit with digging up some of the spending featured in this year's pig book - the site made available travel logs that showed Mainers had paid $315,224 in air travel expenses for state employees and over $38,000 for one employee's mileage expenses in the State Controller's office. At the release of the book, the Maine Heritage Policy's chief executive officer Tarren Bragdon was hopeful that this out of control spending will serve as a major catalyst in an upcoming referendum on a state Taxpayer Bill of Rights. Given the extent to which Mainers are being robbed of their money by the state, we hope he's right.
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