| Wow. Just got this via email, the rather incredible fiscal note for Chuck Denowh's I-162, the takings initiative that is going to takings your money to give it to railroads and other big landowners.
Near as I can tell, the initiative is very similar to 2006 effort that mobilized an amazing amount of dishonesty and fraud, eventually being thrown off the ballot.
Already, Montanans ought to be wary supporting this new version. The fiscal note headlines that the anticipated cost of the bill is $600 million over six years, but consider the reasoning that leads to that number and realize just how conservative it is. The Governor's Budget office used Washington State's estimates of a similar measure and Oregon's actually filed claims under the initiative to determine the price.
In Oregon, actual claims filed came to $19.8 billion (with a b). In Washington, estimated claims came to $8.15 billion. Adjusting the Oregon figure for population, the budget director says that a similar program in Montana would result in over $5 billion in claims. Adjusting the Washington figure, we still end up with over $1 billion in claims. So how do we end up with a dollar figure of just $600 million? The following sentence explains: Using the comparison to the analysis done for the Washington initiative and taking into account the uncertainties that exist because of the differences between the Montana and Washington initiatives; a 50% discount has been applied to this analysis. In other words, due to uncertainty, we're going to risk underestimating the cost of this initiative by as much as $600 million!
But let's think about this again, the adjustment in cost from Washington State is done based on the populations of Washington and Montana. It fails to adjust for the fact that the initiative language in Montana is actually broader than the initiative language in Washington. It also ignores the fact that Montana has a hell of a lot more land than Washington State. We may have fewer people, but I'm not sure we have significantly fewer assets in the state (would love to hear otherwise).
In other words, the anticipated $600 million price tag is an optimistic interpretation of an optimistic interpretation of an optimistic interpretation. The Governor's office appears to be bending over backwards here to avoid criticism of cooking the books for political purposes. That's all well and good, but Montanans need to be aware that this initiative could easily destroy Montana's fiscal situation -- something already seriously threatened by the economic slowdown. |
