National Tax Limitation Committee Watch: Son of Proposition 75

Lew Uhler of the National Tax Limitation Committee

George Skelton, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and Dog Trainer has Anti-Union Activists Hope to Create Son of Prop. 75.

For Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Proposition 75 was akin to Frankenstein’s monster. He created it, could not control it and was ruined by it — at least his “reform” package was destroyed.

The so-called paycheck protection initiative galvanized public employee unions into an all-out war against the governor and his reforms. Unions used it as a smoking gun for their claims that the governor’s real agenda was a partisan power play aimed at weakening his adversaries.

Nevertheless, Prop. 75 did come the closest of any proposition to passing in the special election, losing by seven points.

Now, the nurturer of Prop. 75, longtime anti-tax activist Lewis Uhler, is planning to create another version of the monster for the November 2006 ballot.

Unlike Prop. 75, which would have required public employee unions to obtain annual written permission from members to spend their dues on politics, the reincarnated version will attack unions from a different angle.

It will be modeled after a Utah law called the “voluntary contributions act.” That law forbids public employee unions from spending any dues on politics. All politicking must be funded through a political action committee. And governments are prohibited from collecting PAC money with payroll deductions.

Flap believes under a non-special election that Proposition 75 would have passed.

Uhler’s latest attempt will worry the unions again and make them commit resources.

“I’m not at all convinced that we as taxpayers are responsible for picking up the cost of union political fundraising,” asserts Uhler, president of the National Tax Limitation Committee, which he says has 100,000 dues-paying members.

“What is he smoking?” asks Democratic consultant Gale Kaufman, who coordinated the unions’ victory over Schwarzenegger’s ballot measures. “They’re out of their minds. What’s that about?”

Gale, you know what he is talking about…….making the public employee unions spend millions of dollars to fund a media campaign to defeat proposition 75 fairness initiatives.

Better start raising dues again………