americans for limited government

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Americans for Limited Government (ALG) is a conservative, libertarian think tank. Its primary concerns are tax and spending reform, property rights restoration, school choice and political term limits.

ALG supported campaigns in twelve states for the November 2006 election. Contents [hide] 1 Property Rights 2 Taxpayer Bill of Rights 3 Public Schools 4 Recall of Judges 5 Controversies 6 Additional information 7 External links 8 References //

Property Rights

One of ALG's primary projects is funding ballot initiatives throughout the country that would curtail the expanded scope of eminent domain created by the US Supreme Court's Kelo v. New London decision in 2005. Additionally, many of these measures will require governments to compensate land owners when land use and environmental laws decrease the value of parcels of property. Most of these initiatives allow the governments to waive restrictions instead of paying compensation.

A similar provision, Measure 37, was approved by voters in Oregon in 2004. Encouraged by this success, and piggybacking on the public backlash from the Supreme Court's 2005 Kelo decision, ALG and the closely related Fund for Democracy have been supporting similar initiatives in eleven states in 2006. Such initiatives qualified for the 2006 ballots in Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Washington. Similar initiatives failed in Colorado, Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma, and South Carolina. Another initiative may be on the ballot in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough of Alaska. I-933 in Washington state has been a particularly controversial measure.

In addition to more general controversies associated with ALG (see below), critics of ALG's property rights efforts have focused on two pragmatic areas: first, critics claim that those initiatives will make government incapable of regulating land use.[1] Second, critics claim that the kind of initiatives ALG supports will cost tax payers billions of dollars as it requires compensating businesses for complying with existing laws. [2]

Taxpayer Bill of Rights Main article: Taxpayer Bill of Rights

ALG also supports initiatives to enact Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TaBOR) laws, which require states annually to reduce or restrict revenue or spending to within limits set according to inflation and population growth. These laws provide for "rainy day" (emergency) funds as well as the ability for state voters to decide whether their representatives should spend revenue surpluses rather than have it refunded to the taxpayers. Colorado voters passed the best-known example of a TABOR law in 1992 and later voted to suspend its restrictions via the 2005 Colorado Economic Recovery Act].[3]

The 2006 TaBOR initiatives were referred to variously as Stop OverSpending (SOS) (in Nebraska), Taxpayer Bill