Property taxpayers across Arizona are alarmed. They have been receiving notification from county assessors across the state that the taxable value of their property is again increasing.

Their anxiety is certainly justified because experience tells them that increases in assessed value will translate into higher property taxes when local governments set their budgets.

Some taxpayers are exploring the possibility of joining a handful of tax-revolt efforts that are brewing around the state.

Valuation increases do not have to result in tax increases.

When Arizona's cigarette tax jumped from $1.18 a pack to $2 in December, Donna Dear started reminding her husband that if they quit smoking, they could afford a nice vacation.

Dear, 55, of Laveen, didn't quit, but she went from 10 packs a week to six. With Congress now weighing the biggest federal cigarette-tax hike in history, Dear said the pressure on her pocketbook may soon be enough for her to kick her 30-year habit.

"Every time you buy a pack and you see the cost, it reinforces the fact that you have to quit," she said.

Arizona leaders are doing a lot of looking for unicorns these days.

The one they are in particularly hot pursuit of is a state tax structure that isn't so subject to cyclical fluctuations.

The universities sent out a scouting party for this particular unicorn, called the Fiscal Alternative Choices Team. It recently released a field report.

The main focus among state government policymakers has been how to pay the bills next year. There are, however, side discussions taking place over how to construct a better tax system.

In fact, part of Gov. Jan Brewer's plan includes pro-growth tax changes (unspecified) to be phased in after a temporary tax increase (also unspecified) carries us past the present valley of woe.

PREFACE

Bob Robb, in his column on the Fiscal 2000 Committee, quotes numbers in a way that serves a certain purpose. Not only does he tell just part of the story, but his analysis is too simplistic.


In 1989, I chaired the State Select Committee on State Revenues and Expenditures, better known as the Fiscal 2000 Committee. The 15-person committee, made up of elected officials and several representatives of the private sector, studied Arizona's fiscal structure carefully.

A graph charting population growth in Arizona bears an uncanny resemblance to the state’s highest mountain, Humphrey’s Peak — except that the graph climbs even more sharply. Just 10 years ago, Arizona had 3.6 million residents. In 2000, its population was up to 5.1 million. In times as good as the late 1990s, when every new citizen was seen as a source of new revenue — in the form of additional sales, income and property taxes — it was assumed that more people were a blessing.

A new property-tax-supported hospital district in Maricopa County, as would be established by Proposition 414, is unnecessary and unwise.


Moreover, the political shenanigans engaged in by Maricopa County officials with the ballot pamphlet and even the ballot question itself deserve a sharp rebuke from voters.

The county used to be the primary health provider to low-income residents. But that responsibility shifted to the state in the 1980s, with Arizona's managed-care alternative to Medicaid, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System.

Nearly all Glendale employees had their wages frozen the last four years, but the city's human-resources director received a nearly $14,000 bonus last year, and a nearly 8.6 percent salary increase to $151,111 this July.


A month later, Alma Carmicle began telecommuting from her new home in Mississippi, working by phone and e-mail when she isn't on a return visit to Glendale.

Gov. Jan Brewer's staff on Wednesday sketched out a plan to lighten the burden on small business both with tax relief and clearer rules in both the income- and sales-tax codes.

The plan does not call for across-the-board cuts.

Instead, the proposal includes a more generous income-tax exemption for equipment bought by businesses and a promise to simplify the state's sales-tax code.

Although Brewer's goal is to help small business, many of the changes would benefit companies of all sizes.