The November ballot will be full of ballot questions attempting to do everything from capping state spending to giving constitutional protection to conservation funding. Many of these ballot initiatives will have serious implications for Michigan's environment.

The so-called "Stop Over Spending," or SOS, initiative poses the biggest threat to Michigan and our environment. Funded by out-of-state groups like Americans for Tax Reform, the bill's premise is that our state is actually overspending. This concept is absurd to anyone who has watched our state's spending and services decline over the past decade and has felt the impacts on their families. Michigan has already cut $3.5 billion in programs and staffing reductions since 2002.

If it passes, this initiative would put a rigid spending formula into the state's constitution, limiting the annual growth in state spending to a strict formula based on population growth and the inflation rate. Essentially, government spending would be so limited that drastic cuts would be made to state-funded services, likely including nonprofit funding and environmental protections, and local funding and services.

A similar referendum adopted by Colorado voters in 1992-known as the Taxpayer Bill of Rights or TABOR-stifled that state's economic growth and drained revenues from state coffers. Programs such as health care and education were cut. Consider:

• In 1991-92, CO ranked 23rd in adequacy of pre-natal care. In 2002, it ranked 48th.
  
  
• Between 2001 and 2005, the percentage of state park operating costs covered by authorizations from the state's General Fund has declined by 37%.
  
  
• State funding for higher education has been slashed by 21% over the past four years, and the University of Colorado has proposed a 26% tuition increase from last year's level as a result.
  
  
• Colorado's job growth rate now lags behind neighboring states.
  

In November 2005, Colorado voters set aside the TABOR spending formula for five years and redefined the base to which the formula is applied. In Michigan, SOS would require voter approval to override if we decided that the initiative was actually hurting our state.

MEC's board voted to oppose this ballot initiative, and we will do what we can to fight it. We urge other organizations to do the same. Among other groups opposing this initiative are AARP of Michigan, American Federation of Teachers of Michigan, Michigan AFL-CIO, Michigan League for Human Services, Michigan Nonprofit Association, Presidents Council of State Universities of Michigan and SEIU (Service Employees International Union).

MEC also opposes the anti-affirmative action initiative, which would ban public sector voluntary affirmative action programs. We oppose the initiative to repeal the Single Business Tax. We support the conservation funding initiative, which would give constitutional protections to the Conservation and Recreation Legacy Fund, the Game and Fish Protection Trust Fund and the Non-game Fish and Wildlife Trust Fund. We have remained neutral on the K-16 Educational Funding Guarantee and dove hunting, and we have yet to take a position on the Eminent Domain ballot question.