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MR. CADINHA: I have a question of Mr. Moss. I understand fiscal responsibility and appreciate it and I have one concern about spending limits , tax limits. Is the intent of your recommendations to discriminate against somebodyimmigrating into the county? MR. MOSS: No, I don ' t think we are trying to discourage anybody to that extent. As I explained, I think I 'm really trying to protect people who have their property now from being squeezed outof it by steadily rising taxes. MR. CADINHA: Someone coming in though and buying property would havea different tax base as far as real property and would pay more in taxes for a like dwelling or a like environment. MR. MOSS: This is true. - MR. CADINHA: Also, how, _wi,thi a tax limit and a spending limit, insofar as debt service and budget. . ®;h'ow would you handle a decline in valuation? I know very few people con- sider this but it has happened in our country before. Should real property decline and you have a tax limit of 1% and you have a county budget that is also limited by debt service limit- ations. Okay, if you have a decline in value, what happens? You suddenly have a county that is in a deficit position. MR. MOSS: You soften that problem to a certain extent by basing it on a three year running average Which smooths out the. big ups and the downs. A decline in any one year isn ' t going to trigger a problem. I 'm quite sure that was the way the con-con amendment read and is now part of the Constitution. That is was based on a three year running average of the growth of the economy, limiting the growth of the budget. Also there was a provision , I believe, that a two-thirds vote of the legislature could temporarily set aside the limit. I always hate to get into that kind of a situation but maybe you have to do that to cope with the situationjust described. MR. CADINHA: Once something is committed to charter it ' s almost biblical in na:rure and it is a. lot easier to accomplish via ordinance than have to circumvent a charter.+ rn0 These are concerns and .I . was just curious to know how these provisions would handle the different. . . ' MR.. .MOSS.: . Incidentally, I read in the paper the other daya very interesting comment on the effect of the Constitutional -amendments on the spending of the State Legislature. Apparently, the debt limitation has caused a considerable decrease in the so-called pork barrel appropriations and requests because they. can ' t--in the past, people appropriated lots of money but it was never spent, never released and now you can ' t do that because any time you appropriate themoney you have to show where it is coming from and how you are going to borrow it and what it does to your debt limit. And apparently it is having a beneficial effect in the State. - 18 -