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Budget Cap Would Have Helped NC
RALEIGH — North Carolina lawmakers could have avoided repeated massive budget shortfalls in recent years associated with economic downturns, if only it had a Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights in effect, according to a study released Thursday. The report, “A Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) for North Carolina,” was written by University of Colorado economics professor Barry Poulson, and was sponsored by the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, a taxpayer advocacy group. He said that the state, if it had an effective TABOR law in the 1990s, could have established a rainy-day fund of $1.9 billion by 2000-01 that would have helped carry it through tough economic times.