The question of whether Prop 13 was good or bad for California is still a contested one. But that hasn't stopped "anti-tax" activists in Arizona from filing an initiative Friday that is closely modeled on Prop 13.

Like the California initiative, which was approved by voters in 1978, this Arizona measure, if it qualifies for the ballot and passes, would limit increases in property values to 2 percent per year for tax purposes. It also would cap property taxes for residential property at one-half of one percent. That's actually lower than Prop 13's 1 percent limit. What's strangest about this initiative filing is the timing. Prop 13 was designed to put limits on how much your property value -- and thus property taxes -- may go up from year to year. That's not exactly a problem for anyone these days, much less in Arizona, where property values have been in free fall.

Conservatives likely will get behind the measure, but one wonders why. In a 2005 interview, Milton Friedman, the conservative economist, told me that if you're going to tax, the property tax is the least dangerous tax because you don't get less property by raising it. (The same is not true, he explained, of sales or income taxes).  

Indiana does not have statewide initiatives or referenda. But the legislature there, in an effort to put downward pressure on property taxes, passed a new requirement in March: that a local referendum be conducted on large-scale construction. The referendum is required on K-8 school construction of $10 million or more, high school construction of $20 million or more, and all other public projects of $12 million or more. The referenda have begun, and the Journal Gazette, the paper in Ft. Wayne, takes a thorough look at the change.