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Diminished local government autonomy and increased fiscal centralization in the hands of state government are the consequences of the restrictions on the local property tax imposed in the western states in the past twenty years. While the trend is a national one, it is more evident in the West than in other regions. Statewide voter initiatives account for some of the restrictions, particularly the more severe ones, but legislatures and governors also impose these limitations. In tracing the recent course of the centralization of local finance, this article details the property tax restrictions adopted in individual western states, examines the initiative and conventional legislative sources of these actions, and provides quantitative and qualitative evidence for the centralization thesis. In many western states the property tax has lost much of its local character, becoming in large part a fiscal and political tool for state policymakers.The property tax in the western states, as in other parts of the United States, is the traditional fiscal mainstay of local government. This one revenue source generates more than $32 billion for local governments in the thirteen western states, more than a third of their locally raised income. 1 It also has significance in statewide terms, as a key fiscal link between the states and their local governments. Frequently the property tax is an issue in the budget deliberations of legislatures and governors and in the actions of statewide electorates.What makes an analysis of this relationship timely near the close of the twentieth century are the profound changes in the character of the property tax that have occurred in Sokolow / The Changing Property Tax in the West 85

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