HELENA — Montana is shaping up to be one of a handful of battleground states this fall over state spending caps, a yawn-inducing issue if ever there was one.

Until you listen to the rhetoric.

Depending on which side is talking, the proposed ballot initiative — dubbed Stop Over Spending — either will put a fat wad of cash in your pocket, or will leave you, literally, out in the cold.

"Sink Our State," Eric Feaver calls the proposal. "This would be an awful event. I think people's services would be seriously impacted negatively," said Feaver, president of the MEA-MFT, the state's largest public employees union.

SOS would be awful only if the idea of a tax rebate is awful, countered Sen. Joe Balyeat, R-Bozeman, one of the measure's proponents. He argues that SOS would put a lid on state spending, provide for a rainy day fund, and return whatever is left over to taxpayers.

"They're the rightful owners, anyway," he said. "If we've collected more than we need for the necessary functions of government, by rights it should go back to the people."

Montanans are going to hear a lot of that sort of back and forth this year as national groups mobilize around each side of the argument.

Montana is among about a half-dozen states with similar proposals that could end up on the ballot in November. Maine, Oklahoma, Nevada and Oregon also are considering spending limits, among others. Stop Over Spending is a popular name.

TABOR, these days, is not.

As in the Taxpayers' Bill Of Rights, the name for the Colorado state spending limit that was suspended last year by voters willing to trade in their tax rebates for more state services.

Colorado's TABOR imposed the strictest fiscal limits in the nation, and backers of Montana's plan are quick to point out that they've tweaked their proposal to remove its more draconian effects.

For starters, SOS eliminates the infamous "ratchet effect" (this is usually where the yawns start) that hamstrung Colorado's budget. Under TABOR, state spending in Colorado ratcheted down when the economy slumped. But TABOR's limits didn't allow the state to spend more money again when the economy improved.

Colorado Gov. Bill Owens — an "ardent" proponent of TABOR who also campaigned for last year's successful attempt to suspend the ratchet effect — described it this way:

It's as though a reservoir, drained during a drought, was not allowed to refill even after the rains returned.

TABOR was started in 1992.

Coloradans got their rebates, but eventually found themselves paying more for things like state parks fees and hunting licenses. Some Division of Motor Vehicles offices closed. College and university tuition went up as state spending on higher education declined from $5,062 per student in 2001-02, to $3,861 per student in 2005-06.

Opponents to spending caps use those numbers to paint dire pictures of life under the restrictions.

"TABOR creates conditions that each year pit programs and services against each other for survival. ... They undermine existing services for children, youth, and families and make any new initiatives virtually impossible to undertake," according to the Washington, D.C.-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which helps fight TABOR-type initiatives around the country.

Typically, opponents organize bipartisan local coalitions, as was done in Colorado, where groups as disparate as Homebuilders Associations to the Anti-Hunger Alliance joined last year to fight the ratchet effect. Feaver has vowed to help mobilize a similar coalition in Montana.

Gov. Brian Schweitzer has already said he opposes SOS.

Proponents of spending limitations get help from Grover Norquist's anti-tax group, Americans for Tax Reform, and from FreedomWorks, the group headed by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey.

In Montana Balyeat and Rep. Scott Mendenhall, R-Clancy, the other main backer of SOS, say they've fashioned Montana's proposed initiative to sidestep the problems that so plagued TABOR.

SOS would peg spending increases to inflation and population growth — a "soft cap," as Balyeat terms it.

"It won't even result in any blood on the floor," he said.

But Josh Harwood, an economist for the Colorado Legislative Council, said that the populations most dependent upon government services — the poor, the elderly and prisoners — increase far more quickly than the overall population, the number to which spending increases are linked.

Henry Sobanet, director of the Colorado Office of State Planning and Budgeting, said Colorado also found inflation a notoriously unreliable basis for budgeting. "As the economy started to recover we had a curious mix of factors that caused dramatically low inflation," he said.

Balyeat and Mendenhall also wrote several exemptions into SOS, mainly to avoid constitutional issues. For instance, the state lands revenues that help fund public schools would be exempt.

However, that money comprises only about 12 percent of the $491 million allocated this year for schools. The rest would be subject to the limits, which is why school groups are so opposed to SOS.

Spending limits pit state agencies against one another for a smaller pool of tax revenues, Feaver said.

"We already fight among ourselves. This just gives us an opportunity to have even more brutal fights. Instead of brass knucks and switchblades, we can bring out the shotguns and howitzers," he said.

Balyeat characterizes those conflicts as prioritizing.

"There's nothing in this initiative as such that would specifically limit school spending. ... If they prioritize school spending, other things would have to have slower growth."

As Rep. Mike Milburn, the Cascade Republican who will spearhead the SOS effort in northcentral Montana said, "If the economy is beginning to grow, and we have more money, do we spend it all? Or do we start lowering taxes and spend what we need?"

Balyeat said the beauty of SOS was proven in Colorado when voters there changed the terms of TABOR last year.

"It has a final safety valve. If inflation and population growth is not enough, if all the exemptions are not enough, it can still go to the people" for alteration. "I trust the people to make a good decision, just like they did in Colorado. I think the recent election in Colorado proves their spending limitation works. The people decided they wanted to spend more."

Montana's SOS proposal is being reviewed by the Attorney General's Office and should be ready for signatures by the end of the month, Balyeat said.

The initiative's supporters will need to collect 45,000 valid signatures by about mid-June to qualify the petition for the November ballot, said its coordinator, Trevis Butcher.