As the birthplace of the modern anti-tax movement, California will always have groups watchdogging the spending of public dollars.

And so it should. As we've seen, Democrats and Republicans are all too willing during boom years to increase spending to unsustainable levels. Taxpayers need effective advocates.

Yet there's a difference between protecting taxpayers and rigidly opposing all new tax increases, regardless of the state's finances. That's when watchdogs can turn into demagogues.

Too many of California's anti-tax groups have gone down that path. But one of them – the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association – exemplifies the problem more than the others. The Jarvis association has morphed from merely an interest group with a narrow perspective into an organization that seems mainly concerned with perpetuating its own existence and employing its staff. The extreme positions it takes and the methods it employs to achieve those objectives have become destructive to the state's political process.

In recent years, as California's tax revenues have plunged and its deficits have deepened, the HJTA has clung to the fiction that California can close its shortfall – now at $40 billion – without some form of tax increase. It has threatened to unseat GOP lawmakers who might stray from their no-tax pledges. And it has successfully attacked conservative groups who would defy the no-tax orthodoxy.

Such was the case last September, when the state's oldest taxpayer advocate, the California Taxpayers' Association, after much internal debate, dared to support Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to seek a temporary tax increase combined with various budget reforms.

Within hours of that decision, the would-be disciples of the Howard Jarvis legacy went after their sister organization, with HJTA President Jon Coupal saying Cal-Tax had damaged its reputation, "perhaps irreparably." Not surprisingly, Cal-Tax has since been more circumspect on the need for additional revenues.

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association sprang from Jarvis' successful passage in 1978 of Proposition 13, the landmark measure that limited property taxes. At its peak, the organization claimed more than 350,000 members – many of whom were older Californians fed up with rising property tax assessments and other taxes and fees.

In the last decade, however, the HJTA has become less of a grass-roots organization and more of a gun for hire. In 2004, it accepted $1.8 million from a wealthy Indian tribe to tout a ballot measure, Proposition 70, that expanded slot machines and other gambling. It put its name behind dubious efforts to reform "eminent domain" abuse. Meanwhile, its membership has dropped to a purported 100,000.

On paper, HJTA supports some worthy crusades, such as limiting the growth of state pension obligations and blocking special-interest bond measures that add to the state's debt. But in recent years, Coupal and his cohorts have put far more energy into enforcing no-tax pledges than in pursuing an agenda of real governmental reform. Indeed, as California threatens to run out of money in February, there is some speculation that the Jarvis association and its allies are rooting for the state to descend into insolvency, hoping that the resulting chaos will play into their hands.

We hope that's not the case, because if it is, it's a sad day for taxpayers. When state contractors go unpaid, Californians get IOUs instead of state tax refunds and the state's credit rating goes in the tank, the interests of taxpayers are not served.

Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association

Founded: 1978 (California Tax Reduction Movement)

Membership: 100,000

President: Jon Coupal

Web site: www.hjta.org

Campaign contributions 2005-08: $2,249,508.58

COMING THURSDAY

A big union puts (some of) its members first.