This weekend, about 100 union service employees, policemen and firefighters in Orlando, FL, met to discuss budget cuts which would force them from their jobs. In a city that Forbes magazine recently ranked as the sixth most dangerous city in America, many are questioning how having fewer police offers on the streets of Orlando might affect the safety of citizens.

"It's not the unions causing the crisis. The unions are the ones putting out your fires, responding to your domestic problems, picking up your garbage and making sure clean water comes to your house," said Joshua Willis, a solid waste worker and chair of a SEIU local union in Florida. Read about the 222 workers Mayor Buddy Dyer proposes to lay off in order to fix the Orlando budget deficit.

"I need your help. Here in California there is a ballot initiative called Prop. 1A that would put a cap on what we spend. Supposedly in the good years, extra money would be put in to a 'rainy day' fund. In lean years, I think, money would be pulled back out."

A few days ago, we received a link to a video on Colorado's experience with TABOR, a law that -- like Proposition 1A in the May 19 special election -- put caps on funding for public services, using low-funded crisis years as the baseline. The video, by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, shows how a so-called "Taxpayer Bill Of Rights" ended up costing taxpayers even more than before, while turning Colorado into one of the worst-funded states in the country for health care, education, senior services, and just about everything else.

Well, one of SEIU Local 1021's members in Sonoma County -- an Employment and Training Program Coordinator, Alix Shor -- felt compelled to dig deeper. She wanted to know if the video was true (will Prop. 1A guarantee budget disaster every year?) or just campaign propaganda from her union. So she wrote and asked a lifelong friend now living in Colorado.

"On the other hand, if Prop. 1A doesn't pass, the budget goes back to the Legislature whom I would like to fire every single last one of them for their doing nothing since Prop. 13 passed many years ago and completely ruined the state you and I grew up in. Excuse the rant."

Later, she e-mailed her friends and co-workers her friend's report:

"The video plus Ruth's take on what has happened...leads me to believe that as bad as it is to send the Legislature back to work on the budget, the long term effects of Prop. 1A will be so much worse."

Read Ruth's report after the jump, as well a quick rundown of how Prop. 1A would affect California's budget and fiscal situation if written into the state Constitution.