VANCOUVER, Wash. — Initiative king Tim Eyman is giving state and local government officials the jitters again, this time with a measure that would cap the growth of state, county and city revenue— and require refunds to taxpayers when revenue collected exceeds that cap.

Initiative 1033, which will appear on the November ballot, would reduce state general fund revenue by $5.9 billion, revenue to cities by $2.1 billion and revenue to counties by $694 million between 2010 and 2015, according to the state Office of Financial Management.

It comes at a time when the state of Washington and many county and municipal governments have made deep cuts in their budgets to deal with the effects of the national recession, including reduced revenue from property, sales and real estate taxes.

“The tricky part is, it’s taking effect during the end of the recession, so it establishes a baseline that is lower than what we consider normal,” said Battle Ground city finance director Cathy Huber Nickerson. “It’s going to be hard for a lot of jurisdictions which have been tapping into their reserves. There is not a mechanism to rebuild those reserves.”

Eyman, a Mukilteo political activist, has waged a series of successful tax limitation campaigns over the past decade.

He says I-1033 would build on those initiatives and provide desperately needed property tax relief by limiting revenue growth to the rate of inflation and population growth.

The measure does provide a safety valve: Governments would be able to ask voters for permission to exceed the cap.

“If the automatic increase allowed under 1033 isn’t a big enough increase from the government’s perspective, then the government can go to voters and say, ’We need more revenue,”’ Eyman said. “We believe voters aren’t going to give them a blank check.”

Eyman modeled I-1033 on Initiative 601, passed by voters in 1993, which limited the growth of state spending with a similar cap. “We believe that the fiscal discipline that 601 brought is desperately needed by cities and counties as well,” he said.

He claims his new initiative also will help end the state’s “fiscal roller-coaster,” which saw a 33 percent increase in state spending between 2005 and 2008 followed by painful cuts this year to deal with a $9 billion deficit.

“We overextended ourselves in good times and have to slash in bad times. We need to stop that,” he said.

His campaign has raised $670,000, including $300,000 from Woodinville investment banker Michael Dunmire, who has bankrolled many of Eyman’s anti-tax initiatives, and $250,000 from Eyman himself, who borrowed the money and loaned it to the campaign.

The pro-1033 campaign spent nearly all of that — about $618,000 — getting the initiative qualified for the ballot. More than $500,000 went to paid signature-gatherers, who delivered 315,444 signatures — about 74,000 more than required — by the July 2 deadline.

Eyman says he’s counting on free media and word of mouth to get his message across — like the coverage he received during a visit to the Yakima area last week.

I-1033 has been endorsed by the state Republican Party. State Rep. Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama, a member of the House Finance Committee and a consistent advocate for property tax relief, says he supports Eyman’s measure but thinks it doesn’t go far enough. He’d also like to see curbs on voter-approved levies that allow school districts and other taxing districts to exceed the 1 percent annual limit on growth.

“You still have the excess levies out there,” Orcutt said. “That fact is, that is the number one driver in rising property taxes.”

Opponents of I-1033, including the state’s major labor unions, education advocates, health insurance companies and environmentalists, warn that I-1033 would hamper Washington’s economic recovery by locking in steep reductions in revenue caused by the still-lingering recession.

As of Friday, their coalition had raised more than $470,000 to battle the measure, including more than $365,000 from organized labor.

With two months to wage a statewide campaign against a measure that is sure to have popular appeal, No on 1033 has spent less than $47,000 so far, most of it on campaign consultants.

Campaign manager Aisling Kerins, one of those consultants, said the campaign is gearing up to take its message statewide. A campaign spokesman will come on board this week.

“We know that if we can explain to folks the damage that 1033 is going to do to our economy, especially to schools and health care, they will defeat 1033,” Kerins said. “The fact that such a broad coalition is coming together shows just how extreme the initiative is.”

Opponents say the inflation formula in 1-1033 tracks consumer prices, but governments incur costs that rise much faster than consumer goods for services such as education, health care, and the needs of an aging population.

“Counties buy services for the indigent, the disabled, the mentally ill,” said Clark County deputy administrator Glenn Olson. “We buy things like road construction materials.”

The anti-1033 campaign compares the Eyman initiative to Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights, known as TABOR. Colorado voters passed the tax-limiting constitutional amendment in 1992, but suspended several parts of it in 2005 after funding for schools, health care and transportation reached the breaking point.

Kerins says the comparison is valid. “The heart of the initiative is the same,” she said. “It would be a restrictive, arbitrary limit. It’s going to have the same impacts, including deep cuts in public school funding.”

Eyman says that’s a false comparison.

Colorado’s TABOR “was the nuclear bomb of tax limitation measures,” he said. “Ours is an M-80.”

TABOR limited spending by every kind of taxing district, including schools, libraries and public utility districts, he said. “Every dollar that touched government in any way was limited.”

In contrast, Eyman said, I-1033 covers only state, county and city general fund revenue, and federal funds are exempt.

What’s more, because TABOR was put in Colorado’s constitution, lawmakers had no ability to change it, he said. I-1033 would instead be a statute, subject to amendment by the Washington Legislature.

“We accept that that is part of the checks and balances of our initiative system,” Eyman said.

School district revenue would be exempt from the I-1033 cap. But because I-1033 would reduce the state general fund by nearly $6 billion over the first five years, it’s likely that state funding for schools, health care and higher education, among other big-ticket items, would take a hit.

The state property tax levy, which is constitutionally dedicated to basic school support, would be subject to the cap, said Julie Murray, a state budget analyst. The Legislature would have to make up the “excess revenue” it generates by borrowing from other pots of money in order to fully fund basic school support.

“It becomes really a budget choice,” Murray said. “What is poured into that account is general fund revenue.”

Are Washington taxpayers so overburdened that they need I-1033? In the preamble to I-1033, Eyman declares that Washington’s property tax is “obscene and unsustainable.”

The statistics are open to interpretation.

According to the Washington Department of Revenue, Washington ranks 19th-highest per capita and 35th-highest in the percentage of personal income its residents pay in state and local taxes.

Eyman says, with undisguised glee, that opponents are free to pursue the argument “that the citizens of Washington are undertaxed.”

“I encourage them to say those exact same things throughout the campaign. Our property tax burden is self-evident. If it wasn’t a problem, why did 315,000 people voluntarily sign a petition to put it on the ballot?”