My joy over Democratic victories in 2006 is tempered by my fear over what we might do to screw it all up in 2007.

Politicians’ instinctive reaction to victory is too often hubris. When they win, they assume they have license to do everything they’ve ever dreamed of doing, regardless of whether the voters voted for all that.

So that’s why I’m worried about the 2007 Raleigh municipal elections.

The only way a, say, Tom Fetzer could come back and be elected Mayor – or to the City Council – would be for the present council to give him an already-wrapped campaign gift.

Like:

• A $4.4 million increase in the cost of the parking deck. (Oops, already did that.)

• Or another increase in the cost of the new Civic Center, once estimated at $192 million, now at $215 million. (Ooops, already did that one, too.)

• Or an increase in “impact fees” or a real estate transfer fee that opponents successfully paint as a tax increase. (Not yet.)

Some progressives tell me there is nothing more popular with voters than impact fees. Make the developers pay, they say.

But I hear counter-rumblings from the development community that people turn against the fees when they find out that the homeowner ends up paying the fee.

I don’t know who’s right. But we may find out. And who wins depends on who best frames the argument, which is hard to predict – and on the tenor of the times, which is even harder to predict.

All I know is that Carter and his Republican friends may be salivating.

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