With politicians wary of approving election-year tax hikes, some cash-strapped state and local governments are resorting to pass-the-buck tactics: asking voters to decide for themselves whether taxes should go up.

In Washington state, a Nov. 5 referendum proposes raising the gasoline tax by 9 cents a gallon to finance highway construction and transit projects. Oregonians will decide in January whether to endure a 5 percent income tax increase for three years to plug most of a $482-million budget hole.

Arturo Perez, a fiscal analyst with the Denver-based National Conference of State Legislatures, said few legislatures raised taxes this year other than on tobacco despite pervasive budget deficits.

“Most states stayed away from any discussion of it, much less a vote,” he said. “It’s an election year.”

Perez said Washington’s gas tax measure follows a trend of specific uses for new tax revenue.

“The days are gone of simply saying to voters, ‘We’re going to raise your taxes X percent trust us how to spend it,'” Perez said.

Jonathan Collegio of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform said voters should be wary of requests to raise their own taxes, even for ostensibly brief periods.

“Often legislators find it difficult to wean themselves from the cash,” he said. “Passing the buck is cowardly. They’re not attacking the root of the problem, which is spending.”