This is the first in a series of articles examining the ballot questions in this year’s state elections. See featured perspectives on Question 1 in our Opinion section.

Massachusetts taxpayers will have the option next week of abolishing the state income tax by voting “yes” to Question 1, a ballot initiative known as the Small Government Act to End the Income Tax and one of the main platform issues of Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Carla Howell.

As chair and co-founder of the Committee for Small Government, Howell has campaigned to rid the state of “big government,” which she said continually wastes money of working taxpayers on programs that only “make things worse” and “divert money and energy from positive and productive uses in the private sector,” according to the initiative petition. The petition also claims big government, which is primarily funded by the state income tax, “promotes irresponsibility,” “makes people weak and dependent” and “is inherently flawed and unreformable.”

The Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation vehemently opposes Question 1, which President Michael Widmer said would eliminate the primary source of funding for a variety of decades-old state and local programs.

“Getting rid of [the state income tax] would have really dramatic and dire consequences for the citizens of the state and for the state itself,” Widmer said. “This is not a debate about a tax policy, this is essentially the state retreating from its obligations [to fund state programs] that have built up over almost a century.

“This is far and away the most dramatic and really reckless proposal ever to reach the Massachusetts ballot,” Widmer said.

Howell said the point of the initiative is to create a smaller state budget, which would shrink huge government spending, and argued Widmer has threatened and lied to taxpayers about the necessity of income tax revenue.

“The whole purpose of the Small Government Act is to make government small, to force the legislature to get by with less,” Howell said. “Michael Widmer likes to threaten taxpayers and voters into believing that we actually must have this revenue, but that’s a lie.”

According to Widmer, however, most Massachusetts city and town governments rely on state funding for more than 75 percent of their budget, particularly for education funding, which Howell and other libertarians hope to eliminate if the Small Government Act is passed. Howell said she is also opposed to state health care funding under the Medicaid program, an obligation Widmer said would not disappear if the income tax were abolished.

“In the end, the key point here is that if the income tax is repealed, the state’s obligations, either legislative or constitutional, to provide support for local institutions and to provide health care under the medical programs … will not disappear and so the only way to fund those are under sales or property taxes,” Widmer said. “So, we would see dramatic increases in both sales and property taxes and those taxes fall much more heavily on low income people.”

Yet Howell argued the state’s property tax would be cut altogether if the income tax funding big government programs was repealed.

“Not only will we easily be able to cut $9 billion of our greedy, bloated, ever-growing $28 billion budget, we will be able to drop the property tax as well because the big government programs we’re funding are diving up the property taxes,” Howell said.

Howell also defended her stance to reduce state funding for education and healthcare, blaming “big government” and taxes for high operative costs of schools and the abuse of the Medicaid program.

“Big government drives up the cost of education and encourages waste and mis-spending in our towns and in our schools,” Howell said. The problem can be solved by forcing schools to turn to local government for funding, she said.

“Almost one million people in this state are on a poverty program called Medicaid — that is disgraceful,” Howell said. “This program was intended for the very poor. We’re doing something very wrong if one-sixth of our population is on a poverty program.”

According to the initiative petition, high taxes and an enormous budget “reduce our standard of living and drive jobs out of Massachusetts,” while making it easier to hide waste and corruption. Howell said lower taxes will inevitably boost the economy, create new jobs and give money back to taxpayers.

“We will create between 300,000 and 500,000 new jobs. Big government means high unemployment; small government and low taxes means a vibrant economy and new jobs,” Howell said. “We will also give back an average of $3,000 to 3 million taxpayers. That means far fewer people will go on welfare and unemployment.”

But, according to Widmer, Howell is misleading the voters with this statistic, which will not prevent low-income taxpayers from going on welfare as it favors high-income taxpayers.

“All [Carla Howell’s] ads talk about every taxpayer getting $3,000 every year while many taxpayers will actually lose money on this,” Widmer said. “The half million voters who don’t pay any income tax right now will lose money and those in the higher income brackets will save much more than $3,000.”

Brenda Hochberg, a former Boston-area tax attorney, said she thinks abolishing the income tax and cutting funding for education and healthcare is impractical and would be “chaotic.”

“Maybe these services should not be provided by the government but that doesn’t happen overnight and I don’t think you can just one day pull the plug and expect everything to work out fine,” Hochberg said. “It just doesn’t sound like a very practical idea.”

Hochberg said localizing school funding would undoubtedly favor wealthy communities and worsen school systems in communities with minimal economic resources.

“If you make it go local, what happens to places like Fall River and Lawrence? They already have so few resources,” Hochberg said. “With a system like we have now, there’s some ability to have wealthy communities assist the not-so-wealthy communities. Places without resources are going to get worse and places that have them will do great and I just don’t like that picture.”

“When you raise the question of the state’s legislative and constitutional obligation [Carla Howell] has no answer for that,” Widmer said. “She has no answers for anything really, other than the repetition of the small government is beautiful theme.”