INDIANAPOLIS | Gov. Mitch Daniels pitched legislation Tuesday that would trigger income tax refunds for Hoosiers in boon state budget years.

The Republican governor described his re-election initiative as a taxpayer safeguard designed to steer future state surpluses out of the hands of spendthrift legislators.

"Better the money stay in your pocket than burn a hole through theirs," Daniels told a luncheon crowd of roughly 200 Rotary Club of Indianapolis members.

The proposal would set up a system through which any annual state surplus automatically would be returned to income taxpayers the following spring -- but only if state government already has ample cash reserves. If the plan had been in place earlier this year, Daniels said, taxpayers could have received refunds of less than $100.

The governor, who is seeking a second term this November against Democrat Jill Long Thompson, has taken great pride in balancing the state budget and building $1.3 billion in reserves. He suggested Indiana would need to have at least that much in the bank to trigger the annual rebates he is proposing.

The governor repeatedly used legislators as a foil during his speech, likening them to teens plied with booze and car keys or a lottery winner who ran through half his winnings on "liquor and lose women" and "wasted the rest." Daniels later said he was referring to hypothetical fiscal shenanigans by future lawmakers and did not intend to impugn current legislators, who this spring overwhelmingly approved what the governor has called "Indiana's biggest tax cut ever."

Daniels also asked the rotarians to help him publicly pressure the General Assembly to finalize property tax caps included in the recent tax overhaul. The Legislature must take a second vote by 2010 in order to move the measure to a ballot referendum that would allow Hoosiers to write the tax caps into the Indiana Constitution.