To its true believers, the unending battle against higher taxes requires an unrelenting and unflinching warrior to do its bidding. Hence, Douglas Bruce.

The near-mythic Colorado Springs tax-cut crusader; author of Colorado’s taxing and spending limits; sometime politician; all-round political curmudgeon – and, in more recent years, convicted felon – emerged from months of seclusion this week to renew the fight.

The venue? His original stomping grounds: The Colorado Springs City Council.

As reported by the Colorado Springs Independent’s Pam Zubeck:

Mayor John Suthers’ ballot measure seeking voter approval to keep up to $12 million in excess revenue flushed out the guy who wrote the measure that made a ballot measure mandatory: Douglas Bruce.

After serving prison time for a probation violation in an earlier tax evasion case last year, Bruce has been back in Colorado Springs for several months and today showed up at the City Council meeting to put in his two-cents worth.

The measure seeks voter permission to keep $6 million from 2016 excess revenue collected above caps imposed by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, and another $6 million from any excess raked in during 2017. All the money would go to stormwater projects.

What followed, as evident in Zubeck’s account, was vintage Bruce: A blunt, almost prosecutorial (he was once a prosecutor) and systematic takedown of the city’s tax proposal alongside a thorough chastisement of the city’s overall fiscal policies.

And he was probably just warming up. He had, after all, been on ice for a while, having served five months in prison for violating the terms of a parole that had been granted after he had served a previous prison hitch in 2012 for tax evasion. It’s all part of a very long story – as is so often the case with Bruce – and we won’t recount it here. For the uninitiated, let’s just say catching up involves a lengthy list of suggested readings.

Bruce was paroled this most recent time on Sept. 3 and seems to have been lying low since then. Until now.

He couldn’t stay away for too long; the public forum beckons him. Like a moth to a flame, he answers its call. Or, in his case, it’s more like a moth with a flamethrower.