Long before the approaching fall election, anti-tax activist Doug Bruce and others have already filed signatures for an initiative to once again change the Colorado Constitution. Their approach, amendment 38 on the Nov. 7 ballot, would make it easier to put citizen initiatives on the statewide ballot and would extend initiatives to all levels of government, including counties.
Initiatives are popular among people frustrated when the legislature doesn’t see an issue their way, but they too often have unintended consequences. In fact, initiatives are responsible for Colorado’s tangled fiscal policies, and have also weakened both representative government and people’s faith in government.
Those, at least, are the findings of a group of experts that has studied the issues in depth. Late in 2005, the nonprofit Colorado Economic Futures Panel, released a report stating that Colorado’s “core problem” is decision-making by constitutional amendment.
Chair of the panel was James Griesemer, professor and dean emeritus at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business. “Colorado is a place of great promise,” he says. “We are a high-income state with an educated populace and relatively low taxes.” But, he warns, unless Colorado overcomes major roadblocks to effective public decision-making, it faces an uncertain economic future in an increasingly competitive world.
Griesemer points out that since 1990, Colorado’s constitution has been amended by more than 29,000 words. “We already have the lowest threshold of any state for the number of signatures required to put an initiative on the ballot,” he says. “People from outside the state can come in and pay petition circulators to change our constitution and our lives.”
Griesemer says it is hard for citizens to understand the impact of initiatives. “There is no impartial analysis. Instead, voters hear oversimplified sound-bites in paid ads,” he says.
Another problem with constitutional amendments is that once passed, they are virtually “set in concrete,” Griesemer says. For example, it cost $10 million and a huge effort to change TABOR for just five years.
To address this “core problem,” the panel has made two key recommendations: Coloradans should make it significantly more difficult – instead of easier – to change the constitution, and fiscal policies should be removed from the constitution and placed into state law.
Griesemer acknowledges that the changes urged by the panel – which, ironically, would require changing the constitution – won’t be easy. Sam Mamet, executive director of the Colorado Municipal League, agrees. He predicts that the effort to educate the voters will need to be “Herculean.”
John Buechner, a former legislator and past president of the University of Colorado, believes some kind of formalized organization, perhaps an institute dedicated solely to the panel’s recommendations, will be needed. “There needs to be a forum where the issues can be fairly debated,” he says, and every interest group, including nonprofits, neighborhood groups and the education and business communities, needs to be at the table.
The legislature is currently considering sending its own constitutional amendment to the voters in November. A Senate resolution would make it harder to amend the constitution by initiative, while also restricting the power of the legislature to change an initiated law. It would require approval by 60 percent of voters (instead of the current simple majority) to approve any initiative to amend the constitution. In addition, it would require a two-thirds vote of the legislature to overturn any initiative within five years of its passage by the voters.
Assuming the resolution makes it to the ballot, who should take the first steps to move it forward? Ideally, Gov. Bill Owens and the leadership of both political parties would begin the process of educating the voters about why it should be more difficult to change the constitution. Realistically, that’s not likely to happen in an election year.
In November, Colorado voters will be asked to make decisions on a number of initiatives. As they approach the polls, voters should carefully consider whether it is wise to make it even easier to amend the state’s constitution, as Bruce wants to do – or whether the state would be better served by establishing an uncluttered constitution as the framework that will allow Colorado to move forward to a promising future.
Susan Thornton (smthornton@ aol.com.) served 16 years on the Littleton City Council, including eight years as mayor. She writes on suburban issues on alternate Thursdays. For the full text of the panel’s recommendations, go to www.du.edu/economicpanel.
