Election season is upon us, with its usual bombardment of initiatives. There are signature gatherers outside supermarkets, Supreme Court decisions authorizing or dumping ballot language, and warring sides blasting each other and raising millions of dollars to promote their points of view.
Most initiatives don’t matter much to voters because they don’t affect our daily lives. They may be extremely important to a core group with a particular ideology they want to impose on the rest of us, and that is enough to get them on the ballot. But, because most of us aren’t passionate about the issue, we don’t spend a lot of time learning about the content and the consequences.
Obviously, some initiatives generate major interest and critical repercussions, such as those that earmark how tax dollars must be spent or limit taxes and spending. Others, like term limits, change the way government functions. While groups spend millions of dollars persuading Coloradans to vote for or against the initiatives, rarely do they enlighten us fully on the issue.
The result of Coloradans’ love affair with the initiative is a government in a straitjacket. The legislature has such limited budget authority that it can only act around the fringes. Without adequate budget flexibility, legislators cannot really set state policies or priorities, like improving access to higher education when we need to attract high-tech businesses or putting enough police on the streets when crime is on the rise.
Term limits knock elected officials out of office after eight years (though a few switch back and forth from House to Senate in an effort to stay put). While that is appealing to many, it in effect transfers power to unelected legislative staffers, lobbyists and special interests who know the issues much better than term-limited elected officials.
Over the last 20 years, volunteers have spent thousands of dollars and countless hours studying ways to fix the fiscal and governance mess we’ve created for ourselves. Most recently, the University of Denver established the Colorado Economic Futures Panel, which released its findings and recommendations earlier this year.
The panel found that the long stream of fiscal initiatives had created “conflicting policies and unintended consequences” based on too little analysis and too much 30-second hype. They believe that the purpose of electing representatives to legislatures, county commissions and city councils is to have people who will take the time to thoroughly analyze the content and consequences of policies before enacting them. Without this thoughtful scrutiny, we end up with systems and governments that are neither accountable nor functional.
Core recommendations of the panel focus on making it more difficult to amend the state constitution because, once a policy is in the Constitution, it is almost impossible to change it. In addition, they recommend that we eliminate term limits, which “are arbitrary and inhibit effective leadership and institutional continuity.”
Changes like these do not occur just because a group of thoughtful citizens recommends them. No matter how wise the recommendations may be, it will take years of sustained effort to persuade voters to make the changes necessary to return to fiscal responsibility and political accountability. The process will require ongoing, bipartisan leadership across the state, including business, community and political leaders.
To succeed, Coloradans must understand why the current system doesn’t work, why that matters to them, and how a different system will make their daily lives better. They must be persuaded that a more flexible government will serve them better as times change, and that strategic investments, rather than constitutionally mandated spending, will improve opportunities for their families.
There will be fierce opposition to any attempts to tamper with the fiscal and legislative constraints in the Constitution. But, as we have seen in the financial crises of the last few years, when the Constitution limits elected officials’ ability to solve problems, they get worse. Given the array of initiatives facing Coloradans this fall, voters may well agree with the Economic Futures Panel that more rigorous standards for initiatives would improve both the ballot and our government.
Gail Schoettler (gailschoettler@email.msn.com) is a former U.S. ambassador, and Colorado lieutenant governor and treasurer.
