Even when it doesn’t rain, it pours.
Colorado voters will likely face 14 different measures on the Nov. 7 ballot – some of which directly contradict other issues on the same ballot.
Meanwhile there is Congress, the governorship and the state legislature. That could mean a rancorous and confusing election campaign as well as long lines at the polls as voters struggle to make their wishes known.
Seven measures were referred by the legislature and are thus designated by letters, as Referendum C was last year.Citizen initiatives are assigned numbers after they are certified for the ballot.
One referral is designed to soften an initiative, Amendment 39, that orders all school districts to spend at least 65 percent of their budgets on classroom instructions. Many school districts have denounced 39 as a “one-size-fits-all” measure that ignores the extra transportation costs of rural districts and other needs. Legislators thus drafted Referendum J, which retains the 65 percent standard but allows some exceptions.
One other initiative has already been certified for the ballot, the hapless Amendment 38. Among other things, it extends the right of citizen initiative to more than 2,000 local governments, including counties and special districts, that do not now have such provisions. Business groups are preparing a hard fight against 38, which they fear will infringe on property rights.
Two items, Referendums H and K, were placed on the ballot by the recent special legislative session on immigration. H removes tax credits for companies that knowingly hire illegal immigrants while K is a quixotic measure that instructs the Colorado attorney general to sue the U.S. government to comply with existing immigration laws.
Another referred measure, Referendum E, extends a property tax break to disabled veterans. F changes rules on recall elections while G simply removes some obsolete provisions in state laws.
Referendum I is a high-profile measure that allows same-sex couples certain rights as domestic partners. That measure stops well short of allowing same- sex marriage and thus could dovetail with an anti-gay initiative filed this week by Focus on the Family defining marriage as a union between a woman and a man.
In addition to those 10 measures, four more citizen initiatives were filed last week with enough signatures that they will probably be on the ballot. They won’t be assigned numbers until they are officially certified but include a labor-backed measure to increase the state minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $6.85; a proposal to set retroactive term limits on judges that would remove more than half of Colorado’s sitting judges; an ethics measure prohibiting lobbyists from buying meals or drinks for legislators; and an initiative that would legalize marijuana across the state as it now supposedly is in Denver.
That leaves 14 petitions still technically alive. The deadline for filing such petitions isn’t until 3 p.m. Monday but most observers believe their sponsors are far short of the necessary support.
Three of the no-shows are worthy of notice. One, by Colorado Springs anti-gay activist Will Perkins, was specifically drafted to prohibit the domestic partnerships that Referendum I would authorize. That spawned an offsetting initiative by gay businessman Tim Gill to block Perkins’ measure. As previously noted, the referred domestic partnership law and the ban on gay marriage were deliberately written so they could co-exist if they both passed. In contrast, if the warring Gill and Perkins measures had reached the ballot, it would have created a four-way quagmire of dueling plans that might have plunged voters into total gender confusion.
Finally, it is uncertain that anti-tax activist Jon Caldara will succeed in gaining enough signatures for his effort to roll back last fall’s Referendum C budget reform. C’s passage is now allowing Colorado’s battered schools and highways to recover from the recent recession. Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez was the first person to sign the Caldara petition. Perhaps he was also the last.
