Colorado voters last fall gave overwhelming approval to Amendment 41, a constitutional measure designed to curb the influence of lobbying dollars in state and local government.
Some provisions of the measure are unnecessarily vague, but it gives state lawmakers the right and responsibility to pass enabling legislation to facilitate its implementation.
We hope the legislature will do so as an early order of business. Critics of Amendment 41 are concerned that the measure could produce unintended results, such as denying the children of everyday government employees certain education scholarships, or even preventing university scientists from receiving Nobel Prize money. Attorney General John Suthers recently said a strict interpretation of the law could lead to such ridiculous impacts.
It would have been preferable for lawmakers to write an ethics statute themselves – it could have been much more precise and easier to amend. However, that didn’t happen, and legislative leaders have made it clear that when they return to session today, they don’t intend to aid the new law with implementing language. That’s an arrogant approach. Ignoring this chore would be a tremendous disservice to the voters who approved Amendment 41 and government employees to whom it might apply.
Under the amendment, lobbyists are prevented from giving gifts or meals worth more than $50 to state and local officials and employees or members of their immediate families. It also slows the statehouse “revolving door,” prohibiting just-retired lawmakers from lobbying former colleagues for two years. Some 27 other states already have similar provisions.
Citizen ballot initiatives are often burdened by vague or poor wording, and the provisions of 41 are a case in point. That has prompted some theatrical concerns – that the ban could prohibit school scholarships for children of clerks and janitors and other non-policymaking employees, for one example, or criminalize an auto dealer’s recreation-league sponsorships.
That’s clearly not the intent of Amendment 41. The law’s language says punishment will be meted out only for a “breach of the public trust for private gain.”
There are areas where implementing legislation can be helpful without interfering with this clear intent. There’s no cause served by leaving thousands of government employees in some sort of limbo where they’re afraid to even accept a scholarship.
By approving Amendment 41, voters, in fact, told lawmakers that it was appropriate for them to make the law work. The last paragraph of the law, Section 9, reads plainly: “Legislation may be enacted to facilitate the operation of this article … .”
The second half of Section 9 indicates that lawmakers can only go so far, and Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald and House Speaker Andrew Romanoff are pretending to believe that implementing language is forbidden. That clause reads: “… but in no way shall such legislation limit or restrict the provisions of this article or the powers herein granted.” Attorney Mark Grueskin, who’s been hired to help write implementing language by 41 supporters, notes that same language was written into 2002’s Amendment 27, a campaign reform measure – and lawmakers approved implementing language for it on three different occasions, in 2003, 2004 and 2005.
Fitz-Gerald and Romanoff, however, insist the law must be implemented as written – vague language and all. Lawmakers, Fitz-Gerald said, need to “take absolutely nothing and go to absolutely nothing and be as clean as Caesar’s wife.”
University of Colorado President Hank Brown said neither party likes the amendment, so he’s afraid lawmakers won’t “expend political energy to clean it up.” But his concerns about scholarships, prize money and research grants deserve clarification.
If a frivolous case is pushed to court, we’re confident judges will apply the intent of the amendment – to guard against violations of public trust. But why leave it up to the courts? Lawmakers can improve state ethic guidelines by passing clarifying legislation, or putting such language before voters in 2008. Voters are relying on the legislature to make these ethics guidelines work.
