Momentum appears to be building in the Colorado legislature in favor of tightening the state’s uniquely lenient rules on how citizens can change the state constitution. But it will be a risky political fight.
Cynics will say legislators want to get back at voters for having saddled them, and their lobbyist friends, with the no-gifts restrictions of last fall’s Amendment 41.
And public opinion likes things the way they are. Insiders may appreciate that fewer than half the states allow their citizens this direct-access “redress of grievances,” and that Colorado’s signature and voting requirements stand alone in ease of access.
But try explaining that to the general public.
In the last two weeks of December 2006, the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce polled its members on a number of political issues, including ballot access. Sixty percent of the chamber members responding said they don’t like the way ballot issues are handled now and think improvements are needed.
Compare that with the feelings of everybody else. A poll the first week of December by Hill Research Consultants showed just the opposite – that 65 percent of Colorado’s general population favors the existing ease of access to the ballot.
Despite the political peril, proposals for change are proceeding on at least two fronts. One is to increase the number of signatures required to put a constitutional change on the ballot. The other is to increase the percentage of votes required to pass one.
House Speaker Andrew Romanoff favors changing the petition signature requirements. His proposal – a constitutional amendment itself – would reduce the number of signatures for a statutory change by 20 percent and raise the number for a constitutional amendment to twice the statutory requirement. He’s been working to collect enough co-sponsors to ensure the necessary two-thirds approval in each chamber, and says he has that number in the House.
Rep. Al White, R-Winter Park, has a different approach. His House Concurrent Resolution 1001 would require any future constitutional amendment to pass with a 60 percent favorable vote. It wouldn’t apply, though, to HCR 1001 itself; the existing simple majority rule would still be in effect.
Only Florida has such a supermajority requirement, and it was adopted just last year. Its 60 percent rule was put in place by a 58 percent vote.
In the past 40 years, only a dozen constitutional amendments have passed by 60 percent or more – including the problematic Amendment 41, which had 62 percent support. Among those that missed the cut were TABOR and the school-finance Amendment 23.
White’s proposal would allow anything adopted while a simple majority was in effect to be repealed by a simple majority.
Both approaches are designed to nudge citizens toward changing the statutes instead of the constitution. The constitution can be changed only by popular vote; the legislature makes laws all the time – to a fault, some might say.
Either approach also would restrict the legislature’s ability to repeal or amend a voter-approved statute. Changes would require a two-thirds legislative majority for the first five years after the law is approved.
First-term Rep. Ellen Roberts, R-Durango, may have been the first to quietly raise this subject. But now powerful veterans have taken up the cause.
A look at the state’s over-long, bureaucratically detailed constitution shows that change would be good public policy. The trick is to convince voters that they have to stop abusing their constitution this way.
Fred Brown (punditfwb@aol.com), retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a political analyst for 9News.
