Colorado voters next fall may face two diametrically opposed ballot issues dealing with the same thing — whether ethnic, racial and other minorities should be treated differently from everyone else in state hiring, contracts and educational opportunities.
This is the sort of confusion and conflict Colorado invites with its lenient rules granting access to the ballot. Legislators and at least two citizen panels are mulling ways to tighten up the process, but it’s difficult to find agreement.
Right now, petition carriers are out collecting signatures for Amendment 31, which says the state may not “discriminate or grant preferential treatment” on the basis of race, sex, color or national origin. Proponents have to produce some 77,000 verifiable names of registered voters by March 25.
Last week, there was a hearing on proposed Amendment 61, which attempts to preserve existing “affirmative action” programs. That’s in quotes because critics on the political right think it’s a loaded phrase, just as critics on the left think “tax relief” is politically loaded.
Amendment 61’s working title is “Federal Standards for Discrimination/Preferential Treatment by Colorado Government.”
Amendment 31 is titled “Prohibition on Discrimination and Preferential Treatment by Colorado Government.”
Confusing, no? Amendment 31’s supporters speak of “equal opportunities.” Amendment 61’s supporters speak of programs that “benefit” minorities and women. If both of them make the ballot, and both of them pass, the resulting collision will have to be untangled by the courts.
At least both are comparatively short. Amendment 31 is only 37 words, for example. And one could argue that such broadly worded principles are exactly the sort of thing that should be in a constitution.
The same can’t be said for some of the other amendments that have been added to the Colorado Constitution over the years. They’re not broad principles; they’re picky particulars.
The campaign and political finance amendment, for instance, fills a mind-numbing nine pages of the legal volume containing the constitution. Each page has roughly 900 words.
The amendment creating the Great Outdoors Colorado program (GOCO) is five pages long, as is the amendment specifying conditions for medical use of marijuana. The Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights is a comparatively modest three pages, but that’s more than three times the length of the original Bill of Rights — the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Norma Anderson is a member of one of the panels of influential citizens considering ways to clean up Colorado’s constitution, or at least to keep it from getting more cluttered. But the former state senator from Jefferson County isn’t convinced the Colorado Constitution Panel’s recommendations cure what the panel itself calls “a tangled web.”
Speaking of confusing, Anderson’s group, Colorado’s Future, has the same roots as the CCP. Both are offshoots of the Economic Futures Panel convened a few years ago by the University of Denver. But they are “absolutely completely separate” now, Anderson says. In fact, Colorado’s Future didn’t really see the Colorado Constitution Panel’s report until it was released earlier this year.
CCP is the research group. Colorado’s Future is doing the advocacy, and for now, it’s concentrating on educating a skeptical citizenry that there’s really a problem. The legislature will take some convincing, too.
As for the CCP recommendations, “We haven’t decided, as a group, what to endorse,” Anderson said. Personally, she said, “We don’t support all that they want to do.” Some of the ideas, she added, “give me a headache.”
Fred Brown (punditfwb@aol.com), retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a political analyst for 9News. His column appears twice a month.
