State agencies spent more than $300,000 to prepare four initiatives for the November ballot that were ultimately withdrawn at the last minute, according to an analysis by a research arm of the University of Denver.
The report from the Center for Colorado’s Economic Future recommended that the Colorado General Assembly reevaluate the statute that allows proponents to withdraw ballot initiatives as late as 33 days before the general election.
The union-backed Amendments 53, 55, 56 and 57 were pulled Oct. 2 — the last day to do so — as part of a compromise between organized labor and business leaders.
By then, $107,000 in taxpayer money had been spent to publish the full text and titles of the measures in newspapers throughout the state, according to the report.
The secretary of state spent an estimated $88,000 verifying petition signatures and preparing for title-board hearings for the measures. Printing the 2008 State Ballot Information Booklet, known as the “blue book,” cost $44,000 more with those measures included, the report said.
Those pages added $60,000 in postage costs to the blue book. Translating the measures into Spanish cost $2,255, taking the total cost of preparing for the measures up to $301,255.
The measures still will appear on ballots, but votes won’t be tallied.
Unions withdrew their measures, which business and elected officials said could have crippled the state’s economy, in return for a pledge of $3 million from businesses to help fight three other amendments viewed as anti-labor.
The report suggests that state legislators may have intended for the withdrawal deadline to be 33 days before ballots are printed — not 33 days before the election — when they enacted the statute a decade ago. Ballots must be received by county clerks 32 days before the election.
“They could withdraw it at any time up to 33 days before the ballot is printed,” the late Sen. Ray Powers said during a committee hearing in March 1998, according to the report.
A deadline of 33 days before ballots are printed would have placed it at the end of August or early September instead of Oct 2. If that were the case this year, a lot of the costs could have been avoided, said report author Jeffrey Roberts.
Andy Vuong: 303-954-1209 or avuong@denverpost.com
