Backers of a constitutional amendmentthat would require more road spending in Colorado have agreed to pull it from the ballot under a deal with state officials that calls for the legislature to earmark more money for roads in coming years.
The deal, formally announced Thursday morning, averts the fight at the ballot box this fall. The agreement includes proposed legislation to be pursued early next year as well as a 2027 ballot measure that will ask voters to approve potentially billions of dollars for roads over the next decade. The deal was first reported by The Denver Post.
Attorney General Phil Weiser, the Democratic nominee for governor, was credited with helping push the deal over the finish line — setting up the prospect of a major legislative win before the general election is over.
“This is the type of bold strategy and commitment that Coloradans wanted and need,” said Jeff Keller, a co-chair of the Restore Our Roads Coalition, the group pushing the ballot amendment, in a statement. “It goes beyond what the ballot measure contemplated, both in the level of revenue it will produce and in its ability to address the major roads and bridges projects that have been ignored for too long.”
He added: “Our goal has always been to give Colorado taxpayers a voice in how the taxes and fees they pay for transportation are used. And now they finally will.”
has had heavy backing from the construction industry, including the Colorado Contractors Association and the Colorado Construction Industry Coalition. If it were to stay on the ballot and pass, it would require the state to spend some $2 billion per year, including $540 million from the general fund, on road transportation projects.
It would require taxes and fees the state collects on motor vehicles, fuel and parts to be spent specifically on road transportation — and was formulated as a way to push back against lawmakers’ budgeting of some of that money for transit and other uses in recent years.
State Rep. Andrew Boesenecker, one of the top Democrats in the House and a negotiator on the package, spoke about the deal on a call with fellow legislative Democrats Thursday morning. He said the emerging package would include legislation that could earmark as much as $120 million for roadway repair, without cutting into the general fund.
The exact details of how the legislature will pay for the proposal, along with the details of the 2027 ballot measure, will be worked out in coming months and during the normal legislative process early next year.
Its passage would hinge on the dealmakers winning election in November, when Democrats are favored to retain control of the legislature and the governor’s office. Weiser is running in the governor’s race against Republican Victor Marx and other candidates.
Boesenecker called the framework a “proactive and, I think, responsible path forward that addresses a core concern in our state.”
He said legislative leaders never disagreed that the state needed to do better on road maintenance, but he had problems with how the proposed constitutional amendment would have paid for its goal. This new process, he said, ensures a variety of stakeholders will be able to shape the final product.
“Because we were able to convene the conversation over the last several months, bring the right folks to the table, and have an honest and good-faith discussion on the challenge people face in regard to roadway maintenance in Colorado, we were able to come together — as opposed to being on the opposite sides of the table,” Boesenecker said.
The different sides were able to strike the deal with about a week until the deadline to pull initiatives from the state ballot.
As a constitutional amendment, Initiative 175 would have needed 55% of the vote to pass in November.
The ballot measure had faced fierce pushback from Democrats in the legislature, where the party holds nearly 2-to-1 majorities. They argued the amendment would, in effect, gut spending on other state priorities by requiring the road spending even as the government likely grapples with another massive budget deficit.
In the waning days of this year’s legislative session in the spring, lawmakers pushed through a bill designed to all but neutralize the amendment, even if voters were to approve it in the fall.
At the time, lawmakers had hoped to force the Restore Our Roads Coalition to withdraw its ballot measure in exchange for more talks on a legislative solution, a gambit that the coalition rejected at the time. That legislation would delay the bulk of the amendment’s impact from being felt for only three years, according to the coalition — a period of time the group was willing to wait out.
“I’m grateful that the Initiative 175 proponents were willing to collaborate and find a path forward — one that will produce a ballot measure that we can all get behind,” Weiser said in a statement. “The agreement we reached today will meaningfully fund our transportation system and protect scarce resources for other critical services. Only when we listen to each other can we find common ground.”
Gov. Jared Polis, who is term-limited and in his last year in office, also heralded the deal — while highlighting how roads have improved under his administration. In a news release, his office cited Colorado Department of Transportation data showing that more interstate pavement is in “good” condition than it was three years ago, up to 50.6% compared to 42.8%, and less is in “poor” condition.
