Steve Pomerance

Once again, the Colorado Legislature has taken up the job of amending the Colorado Constitution to make it more difficult for others to do the same. The current proposal, Senate Continuing Resolution-001, has many similarities with other recent attempts, including Referendum A (1996) and Referendum O (2008). Unfortunately, the Legislature is acting with tone-deafness to Colorado citizens` desire for direct democracy, and without adequate consideration of the effects of the proposed changes. So I expect that, once again, the proposal will lose at the ballot box. This particular attempt to take power away from the citizens is apparently in response to complaints by opponents of the 2010 Amendments 60, 61, and Proposition 101 that they had to spend money to defeat these proposals. While I agree that these proposals were ill-conceived and dangerous, part of democracy is fighting bad ideas. Currently, citizens can initiate legislation by gathering signatures to put either a statute or...

State Senator Rollie Heath has proposed temporarily increasing various taxes here in Colorado to address a critical funding shortfall in K-12 education. His proposal actually just returns some taxes to previous rates, and would generate an estimated $1.63 billion in additional revenue, averaging somewhat over $500 million per year for three years. Although these funds are very important, what`s more important is that this proposal misses a huge opportunity to permanently improve school funding and, at the same time, reduce taxes on ordinary Coloradoans. The Legislature, without going to the ballot, could remove the prohibition on the use of school impact fees that is in the state statutes, and grant the power to school districts to impose such fees. Then school districts could either impose school impact fees on new development (no TABOR ballot vote on the fees is required, but issuing bonds would still require a vote), or try to get their voters to pass tax increases to cover the ...