Opinion: We need more democracy, not less


From my perspective, many of the current hot political issues have angles that haven’t been adequately discussed. Here are a few:
Amendment 71 is an attempt to make it extremely difficult for any but the most well-funded interest groups to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot, much less get it passed. The argument by Colorado’s “We know best” power-brokers is that we need more stability. But in Switzerland, one of the most stable countries in the world, it’s easier to petition to amend their constitution than to amend Colorado’s. A far better fix for Colorado would be to better protect statutory initiatives by only allowing them to be changed with concurrence of two-thirds of both the Senate and the House and consistent with their stated purpose. This would make this type of initiative more attractive and thus limit the use of constitutional amendments, and the Legislature could fix any technical problems discovered after passage.
Propositions 107 and 108 support open primaries, a really good first step in opening up the candidate-selection process. But we need to further expand the process by using preference voting in all primaries. Then you could vote for your favorite, even if not popular, but still have your second or third choice get your vote if they are the more popular with others, with the final election held between the two candidates that end up with the most primary votes.
Boulder’s term-limit charter amendment proposal is not like most term limits: It limits the number of lifetime terms, not just consecutive ones, and also is retroactive, meaning that terms a council member may have served prior to its passage count against them in the future. So the Boulder proposal penalizes potential candidates for decisions they made in the distant past when they had no idea that their council service could limit them. In contrast, Colorado’s 1994 term-limit amendment only limits terms served after its passage, and only the number held consecutively, not lifetime totals.
The Boulder proposal is also legally questionable. The Supreme Court declared Arkansas’ 1992 retroactive (“ex post facto”) term limits for congressional representatives and senators unconstitutional, stating, “the fundamental principle of our representative democracy [is] … ‘that the people should choose whom they please to govern them,’ ” and “A … term limits measure is unconstitutional when it has the likely effect of handicapping a class of candidates and has the sole purpose of creating additional qualifications indirectly.” Also, Colorado’s 1994 statewide term-limit amendment may not allow the Boulder proposal, since that constitutional amendment appears to only allow local changes to the limit on the number of sequential terms.
The latest version of the co-op ordinance shows the impossibility of trying to satisfy the numerous conflicting goals. It has an unenforceable definition of “co-op” because no one could effectively monitor compliance without being a member. Its 100-foot minimum spacing means one of every three homes could be converted. It allows 12 people in a co-op with no rent limits, creating a strong financial incentive for property owners to rebuild existing moderately priced homes as expensive rooming houses.
Since some council members enthusiastically support co-ops, every co-op should be required to convince a council member to be its sponsor to be responsible for dealing with complaints and be on the hook for violations, all of which would be communicated over a publicly accessible “hotline” so that everyone could see what’s happening. The regulations should also require a once-per-year approval vote of residents and property owners within 100 feet for a co-op to remain. But best would be to create a zoning district just for coops, and avoid all these problems.
The plan for dense affordable housing on land in Twin Lakes that was legally dedicated for other purposes exposes some serious flaws in the county commissioners’ approach. The commissioners say they represent all the people of Boulder County. So rather than being in a reactive mode about the “housing crisis,” the commissioners should demand, before they approve any high-density land uses, that the city of Boulder require at least 50 percent of all new housing development city-wide be permanently affordable to people below Area Median Income, that all new business development pay jobs-housing linkage fees adequate to serve all employees earning below AMI, and that CU provide housing for any new employees and students. (And all should fully mitigate their regional traffic impacts.) What goes on in Boulder has county-wide impacts, and the commissioners should require cities like Boulder to take responsibility.


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