Denver Post
The birth records of adoptions finalized in Denver would become available to the adoptees, once they are adults, under a proposed ballot initiative. Adoptees in Search ”” the Colorado Triad Connection will hold a “review and comment” session on Friday with City Council staff and the city attorney’s office about the proposed ballot measure. The group ”” with about 1,000 members, mostly adoptees but also birth parents and adoptive parents ”” hopes to persuade voters to pass an ordinance allowing the adoptees “equal, direct and unrestricted access” to their birth records.
A proposed ballot measure would let utility customers vote on whether to opt out of getting their power from wind, solar or other renewable sources. Supporters of the measure said renewable sources are costly and that customers should have the right to choose less expensive forms of energy. The initiative is one of five filed this week with the Legislative Council, the first step in a series of steps to getting a measure on the ballot for voters to consider in November.
An unlikely crew of activists and advocates has teamed up to sue Colorado Secretary of State Bernie Bues cher in federal court, arguing that laws enacted last year to curb ballot petition fraud go too far and violate the U.S. Constitution. The laws, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in the legislature, put tough new requirements on companies that pay people to collect signatures for prospective ballot measures.
Read the story from the Denver Post
It is not every ballot initiative that has its own hip-hop song. But then, how many times are voters asked to approve formation of a commission to study visitors from outer space? Jeff Peckman, director of the extraterrestrial affairs commission ballot initiative, will launch a campaign to educate voters about his proposal this evening at 7 P.M. at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds. Peckman collected signatures to have the measure placed on Denver’s Aug. 10 ballot.
A celebration of the 25,000 beneficial uses of marijuana ”” proposed for a local ballfield ”” was snuffed out by the Nederland Board of Trustees last week. But a vote on decriminalizing marijuana for all 1,400 residents of Nederland might be coming in April, sealing the Boulder County mountain town’s reputation as a go-with-the-flow haven for iconoclasts. “We’ve got a long-standing history of a kind of counterculture kind of town,” said Town Trustee Marci Wheelock. “A lot of people can move here, and they can do what they want, and your neighbors aren’t into each other’s business.”
What Blake Harrison wants is for grocery and convenience stores across Colorado to stock wine and full-strength beer if they so choose. But his recently filed ballot initiative to allow that could instead harm his cause by giving lawmakers, annually faced with a similar bill, an escape hatch for what has historically been a difficult vote, analysts say.
The backers of a ballot proposal that would wipe out most vehicle-registration and telecommunication fees plus decrease the state income-tax rate submitted 140,000 signatures to the secretary of state Thursday afternoon.
The Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts will continue to operate in aging, asbestos-filled buildings. Aurora will close four of its seven libraries. And a Boulder County open-space program was denied money for the first time in two decades.
A push for a ballot initiative to give Denver sheriff’s deputies enhanced arrest powers suffered a blow Tuesday when elections officials reported that more than half of the nearly 60,000 signatures collected on behalf of the effort were invalid. “The Denver Elections Division has found an insufficient number of signatures valid to place the measure on the ballot, therefore the division deems this petition insufficient,” Denver Clerk and Recorder Stephanie O’Malley wrote in a letter to the president of the Fraternal Order of Police, the union that represents deputies.
Denver sheriff’s deputies believe they have collected enough signatures to force a special election on whether they should have expanded arrest powers like their police counterparts. In the city and county of Denver, police are in charge of patrolling the city’s streets and enforcing laws, while the deputies provide security in city jails, Denver Health Medical Center and the courthouse. Holding the special election in February, as the deputies have requested, would cost $750,000 to $1 million, according to city election officials.
The Denver City Council on Monday passed a proclamation urging voters to defeat a ballot initiative that would require police to impound the vehicles of unlicensed drivers. All but one council member heaped scorn on the initiative, saying it was a costly, thinly veiled attack against illegal immigrants that would end up requiring the city to spend precious resources. “It will tie up police time,” said Councilman Doug Linkhart, who sponsored the proclamation. “It will tie up city attorney time. It will tie up court time.”
Stu Allen describes himself as “a 23-year-old kid who just got (ticked) off watching the news” about California voters overturning that state’s Supreme Court ruling that same-sex marriage was a constitutional right. Calling themselves “Yes on Equal Rights,” he and his girlfriend, Crystal Russell, 22, relied on Google searches and the how-to guide on the Secretary of State’s website to launch an initiative to put same-sex marriage on the 2010 ballot.
Despite the passage last year of a ballot initiative that requires police to impound the cars of unlicensed drivers the city has not been doing so. The city has been taking advantage of what some claim is a loophole in the law that allows officers discretion on impounds. Supporters of last year’s initiative say they may come back to voters with a fix or the law.
A Denver man is has reworked his proposed ballot initiative that would create a city commission to study extraterrestrials. An attempt to put the measure on the May 2008 ballot failed to get the 4,000 required signatures.
A state House Panel has passed a bill that would place several regulations on the ballot initiative process in Colorado. The measure would ban payment on a per-signature basis, require petition companies to register with the state, and move up the deadline to file signatures.