Colorado
A group calling themselves Great Parks - Great Communities plans to ask the El Paso County Commissioners to approve a ballot initiative seeking a 0.015 percent sales tax increase to fund operations and basic maintenance of parks, trails and open spaces in the county. The Sustainable Parks Initiative is led by the Trails and Open Space Coalition has been holding public meetings to address funding cuts to local parks over the past 3 years. At a meeting last night, the group renamed themselves Great Parks - Great Communities.
While Colorado lawmakers wrangle over how weak the token protections for initiated state statutes in SCR11-01 should be, the legislature is moving forward on other inventive plans to keep citizens from having a say in state government. SB11-1072 aims to create even more opportunities for frivolous lawsuits against initiative activists, and was acted on by the Senate Judiciary Committee early this week.
Citizens in Charge President Paul Jacob submitted the letter below today to Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler. Secretary Gessler set a hearing for today on using his rulemaking authority to clean up part of a 2009 law that places petition proponents in danger of personal legal attacks. The rule change comes as the result of a broad-based effort led by Citizens in Charge to get the Secretary to weigh in.
Colorado’s petition system is in a shambles, and the state legislature remains fixated on nailing down the lid on the coffin. Luckily, newly elected Secretary of State Scott Gessler seems to want a more reasonable petition system to preside over.
How difficult should it be for citizens to change their state constitution? They’ll be deciding that question in Colorado, where the state Senate is considering Concurrent Resolution 1, which would raise the threshold for constitutional referenda to 60 percent. The measure is supported by both political parties — it is co-sponsored by six of 15 GOP senators and 16 of 33 GOP representatives — but Paul Jacob, president of the Citizens in Charge Foundation, denounces it as an anti-democratic measure which “places the Colorado Constitution in the hands of a minority of voters.”
Saying that just cutting spending wasn’t the answer to Colorado’s budget problems, a Democratic state senator on Monday filed a citizen initiative that would ask voters in November to enact a three-year, $1.63 billion tax increase. “I am in hopes that the citizens of this state will say, ‘Enough is enough,’ ” Sen. Rollie Heath, D-Boulder, said in a news conference at the Capitol announcing his initiative.
Colorado state house Republicans and Democrats teamed up with big labor, big business, and other special interests against Colorado citizens to pass SCR-1 by a vote of 55-12 early this morning. The constitutional amendment, if approved by voters, would turn the current deep freeze that has overtaken the state’s petition process into an ice age.
With a constitutional amendment that would make it far more difficult to enact future constitutional amendments – especially through Colorado’s citizen initiative process – already passed by the State Senate and now pending on the floor of the House of Representatives, Citizens in Charge Foundation, a national voter rights group (and a partner organization to Citizens in Charge), today issued a report entitled, “Five Facts about Amending Colorado’s Constitution.”
National group U.S. Term Limits has joined the broad coalition of voices denouncing the Colorado General Assembly’s special interest-fueled attack on citizen initiative rights. From a statement released yesterday:
Former University of Colorado, Boulder Senior Instructor Emeritus professor of in political science and initiative rights activist Thaddeus Tecza writes in a letter to the Denver Post:
Lawmakers yesterday backed legislation that would ask voters to make it more difficult to amend the Colorado Constitution. Senate Concurrent Resolution 1 was backed by the Senate State Affairs Committee by a vote of 3-2.
The Colorado House has tentatively approved a bill lawmakers say will make the state’s ballot initiative process more transparent. The House approved House Bill 1072 on an initial voice vote Tuesday. It would require that a ballot proposal’s two designated representatives attend the meeting where the measure is cleared to appear on the ballot. It would also require that they specify when they collected signatures and how much money they spent.
A liberal group that pushed a tax-increase initiative thrown out on a technicality is back with new proposals that would ask Colorado voters to increase taxes by up to $1.5 billion a year. The Colorado Center on Law and Policy last year proposed an initiative that would have returned the state to a graduated income tax and extended sales taxes to include services. But the state’s Title Setting and Review Board in December rejected the measure on a technicality, saying proponents would have to start the process over.
(LAKE RIDGE, VA) – Today, Citizens in Charge, a national voter rights lobby, joined a group of Colorado-based policy organizations and individuals active in recent state ballot initiatives in sending a letter to new Secretary of State Scott Gessler, officially petitioning his office to engage in rule-making to clarify the state’s initiative and referendum process, which has recently been declared “dead” due to an ongoing lawsuit that threatens to bankrupt initiative sponsors.
“We call on Secretary Gessler to act promptly to clarify the rules in a way that protects the First Amendment rights of all Coloradoans to petition their government,” said Citizens in Charge President Paul Jacob. “The current legal limbo is killing the state’s initiative process.”
(LAKE RIDGE, VA) – Today, Citizens in Charge, a national voter rights lobby, joined a group of Colorado-based policy organizations and individuals active in recent state ballot initiatives in sending a letter to new Secretary of State Scott Gessler, officially petitioning his office to engage in rule-making to clarify the state’s initiative and referendum process, which has recently been declared “dead” due to an ongoing lawsuit that threatens to bankrupt initiative sponsors.
“We call on Secretary Gessler to act promptly to clarify the rules in a way that protects the First Amendment rights of all Coloradoans to petition their government,” said Citizens in Charge President Paul Jacob. “The current legal limbo is killing the state’s initiative process.”