By Jim Spencer
SpencerSpeaks.com
The
So some of the most critical government work performed in the state in 2008 will not be done by the General Assembly. Rather, it will be done by the committee asked to deal with the state’s constitutional crisis.
That’s right, crisis.
More than health care reform, more than funding for transportation or higher education, the competing mandates of
In many ways, the Select Committee on Constitutional Reform appointed by state Senate President Peter Groff wields more power than the entire legislature.
The six people on the committee must come up with suggestions that will affect the state for decades after the fights over affordable health care, reliable roads and quality colleges end.
“The most serious constitutional issues facing the state involve conflicting provisions within the constitution; the unintended consequences of constitutional amendments; and policy matters that are, for all intents and purposes, permanently frozen in the constitution,†Jim Griesemer, the chairman of a recent constitutional study at the University of Denver, wrote.
DU’s 2007 Colorado Constitutional Panel made sweeping recommendations for constitutional reform that will be among the options the committee on constitutional reform considers.
Among the DU panel’s most important recommendations were calls to make it easier to have citizen statutory initiatives placed on the ballot, while forcing constitutional amendments to face more pre-vote scrutiny. The panel’s reasoning was simple: Statutes can be tweaked to adjust for changing times. Amendments cannot.
For that reason, the DU panel called for an extended 18-month process for putting amendments on the ballot. The process includes several levels of review, more explanation of costs, public hearings at the legislature and recommendations by the legislature on citizen-initiated amendments.
The most controversial of the recommendations gives legislators the ability to “craft revised proposals jointly†with citizens before those constitutional amendments go on the ballot. Failing that compromise, the DU panel thinks legislators should be able to offer competing amendment proposals on the same ballot.
The select committee doesn’t have to take any of the DU panel’s recommendations. But in appointing
“A constitution should be the moral guidepost by which a state’s progress and journey are measured,†Groff told the Senate on its opening day last week. “A constitution should be a thoughtful list of principles and obligations of citizens. However,
According to the DU panel,
That is because the
The clutter alone is a call to action.
But the real problem stems from contradictory demands. Amendment 23 requires automatic funding increases to K-12 education, while the TABOR amendment – the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights - limits total annual increases in overall government spending. The result in the state’s recent economic downturn was the gutting of funding for higher education that left
This is the worst of the contradictory amendments. But there are others. The short of it is that by overloading the constitution with amendments that cannot be changed, Coloradans have created a self-destructive mess.
Cleaning it up will be neither easy nor popular.
What it will be is necessary.
Copyright 2008 by Jim Spencer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
7 users commented in " Constitutional Crisis Trumps Legislative Battles "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackHi Jim,
You know me I’ve lived in Colorado for
40 years and the only “Crisis” in CO
“governance” is how to better and more
fully get into the pocket of the Colorado
citizen. Colorado leaders spend like
druken sailors on their special projects
mostly that fat cow called “education”
it’s insatiable appetite will swallow
Colorado whole and there ain’t much left
in people’s pockets every penny possible
has been borrowed and every penny spent
dennis hammond
Well said.
The most intimidating part will come if the select committee decides the only way to really fix the document is to more or less go back to square one and hold a constitutional convention. My former home state of Missouri did that in 1948 and managed to create a document that serves the state’s purposes without excessive length.
But that was 60 years ago, when “think tanks” weren’t so popular, and fringe groups weren’t nearly as well organized or publicized. Think of all the groups at both ends of the political spectrum in Colorado who’d love to build their particular axe-grinding cause into the “moral guidepost” of the state.
Sigh. Doing nothing is unacceptable, but doing something — almost anything — carries lots of risk as well.
I’m trying to figure out just when Colorado became such a selfish bunch of rednecks. I would like to know, what could possibly be more important to spend money on than education? The right-wingers all across the country profess to be Christian. What is Christian about depriving children and young adults the opportunity to get the best possible education? When Owens gave back all that tax money (thanks to Doug Bruce), he put the state into a billion dollar hole. That, so every adult could have an extra $300 in their pocket! With $300, you can’t make a vehicle payment, a house payment, or anything of substance. Uneducated and uninsured people don’t prove anything except that Colorado has sorely misplaced priorities. Just think, those kids in public school and college right now are going to be the ones running the highways, insurance companies, banks, and nursing homes when we’re ready to go into them. How does that make you feel about not funding education? If Colorado isn’t the laughing stock of the country right now in regards to higher education, then it soon will be. Businesses won’t want to come here when they know their employees can’t put their kids in a decent neighborhood school or their graduates into a decent college without going into the poorhouse themselves. On the face of it, it’s utterly self-defeating. I’m keenly interested in seeing the leadership really lead. Surely, if people like Reagan and Bush could define “moral and family values” and sell people on tax breaks that are actually breaking them, some intelligent and articulate person could make a case for turning those definitions around. I’m sure the committees are capable of this; it’s a matter of, do they have the guts to try to take a bold step forward? It’s time.
I suppose it must be done. I just hope the wiser heads responsible for crafting changes understand what drove the citizenry to vote these items into the Constitution to begin with: the legislature was UNRESPONSIVE to public opinion. Take TABOR: most people, and I include myself, can’t fully walk through the ratchet-down effect, but that wasn’t what was important for us. What was important was that we be the ones to tax ourselves, or not, as we decide at any given time. So, the bottom line is no new taxes without an election. And they better stop letting “fees,” for example TIF’s and PIF’s, stick their tongues out at the taxation ban, because they’re taxes, dammit, and we never get the chance to say no. The passage of Amendment 23 was similarly motivated: the formula is beyond the grasp of the average citizen, but we agreed on the principle that the education of this state’s children, K-12, should be the priority for every legislature, that it goes to the top, above roads, above tax cuts for big business, above oil and gas credits, blah, blah, blah. Period. If they can recognize and preserve these principles while making honest accommodation of budgeting demands, we may just swallow it. But there won’t be any room for facetiousness or sneak-law, as I predict the fighting to be ferocious. And they’d better stop sniping at the “special interests” they say put these laws in place, because for better or worse, We the People put these laws in place. But we thank them for saying we are special…
A constitution is an enabling document. We don’t any longer have such a document. The DU proposals are certainly reasonable, and it should be very hard to amend our constitution but relatively easy to put a change in the established laws up for vote. Let’s put a proposed constitution together and have the committee work on it.
The notion that our elected representatives are just greedy spendthrifts strikes me as irresponsible; if you don’t trust them don’t elect them.
Stu said what I would have said but I’m not that articulate. Thanks, Stu. We’ve had a pattern over the past years of adding a new amendment to our constitution every time we want to change the way we do things. Each time I ask myself “Why don’t we just pass a law and leave the constitution alone?” and I vote “No” on the amendment but the darned thing passes anyway. I like Stu’s idea of starting over with a new constitution and making it the “enabling” document it’s suppposed to be and then make it very difficult to amend.
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