Colorado
As Colorado wrestles with an already lean state budget growing leaner by the day ”” one that has forced Gov. Bill Ritter to propose repeated controversial cuts to state services this year ”” a trio of budget busting anti-tax initiatives is speeding its way to the 2010 ballot. The dramatic nature of the initiatives, which plainly seek to shrink state government, and their timing, coming as they do amid an historic budget crisis, has sparked high media interest and political buzz.
Is Amendment 54 a valid way to fight pay-to-play politics or an unconstitutionally overbroad limit on political speech? The state’s highest court will hear oral arguments tomorrow in a case that will resolve that controversy. Passed into law as a ballot initiative last year, Amendment 54 was widely seen as a move to curtail political contributions from labor unions. The amendment forbids recipients of large sole-source, or “no-bid,” government contracts from contributing to any political campaign in Colorado, except campaigns for federal office.
We blogged previously about the petition in Denver, CO to get a measure on the ballot to create a UFO Commission. Yesterday, the petition signatures were finally validated and accepted, and voters will weigh in on the issue next year.
The effort to get this measure on the ballot began in April of 2008 and attracted attention from around the world. This is the first serious effort to use the initiative process for this topic.
The ballot initiative to create an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission is finally going to Denver voters. In a letter dated November 30, Denver City Clerk and Recorder, Stephanie Y. O’Malley, confirmed sufficiency of the petition. The letter informed Jeff Peckman, chief proponent of the initiative, that “the Denver Elections Division has found a sufficient number of valid signatures to place the measure on the ballot…at the next citywide election.” Well over 10,000 signatures were submitted to obtain the 3,974 valid signatures needed.
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.
A Denver attorney has filed a ballot initiative that would allow Colorado grocery and convenience stores to sell full-strength beer and wine, reigniting a two-year-old debate over who should be able to pedal different types of alcohol in the state. Initiative 29, which was submitted by Blake Harrison to the Colorado Legislative Council on Tuesday, largely copies a 2008 legislative proposal by now-Senate President Brandon Shaffer, D-Longmont, that was killed in committee.
Citing the poor economy, members of the Ridgway Town Council generally agreed at their regular meeting on Nov. 11 that they have no desire to draft any sort of new tax initiative ballot question, including a use tax, for the April 2010 municipal election to fund the completion of the historic business core streetscape plan.
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.
Reality set in at City Hall on Wednesday after voters slaughtered a property tax hike and approved an initiative that will stop the city from collecting revenue from its enterprises. Mayor Lionel Rivera, who said Tuesday night that issue 300 wouldn’t affect the Stormwater Enterprise, left open the possibility that it did.
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.
Douglas Bruce walked into Centennial Hall where ballots were being counted Tuesday night, faced the television cameras and tore up his Stormwater Enterprise bill, declaring an end to what he calls the “rain tax.” Issue 300, the anti-tax crusader’s ballot initiative, was passing 55 to 44 percent, with 100,597 of the mail-in votes counted by 9:30 p.m. The victory, according to Bruce, meant the enterprise that charges Colorado Springs residents for drainage projects based on the amount of impervious surface on their property must be eliminated immediately.
Colorado voters still have another day to turn in mail-in ballots for this fall’s election. Ballots must be returned to county clerks by 7 p.m. Tuesday.
The initiative process can be used in many different ways and for many different policies, but I don’t think it’s been used very often to create alien visitor policy.
In Denver, Colorado, a man by the name of Jeff Peckman is trying to get a measure on the local ballot to create a commision to teach citizens how to welcome any alien visitors that might show up.
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.