Colorado
The effort to get a sales tax initiative on the ballot for April to fund a proposed community recreation center is under way. During a special board meeting Thursday, the Montrose Recreation District board of directors gave its blessing to a citizen task force that hopes to collect enough voter signatures to get the sales tax initiative on the ballot.
Fresh off a thumping at the polls in Mississippi, supporters of a constitutional amendment that would legally define a fertilized egg as a person are back for a third try with Colorado voters. On Monday, Arvada-based Personhood USA unveiled a measure that’s been substantially rewritten from ballot initiatives Colorado voters shot down by wide margins in the last two general elections.
Colorado citizens hit the polls yesterday to decide whether or not to raise taxes:
In what could be a harbinger of the 2012 election, Colorado voters Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a measure that would have raised nearly $3 billion for education by temporarily increasing state income, sales and use taxes. With 59% of the projected vote counted, Proposition 103 was trailing 65% to 35%, the Associated Press reported. The debate over the measure closely mirrored recent rancor in Washington over the question of whether more spending will revive a moribund economy or slow down a nascent recovery.
When Colorado voters go to the polls November 1, the only statewide issue on the ballot will be Proposition 103, a measure that would increase sales and income taxes to provide money for public education. The controversial measure, which would generate $2.9 billion over the five years the tax increase would be in effect, is lauded by supporters as “standing up for better schools” and vilified by opponents as a “job killer.”
George Will’s recent column, “A republic, guaranteed,” generally scoffs at a lawsuit filed in federal court in Colorado attempting to overturn the state’s voter-initiated Taxpayer Bill of Rights amendment, which caps state spending. But while disagreeing with the goal of the lawsuit, Mr. Will seems to in part agree with those who filed it. At least when they argue in their legal brief that there is a “contest between direct democracy and representative democracy.”
A proposed ballot measure to legalize marijuana for recreational use in Colorado has survived two legal challenges. The Colorado Supreme Court this week rejected two challenges to the measure that would ask voters whether marijuana in small amounts should be legal for people over 21. Sponsors of the marijuana measure are gathering signatures to place the question on 2012 ballots.
Opponents of a ballot measure to hike taxes for education funding allege in a complaint filed with the secretary of state’s office that a person gathering signatures for the initiative broke the law with “false and misleading statements” about the measure.
A Breckenridge citizen group working to get a term-limit elimination question on the ballot in November was unable to collect the needed 411 signatures in time for the June 23 deadline. The ballot question, a topic of some debate in Breckenridge, would have asked voters to remove the state-imposed two-term limit on town council members and the mayor. Two sitting council members, Eric Mamula and Jeffrey Bergeron, are term limited in the spring and will not be able to run again unless the council elects to put the question on the ballot, which it has previously declined to do.
Though Colorado’s famous Taxpayer Bill of Rights, or TABOR, was approved by voters in 1992, a group made up of career politicians has recently filed a lawsuit claiming that the measure violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of a “republican form of government” in every state.
Despite the Legislature’s failure to pass a bill this year to increase the percentage of votes needed to pass a voter initiated constitutional amendment, grassroots advocates recently voiced their opposition to the move they see as part of a trend by legislators to limit the power of the people.
In last week’s edition of The Colorado Statesman, and article from Ernest Luning talks about our transpartisan panel event last month in Denver:
An unlikely alliance of some of the state’s leading liberal and conservative voices are sounding the alarm that Colorado’s ballot initiative process is facing an unprecedented assault from established interests and lawmakers.
In a show of early fireworks, a parade of people on Tuesday called for El Paso County commissioners to place two issues on the November ballot. Commissioners made no decision on either request presented during the meeting’s public-comment period: to reword a measure to extend term limits for some elected officials, and to increase sales tax by 0.15 of a cent to pay for park maintenance countywide.
Our May 2011 Lilburne Award winner Thad Tecza just so happened to be one of the panelists at our event in Denver, CO last month. Citizens in Charge Foundation president Paul Jacob presented him with the award at the end of the event.