DENVER – Legislators have killed a ballot initiative to make it harder to amend the Colorado Constitution.

Supporters might try to put it on the ballot through a citizens’ campaign, said Sen. Ellen Roberts, R-Durango, a co-sponsor of the measure.

Both chambers of the Legislature passed Senate Concurrent Resolution 1 in February, but with a trivial difference that kept it hung up for 75 days. Legislators of both parties complain that voters amend the constitution too much.

Colorado has adopted 150 constitutional amendments since statehood, said Sen. Nancy Spence, R-Centennial, a sponsor of SCR 1.

“The more we amend it, the more we struggle with some of the issues we have here at the Capitol with regard to conflicting amendments. I think it’s time we change the way we amend the constitution, make it more difficult, and take our constitution more seriously than some of us have in the past,” Spence said.

Some conservative Republicans voted against it, including Sen. Kevin Lundberg, R-Berthoud.

“The whole tenor of this is we’re in charge, and to the people of Colorado, you’re not,” Lundberg said.

If the Legislature and voters had approved SCR 1, future constitutional amendments would need approval from 60 percent of the voters, instead of a simple majority.

Petitions to put an amendment on the ballot would have had to get at least 10 percent of their signatures from each of the state’s seven congressional districts.

And finally, the Legislature would have needed a 60 percent majority to change an ordinary, nonconstitutional law adopted by voters for the first three years.

The last provision held up the bill since February. The Senate wanted a two-thirds majority to protect voter-approved laws, but the House insisted on a 60 percent majority.

Senate President Brandon Shaffer, the prime sponsor, let the resolution sit idle until Wednesday.

“I wasn’t crazy about the amendment,” said Shaffer, D-Longmont. “If we strip that off and send it to the House, I’m not sure that we still have the votes.”

He was right. After the Senate went back to its original version, the House adjourned Wednesday without taking it up.

“We believed it was going to die anyway, so we just let it die on the calendar,” said the House sponsor, Rep. Lois Court, D-Denver. “It was mostly politics outside the building. There were a lot of different groups that had varying opinions on whether it was a good idea.”

Roberts said she heard unions disliked the measure and pressured Democrats to vote against it. She lamented its death.

“It’s never a good thing when something sits on the calendar for a really long time because I think people forget what they were supporting and why,” she said.

Roberts had sponsored a similar measure that got onto the 2008 ballot as Referendum O. It failed, but supporters think its position at the bottom of a long ballot hurt its chances.

jhanel@ durangoherald.com