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Should it be tougher to amend Colo. Constitution?

Repeated failures don’t deter these two state lawmakers
Coram

DENVER – If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try again.

Legislators, including Montezuma County Rep. Don Coram, R-Montrose, are trying for the ninth time since 2004 to make it harder to amend Colorado’s constitution.

Colorado is the only state that makes it as easy to amend its constitution as it does its regular laws. Over the years, legislators have argued it should be harder to amend the state’s founding document.

Coram’s bill on the topic passed a House committee 9-2 Monday, but the biggest tests remain.

First, he and his allies need a two-thirds majority to put their idea on the November ballot. Then, voters must approve it. In the past decade, proponents have succeeded just once in getting the plan on the ballot. Referendum O failed at the 2008 election, 47 percent to 53 percent.

Rep. Lois Court, D-Denver, is sponsoring House Concurrent Resolution 1002 with Coram. She brought a slender copy of the U.S. Constitution and a fat copy of the state constitution to a hearing Monday. First she held up the federal Constitution.

“It’s been amended 27 times in over 200 years,” Court said, then held up the state constitution. “This has been amended, just in the last two decades, over 45 times.”

This year, citizens have proposed dozens of constitutional amendments on topics ranging from gas- and oil-well placement to horse racing to the rights of dairy cattle.

Coram said his rural constituents don’t want many of the ballot issues.

“The complaint is something goes on the ballot out in Southwest Colorado, and all the signatures come from downtown Denver. The perception is they’re just cramming things down our throat that we don’t want and don’t need,” he said.

He and Court’s bill would double the number of signatures required to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot, and it would require at least 10 percent of the signatures to come from each of the state’s seven congressional districts.

Currently, it takes 86,105 signatures to put either a constitutional amendment or a regular law change on the ballot. HCR 1002 would require 172,210 signatures to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot.

Opponents said the steep requirement would block only grass-roots, volunteer groups.

“It does nothing with the people who have deep pockets and can put something on the ballot,” said Marty Neilson of the Colorado Union of Taxpayers, a conservative group.

Several liberal groups were just as opposed in Monday’s hearing, including Colorado Common Cause, Food & Water Watch and Local Control Colorado, which is running an anti-fracking campaign this year.

Thad Tecza, a political science professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said legislators get it wrong when they compare the long Colorado Constitution to the short federal one.

“One of the reasons the Colorado Constitution is so long is that the U.S. Constitution is so short,” he said.

The U.S. Constitution doesn’t deal with important topics like education. But states have to handle their issues, and that’s why their constitutions are often so long, he said.

He urged legislators to keep the current system and trust voters to make good decisions.

“The public will isn’t as flighty as we think. People make as many good judgments as legislators do,” he said.

But former Sen. Ron Teck, who tried several years to tighten access to the ballot, said polling he saw last year leads to a different conclusion.

“An unfortunate number of the people polled didn’t even know Colorado had a constitution,” he said.

jhanel@durangoherald.com



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