Speaker's plan: Reconcile constitution's contradictions

Berny Morson And April Washington, Rocky Mountain News

Published June 19, 2007 at midnight

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House Speaker Andrew Romanoff is proposing a sweeping fix for the tangle of contradictory amendments to the Colorado Constitution that binds the state budget.

With the easiest state constitution to amend in the nation, Colorado voters have added 47 provisions since 1980. The U.S. Constitution has been amended only 27 times since 1789.

Among the amendments to the Colorado Constitution is the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights. Passed in 1992, it restrains the size of state government. But in 2000, voters passed Amendment 23, which requires higher funding for K-12 schools until 2011.

Limiting the amount of revenue the government can take in while pumping more money into public education each year can create huge pressure on the state budget.

"To some extent it's like having one foot on the gas and another foot on the brakes," said Romanoff, D-Denver. "Your car won't go."

The problem has real-world consequences, Romanoff said. To meet the obligations to public schools while adhering to -TABOR, for example, the legislature has had to cut funding in other programs, such as state colleges, forcing up tuition.

"It's not just the fact that the constitution is cluttered and unsightly," Romanoff said. "It's the fact that the conflict has forced us to short-change higher education, health and human services and other core programs."

Romanoff has been talking about asking voters to approve a ballot item that would rewrite all the conflicting portions of several amendments.

Getting the proposal before the voters would be a two-step process.

Voters first would have to approve a one-time suspension of the single-provision rule. That's the part of the Colorado Constitution that says a ballot item may address only one subject.

Unless the rule is suspended, voters will face numerous ballot items to address the many provisions that produce the funding problem.

In the second step, the legislature would write the actual amendment resolving the conflicts among the provisions already in the constitution.

Romanoff said he may ask the legislature to take the first step during the session that begins in January, placing an item on the 2008 ballot to suspend the single-provision rule.

The suspension would apply only to the second item that would make the actual changes to the constitutional provisions that affect the budget. That item would be hashed out by the legislature in time to go to voters in 2010.

Romanoff has been discussing his idea with lawmakers and has run it past audiences around the state. He also is mulling a proposal to limit constitutional amendments in the future.

Gov. Bill Ritter said he takes no position on Romanoff's proposal, but he is listening. With higher education, health care and transportation facing budget pressures, his administration is discussing what to send to voters in 2008 to address the problems, Ritter said.

But a big fan of Romanoff's proposal is the man who will chair the Joint Budget Committee - the panel that writes the state budget - in 2008.

Rep. Bernie Buescher, D- Grand Junction, said, "It needs more discussion, but I like where Andrew is going. I expect to be working with him on the details."

Buescher said the budget problem is the result of "one idea after another that seemed good at the time but don't work well together."

"Right now we've got so many conflicting obligations that we try to deal with . . . that our ability to make really sound economic decisions is hamstrung, and we all know that's crazy," he said.

An alternative to Romanoff's proposal is a constitutional convention, in which a committee redrafts the entire state constitution then sends it to voters for approval.

That process could take four or five years. Colorado doesn't have that much time, Buescher said.

After years of amendments, the state constitution exceeds 700 pages, including the annotations that lawyers use to interpret it.

Douglas Bruce, of Colorado Springs, who drafted the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, could not be reached for comment.

But Romanoff's proposal has support among some Republicans.

"I'm not opposed to the idea in theory," said House Minority Leader Mike May, R-Parker. "It's better than a constitutional convention."

He said the big disputes will not occur over whether to suspend the single-provision rule but over the substantive changes that will go before voters in the second step.

"That's when the fighting will start, in part two," he said.

Reeves Brown, the director of the influential Western Slope group Club 20, said Romanoff's ideas make sense. He has discussed the proposal with -Buescher.

Brown said eventual changes that go before voters in the second step must keep the "fundamental" parts of the various amendments, such as the part of the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights that allows citizens to vote on tax increases.

But it's "asinine" for higher education and transportation to be competing for limited state dollars under the current system when both are essential to the quality of life, Brown said.

Rep. Al White, R-Winter Park, also a member of the budget committee, said he supports Romanoff's plan but also would back a constitutional convention. Last session, White floated a resolution to make it harder to amend the constitution. It failed.

"We've got to get some of the bad stuff out (of the constitution). We have to raise the bar by which we amend the constitution," he said.

morsonb@RockyMountainNews.com

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