In the closing days of this year’s legislative session, Colorado Rep. Lois Court sponsored a bill that would have amended the state constitution to require a 60 percent supermajority to pass any future constitutional amendments. This issue had previously been floated to — and defeated by — voters in 2008, as Referendum O.
In 2009, 2010, 2011 and again this year, this attack on the citizen initiative had been introduced in the Legislature, but beaten back by a coalition of citizens and policy groups, including Common Cause and the Colorado Union of Taxpayers.
This year, Denver Post reporter Lynn Bartels informed us that Court’s bill had been “hijacked.” Republican Rep. Jon Becker amended it in committee, requiring the bill’s 60 percent supermajority to apply to any amendment to the state constitution — an idea so repulsive that even Court voted against her own bill.
But there, oddly, is where Bartels’s explanation ends.
You see, Court’s legislation mandated a supermajority to pass a new constitutional amendment, but not for repealing past constitutional amendments — at least, not past amendments proposed by citizens.
Why? Look no further than TABOR.
Passed by citizen initiative in 1992, the Taxpayer Bill of Rights amendment requires any increase in overall government spending, or any tax increase, to be approved by the politicians’ boss: the people of Colorado.
Therefore, Court and her fellow legislative Democrats seek a supermajority to block any future amendment like TABOR, while at the same time allowing TABOR to be more easily nixed with only a simple majority. They want two sets of books, two sets of standards, one for the people and another custom-made for them.
This is Common sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
6 replies on “Rocky Mountain Low”
I believe James Madison’s words apply here:
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
Federalist Paper No. 51
Paul:
Rob, quoting Madison, is spot on.
I would also posit my theory: that the rule of law is never seen as personally binding upon those who themselves make the law.
Two kinds of peeople going into politics. The corrupt, and the corruptable.
Hello All,
I lived in CO from 2003 – 2008 while attending Colorado Tech in The Springs. I came from CA and before that, MN. I watched CO go from conservative to liberal. I watched the same people that screwed up CA move to CO because they could not tolerate the poison they created in CA…get it? They sold their houses for a fortune and moved to CO to buy the same size house for less with money left over. They used this money to take over CO. Now CO is polluted with this CA poison. Now I live in SD.
The effort to delete TABOR will go on forever. The liberals are so upset The People actually have a say in CO. Every time, they get defeated, even after winning the state! It makes them furious to no end!
Hold strong and prevent these commies from taking more of our country. They have been incredibly successful over the several generations. But, as the Japanese general mentioned, fear the people when they wake up.…will it be too late when The People do wake up this time?
Thanks to Paul Jacob and many others, we hope not…
John Mattacola in Sioux Falls
No further proof required the Power Lust is a noxious weed that flourishes insidiously in the vacant lots of the manifestations of evil also known as Leftards’ empty minds — but I repeat myself.
John Mattacola in Sioux Falls:
Spot on!
Well said!
Hear! Hear!