Citizens to look at Colorado’s financial landscape

(Courtesy of Rollie Heath website)

Colorado’s 2010 election could result in the creation of a new citizen commission that would be able submit new ballot measures regarding the state’s fiscal policy.

Senator Rollie Heath, D-Boulder, a representative of Senate District 18, proposed the formation of a Fiscal Policy Constitutional Commission, a panel of citizens capable of proposing ballot measures dealing with constitutional fiscal issues, to be approved in the 2010 election.

Richard Valenty, a legislative aide for Sen. Heath, said that this commission would have a temporary exemption from the state’s single-subject rule and the potential to pass a ballot measure that might affect parts or all of TABOR, Amendment 23 and Gallagher.

“They would have included [in the bill] that they would not be subjective to the single-subject rule,” Heath said in an interview with the CU Independent.

The commission would only be allowed to submit amendments to the constitution dealing with more than one subject if the commission conducted at least one meeting in each congressional district in the state, the measure is approved by at least 10 members of the commission, and the measure relates to fiscal policy, according to the draft bill.

Heath chaired the Long-Term Fiscal Stability Commission this past summer and fall, according to the senator’s Web site. During that session, the commission gave majority-vote approval to five bills, one of which proposed a commission of 19 members designed to take action on the state’s fiscal constitutional structure.

This commission, the Fiscal Policy Constitutional Commission, would exist with the express purpose of reviewing the fiscal policy stipulated in Colorado’s state constitution, according to the November draft bill.

“The reason this is important is because we have a number of constitutional amendments, like TABOR, Gallagher and Amendment 23 that basically work in conflict with each other and really does not allow government to have much flex in dealing with the fiscal issues on a state-wide level,” Heath said.

According to the resolution summary of the draft bill, the 19 members would be appointed to the commission by representatives from the legislative, executive and judicial branches of the state government for a yearlong term.

Part of what hampers government officials from implementing new policies is the single-subject rule, a condition that means ballot initiatives and legislation can only impact one main issue.

“It means if you refer an initiative to the voters, or you do a constitutional initiative, you can’t combine more than one subject, which means that dealing with all these constitutional issues makes it impossible to do it by the traditional route, which means you’d have to vote at each step which wouldn’t work,” Heath said.

The proposed Fiscal Policy Constitutional Commission came out of a yearlong study done by the University of Denver, Heath said.

Before any of this can happen, however, Resolution D would refer a ballot measure to the voters in 2010 asking them to approve the formation of the Fiscal Policy Constitutional Commission.

If voters decide to approve the citizen commission, they would meet in 2011 and refer measures and do whatever they thought would be prudent for voters in 2012, Heath said.

Should the commission be implemented and propose measures on fiscal policy, “the general assembly shall…make a recommendation to the voters to either approve or reject the measure, but the general assembly may not change the measure,” the draft bill said.

According to Sen. Heath’s Web site, “Many observers believe provisions found in areas of Colorado’s constitution…create budgetary problems such as the lack of flexibility to adequately fund certain departments or to deal with new problems.”

Heath said that there’s a need to bring stability to higher education.

“Part of what we’re trying to do is bring stability to the whole fiscal situation and hopefully allow use to find things like education and higher education on a more stable basis,” Heath said. “So you’d hope it’d have positive effects rather than negative effects.”

With the impending prospect of increased tuition, students said they are also hopeful about solutions to the dismal financial climate.

Brittany Havey, a 22-year-old senior journalism major and co-director for legislative affairs within UCSU, said that the road to get more funding for higher education is a long one.

“I know that they’re trying to find solutions and they’re trying to figure out how they can get more funding, and I’m almost positive that they’re trying to get rid of TABOR,” Havey said. “I honestly don’t know what would happen, but I mean, it’s a step, so from what I know, it would be good.”

Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Sheila V Kumar at Sheila.kumar@colorado.edu.