State Rep. Ellen Roberts
It is no surprise that State Representative Ellen Roberts (Republican - Durango) doesn’t like the Colorado initiative process and wants to radically change it. Legislators aren’t actually supposed to like initiatives. Initiatives, term limits, referendums and recall votes were, with great wisdom, all put into Colorado’s system of state government by our state’s founders as means to guarantee open and direct grassroots political action and as checks and balances on the three branches of our state’s government. Combined, they create a de facto fourth branch in Colorado - the people.
Roberts plans to work to make the process more difficult, yet she simply fails to make a compelling case for changing anything. No one, other than legislators and lobbyists seem to be negatively affected by the initiative process. Roberts efforts to make it more difficult for ordinary Coloradans to continue to have an extraordinary direct voice, compared to other states, are based on a geographic plan to divide us along urban-rural lines and otherwise make it more difficult for people to initiate legislation. These changes could limit the process to only those who can afford to coordinate statewide signature collections.
Roberts did not explain why she thinks self-government should be more difficult and prohibitively expensive. Do we want our decisions to be made by only the rich, only the “experts,” only the powerful corporations, unions, special interest groups and their lawyers? Does Roberts not trust the people with the power to by-pass a legislature when the people think that the state government is corrupted by influence from special interest groups, when our legislature sometimes proves to be self-serving, or whenever it becomes non-responsive to changing needs or non-traditional ideas?
Each time a lawmaker whittles away at traditional Colorado populist principles, values, rights and responsibilities is he, or she, takes a bold step backwards toward a more centralized and out-of-touch state government. We should be proud to speak of Colorado’s rank in the nation as first in easy self-government.
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The initiative process is controlled by the populace?
If you believe that, here are a few other things to believe: newspapers are run by journalists committed to accurate reporting; politicians keep the interests of their constituency at heart; and finally, everyone will get a pony on their birthday.
Gimme a break. Initiatives are financed and run by only the rich, only the “experts,” only the powerful corporations, unions, special interest groups and their lawyers. And all it takes is a catchy soundbite to mislead about 20% of the public* into voting for something that will haunt all of Colorado's citizens for years.
*Less than 40% of registered voters vote, and it only takes 50.1% of those voting to pass the initiative.
Posted by Grounded on July 17, 2007 04:49 PMyep ole poor jared and pat both are so poor they can only afford to spend millions of their own money on initiatives that they want passed because it can get past our elected officials on a vote of elected folks.
yep jack you are a well informed moron, are you releated to truf or chas b?