From: Senator Greg Brophy
Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2008 10:12 PM
Subject: The Amendments 2008
The Amendments 2008
The cheat sheet here at the top with my recommendations on the left; make yours in the blank and take it with you to the polls.
A46 yes ______
A47 yes ______
A48 yes ______
A49 yes ______
A50 yes ______
A51 no ______
A52 yes ______
A53 no ______
A54 no ______
A55 no ______
A56 no ______
A57 no ______
A58 no ______
A59 no ______
Ref L yes ______
Ref M yes ______
Ref N yes ______
Ref O yes ______
(analysis below)
I do recommend a vote to retain Supreme Court Justices Hobbs and Eid; they are both good. I looked through the rest of the judges and none of them are on my list of activist judges.
There are eighteen questions on the ballot. All of the questions that have a number were initiated by citizens; all of the questions with a letter were initiated by the legislature, passed with a 2/3rds vote and now need to be ratified by the people.
Amendment 46 Yes – The short argument is that A46 would keep government agencies from using quotas for race, gender etc. I do not like quotas or affirmative action. I think that in Colorado especially, neither are necessary.
Amendment 47 Yes – This is the “Right to Work” question on the ballot. What it means is that if you happen to work in a business where the employees have formed a union, you would not be forced to join the union or pay dues to the union. If you like unions, vote no, if you don’t like unions vote yes.
I believe that union sympathizers can make a decent argument against this question: that the union negotiates for every employee and all employees get the benefits derived by that negotiation whether they are members or not. My argument against them is that membership should never be forced, this is a free country, and if the employer is really that bad, everyone will voluntarily join.
Amendment 48 Yes – Ignore all the hype over this one, it is really a straightforward question. Should all abortions except those where the life of the mother is threatened be banned in Colorado? That is what A48 really does and it is purposefully written to challenge Roe v. Wade. It doesn’t ban contraception, it does ban RU 486, and it would raise a due process question in those rare pregnancies where the life of the mother is at stake. In those cases, the unborn baby would be represented in a court action as well as the mother.
Amendment 49 Yes – It is especially important to pass now that Governor Ritter unionized the state workforce through executive order. This amendment would prohibit paycheck deductions from public employees for union dues. The employee would have to pay their dues voluntarily by writing a check. When laws like this are passed in other states, teachers unions lose a significant amount of their revenue. To me, it seems like teachers would rather just keep their hard earned money and not allow the union to automatically take it.
Amendment 50 Yes – Allows the three mountain communities that already have gambling to raise the maximum amount bet from $5 to $100, extend their operating hours and add a few more games.
I’m voting yes, while acknowledging that gambling is a vice that causes significant problems for some people. These three communities have already been ruined by gambling, the state significantly changed the rules in how these casinos operate by passing a smoking ban in casinos last year, and the $5 limit has never changed since its inception in 1991.
Amendment 51 No – This is a sales tax increase to fund developmental disability programs in Colorado. Obviously this is a worthy cause in many, but certainly not all cases; however, the State has a budget that grows by a billion dollars a year. We should be able to better prioritize spending that growth and our existing spending. Finally, to steal a thought from state rep candidate Joshua Sharf, this is the equivalent of the state saying that their least important budget item (what they won’t cut to fund DD) is more important than your, the citizen’s, most important personal budget item because taxes come off the top of your income, before you buy your food, pay your mortgage or buy four dollar gas.
Amendment 52 Yes — This amendment takes some of the windfall of severance tax revenue that has been traditionally treated as a slush fund for the General Assembly and commits it to transportation infrastructure expenditures. Over the years this money has been spent on any pet project that can garner the votes to pass. It has also been used to pay for emergencies that arise, typically at the expense of a pet project that otherwise would have received the funding. I think it is important to set aside some more money for our roads and bridges as that infrastructure is the first area to lose funding in a short revenue year.
Amendment 53 No – This is one of four amendments that have been pulled by their sponsors, a group of union activists. They will still be on the ballot, but the clerks will not count the votes. Vote no anyway.
Amendment 54 No – This is called the Clean Government Amendment, they really should have entitled it the No Free Political Speech for You Amendment. The proponents claim that they want to tackle the real problem of abuse of the sole source government or no bid government contract problem. It is a real problem, and the proponents give excellent examples of serious abuse. The proper solution is to limit the government’s ability to use this type of contract – not to limit the citizens’ right to use their hard-earned money to influence the political process, which is free political speech with money.
Think of it this way: if these guys identified a problem of improper use of firearms, would you want to limit the rights of everyone who has a firearm as a solution or only those who improperly use firearms? To me the answer is easy.
We should not be using the Constitution to limit the rights of individuals; it should be used to limit the government.
Amendment 55 No — This is one of four amendments that have been pulled by their sponsors, a group of union activists. They will still be on the ballot, but the clerks will not count the votes. Vote no anyway.
Amendment 56 No — This is one of four amendments that have been pulled by their sponsors, a group of union activists. They will still be on the ballot, but the clerks will not count the votes. Vote no anyway.
Amendment 57 No — This is one of four amendments that have been pulled by their sponsors, a group of union activists. They will still be on the ballot, but the clerks will not count the votes. Vote no anyway.
Amendment 58 No – A58 is a $321+ million dollar tax increase on oil and gas through an elimination of an existing tax credit the oil and gas companies can get for the amount of taxes they pay on the same mineral production to the local governments. Without question the oil and gas companies will be able to pass through the increase in taxes on natural gas to you and me. They may not be able to pass through the increase on oil production to you and me as oil prices are set in a world market.
Passage of this would also cause the more marginal wells, which make up a majority of the wells in Eastern Colorado, to be shut off sooner rather than later as those wells’ profitability would shrink under the higher tax burden.
This is Governor Ritter’s baby and it is especially hard on rural Eastern Colorado counties as they rely on tax revenue from oil and gas to provide county services. 54% +/- of Yuma County’s revenue comes from oil and gas taxes, I think it is close to 80% in Cheyenne County. Can you imagine how devastating it would be for our counties to lose even some of that revenue and the jobs associated with those wells?
Finally, along with the new regulations being pushed by Governor Ritter on oil and gas production in Colorado, these higher taxes could very well lead oil and gas companies to leave Colorado in droves. Right now, they are the biggest contributor to our state’s economy. We should make sure they want to stay here.
Amendment 59 No – This is a massive tax increase by taking of all of your future TABOR tax refunds. The money would be set aside for K-12 education in theory, but in practice, at least part of the money could be used in any manner that general fund money is used. State government grows its budget by about a billion dollars a year right now. I really think that is enough.
Referendum L Yes – This one allows people as young as 21 to serve in the state legislature. Right now the minimum age is 25. I voted for it because I do know some people who were perfectly capable of serving at 21 (Ben Hendrix comes to mind). I also know some 50 year old legislators who aren’t capable but are in there anyway. I would not want too many 21 year olds, but for that matter, I don’t want everyone to be in their 60’s either. Let the voters decide who is ready; Boulder probably won’t send anyone that is worse than their current representatives!
Referendum M Yes – this one takes out obsolete provisions of the constitution dealing with reduced property taxes for up to 30 years for planting trees on your property. There is newer language in the Constitution that prohibits this reduction.
Referendum N Yes – this one takes out obsolete provisions dealing with the regulation of alcohol. Some of the provisions taken out are covered by the federal government. The other parts are covered by state law, which can be changed by the legislature. I think this is a safe removal of language, but it could allow the general assembly to tinker with the way alcohol licenses are managed in the state.
Referendum O Yes – this one caused some controversy at the capitol. It would make it harder to place an amendment to the state constitution by citizen initiative on the ballot and make it slightly easier to place a statutory change on the ballot by citizen initiative. It does so by increasing the signatures required for an amendment and forcing part of the signatures to be gathered in each of our congressional districts. We have seven congressional districts now, by 2021, we will probably have eight. The idea is to encourage statutory changes by initiative and discourage constitutional amendments.
I think it is really important for rural Colorado to pass this one. Too many times, front range voters approve a measure that only affects us, while we, collectively, vote against it. It is like they ram their preference for how we live or what we do down our throats against our will. If the change happens to be a constitutional amendment, we can’t fix or change it in the legislature; we could if the change were statutory instead.
There are 14 citizen initiatives on this year’s ballot, 46-59. Ten of them amend the constitution and four are statutory. If one of the amendments is as bad as 2006’s A41, which kept kids from getting college scholarships, the legislature can’t fix it.
I tried to be as brief as possible. I have read through all of the questions. I spent quite a little time on the few that aren’t clearly conservative or liberal in their nature, like A54 and Ref O. I hope this helps you. I will be going over all of these at a handful of meetings and at least one more time in a telephone town hall meeting before the election. If you have a specific question about one of the amendments flip me an email or call my cell 970.332.5766.