DENVER– Democratic state lawmakers Rep. Lois Court and Sen. Morgan Carroll have taken another step in their move to head off would-be anonymous Colorado ballot-initiative authors and financiers. A bill they introduced this legislative session comes in response to the farce Colorado Springs anti-tax crusader Doug Bruce made of the initiative process last year, when as “Mr X” he sent detailed emails of instruction to the initiative proponents, failed to report he was housing petition-signature gatherers and dodged subpoena servers for more than three months.

The Court-Carroll bill,
HB 1035 (pdf), would require that the descriptions of proposed amendments and referendums that appear on ballots for voters to consider include the names of initiative authors and backers.

“Colorado voters deserve to know all of the information about the measures they’re being asked to consider,” Carroll said in a release. “Knowing who is behind a ballot proposal and where the language came from is crucial when considering changes to state law. Having this important information will help voters make better-informed decisions.”

The bill passed out of the Senate State Affairs Committee Tuesday and is headed to the Senate for debate.

Rep. Court is a longtime critic of Colorado’s famously loose ballot-initiative process and has been working for years to tighten it up. Basically, citizens write laws and work to get Colorado residents to sign petitions in support of their proposals. It takes roughly 80,000 signatures to land a proposed law on the ballot for a vote.

Court sponsored legislation centered on preventing fraud in the signature-gathering process two years ago.

Critics like Court see the process as inefficient and ripe for abuse. HB 1035 looks to head off not just controversial figures like Bruce but also representatives of activist organizations and corporations, for example, who would seek to hide from voters. Coloradans might look differently on an anti-warning-label law, for instance, if they knew tobacco companies had authored and financed it.

For similar reasons, state campaign-finance laws require initiative supporters to identify themselves by reporting expenditures.

In the course of a campaign finance hearing last year, Bruce, a small-government activist, author of the state’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights and an erratic former member of the state General Assembly, was identified as a “guiding force” in landing Proposition 101, Amendment 60 and Amendment 61 on the 2010 ballot. Proponents testified that they received emails with ballot language and instructions from a “Mr X,” which it came out was Bruce. From April through September he mocked court requests to appear and be deposed in the matter. “I was on vacation,” he said. “I don’t have to clear with anybody in the government whether I want to go on vacation.”

He has never said why he didn’t want to be associated publicly with the initiatives, which voters roundly voted against in November.

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Colorado schools will be particularly hard hit if Amendment 60 passes on Nov. 2. (flickr, cc; Conspirator)

Then there’s Proposition 101 and Amendment 61, the other two of the controversial “Big Three” ballot initiatives being put to voters this election. They would both slash school funding, and neither attempts to require the state to ensure certain levels are maintained.

Dave Montoya, budget manager for Poudre School District, said it’s hard to speculate how the cuts will be distributed in his own district, but there will undoubtedly be an impact in the classroom. With the cuts imposed by the Big Three, he said, education will “look drastically different than what K-12 education looks like right now.”

Proposition 101 would reduce state income taxes by about 25 percent and specific ownership tax by 98 percent, and slash or eliminate telecommunication taxes and fees. These sources of revenue, along with property taxes, comprise the large majority of K-12 education funding.

Amendment 61 would limit or prohibit all borrowing by the state and local governments, leaving schools hard-pressed to finance construction, building repairs, or, in many cases, make payroll, since schools often borrow money to pay staff while they wait for taxes to be collected in the spring.

Proponents point out that Amendment 60, which would cut local school property taxes, requires the state to backfill the loss in funding to schools, but city and school officials wonder how the state will manage to do that when it is already facing a budget crisis.

Questions also loom over the fate of all other government services — including police and fire departments, higher education, and the court and prison systems — if the state does compensate schools for the money they will lose. Budgets for those services could be reduced by up to 99 percent.

There is no doubt among officials across Colorado that the initiatives, particularly Amendment 60 and Prop 101, would impact the public in a significant and visible way, from public safety to road quality. More than half of Colorado’s roads have been declared in poor condition and 128 bridges structurally deficient by the Department of Transportation. With any of the “Big Three” in place, no one can guess where the funds to make necessary improvements would come from.

The Larimer County government, for example, would lose $7 million in ownership tax, said John Knezovich, a certified public accountant and former mayor of Fort Collins. “Every penny currently going into the road and bridge fund — over a four-year period, that money would just disappear.”

Amendment 60 would also require publicly-owned enterprises, which include the University of Colorado, Denver International Airport, the Division of Wildlife, and wastewater and landfill services around the state, to start paying property taxes.

What those taxes add up to is unknown, as these properties have not been appraised before, Joe Watt of the Bell Policy Center points out, but “it is easy to grasp that these [taxes] would be passed directly to consumer (fliers, hunters, water drinkers) because these are generally not-for-profit outfits. Costs go up, they have to charge more.”

And while local residents will see some reduction in their property taxes, the expenses will be shared by all users. Taxes for Boulder County residents, for example, will drop because the University of Colorado’s will increase, but students from around the state are likely to see a rise in tuition.

Steve Miller, the Larimer County Assessor, who would be tasked with assigning values to local public enterprise properties, doesn’t know how he would begin to do that. “I don’t know how this could possibly work,” he said. “We don’t need more constitutional stuff piled onto the mess that we call a property tax system.”

Also under Amendment 60, counties would allow all property owners, regardless of their status as a resident, to vote on property taxes, a provision that raises various concerns across Colorado. In Larimer County, budget director Bob Keister has pointed out that to develop an election system for 25,000 non-resident voters, the county would have to divert funds from other services.

In Summit County, where a substantial number of homes are owned by second-home owners, some towns are concerned that ballot measures popular among full-time residents could fail because of second-home owners who only spend half their winters in town.

Most counties do not have precise budgets worked out for the potential scenario that any of the initiatives pass, but all foresee devastating cuts to every department.

Boulder County, which does have a contingent plan, warns of decreased funding for police patrol and crime prevention, reductions in traffic enforcement, and other police services like crime analysis and investigative work becoming less timely. Snow removal will be compromised, wastewater services will be reduced and utility rates will increase. Similar cuts will be visible with all other services, from animal control to waste reduction programs to libraries. The city is also considering increasing parking rates and overtime fines.

The initiatives would hit some counties harder than others. Calvin Hamler, finance director for Pueblo County, said, “I think we’re different from a lot of counties in that we have a lot of social needs here. Our unemployment is very high, and so the demand for these services is higher.”

If Proposition 101 passes, Pueblo County will have to cut a lot of the outside, non-mandated social services that Hamler says are in high demand, such as community health centers, children’s and women’s resources, detox services, and environmental groups. If these are not done away with, he said, they would certainly be hit the hardest.

Pueblo’s ability to apply for matching grants from the state for projects like road repair and construction would be affected as well, because the up-front funds required, even if they would be reimbursed by the state later, would be unavailable. “If we can’t afford the match, we can’t afford the grant,” Hamler said.

“We already have a very bare-bones budget,” he continued, referring to the $10 million the county recently cut just to balance next year’s budget. Combined with the weakened economy, Hamler said, “We’re in a perfect storm now.”

John Hickenlooper, left, and Dan Maes at Thursday's Colorado Nonprofit Association debate. (Photo by John Tomasic)

Hickenlooper debated Maes at the Denver event Thursday, but American Constitution Party candidate and former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo backed out reportedly because he was scheduled to debate Maes in northern Colorado Thursday night. Tancredo initially backed all three measures but now supports Amendment 60 and Proposition 101.

The state’s nonpartisan Blue Book, which explains for voters the effects of initiatives that appear on the ballot, says that if all three pass, the state general fund will be effectively emptied of revenue — that is, that the state will lose $4 billion and, due to state education funding laws, the state’s entire discretionary spending budget will go to education.

Coming from Maes, the news that there is little appetite for the initiatives should cheer analysts and lawmakers who have repeatedly expressed alarm at the possibility that voters might pass any of the proposals.

Maes not only supports one of the initiatives but he has also been campaigning most of the last year among the hard-core Tea Party constituency that’s fed up with government spending.

Indeed, Tea Party rallies provided rich venues for the signature gatherers who worked to land the initiatives on the ballot.

“This goes beyond cutting fat, beyond cutting into muscle. We’ll be cutting into the bone. Nothing will be sacred,” Maes said. He said school budgets would be slashed and dangerous prisoners would be paroled. “The question is how much can we move more to the private and nonprofit sectors? That’s my goal, with or without these three initiatives.”

Hickenlooper said that the prospect of governing and keeping business thriving in the state should the proposals pass is “unimaginable.”

“The first thing to do is to work feverishly to make sure that none of them pass,” Hickenlooper said.

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The New York Times this morning filled roughly a third of a page with a story about the proposals, creating the odd juxtaposition of Douglas Bruce and Lady Gaga being pictured one above the other, safely separated, of course, by a sea of gray type.

The Times spoke to people on both sides of the debate, but primarily made the case that even most Colorado Republicans think the three measures go too far and should be defeated.

“The Bad Three,” as they are known — at least to opponents — have been a key point of differentiation among Colorado’s candidates for governor, though American Constitution Party candidate Tom Tancredo recently indicated he may no longer support all the measures.

Amendment 60 would cut mil levies and roll back some previous tax increases; Amendment 61 would prohibit the state from borrowing money, require local governments to get voter approval to borrow and require them to pay back all new debt within 10 years; and Proposition 101 would cut the state income tax rate from 4.63 percent to 3.5 percent, cut vehicle registration fees and taxes and eliminate most telephone taxes and fees. Analysts up and down the political spectrum have said the proposals would slash state revenue by a billion dollars and alter the shape of government in the state.

Democrat John Hickenlooper said he opposes all three measures — Amendments 60 and 61 and Proposition 101. American Constitution Party candidate Tom Tancredo said he supports all three measures. Republican Dan Maes said he supports Amendment 60 but opposes 61 and 101.

Hickenlooper said passing any one of the initiatives would put an “unreasonable strain on the state.”

Tancredo said he recognizes that “everybody thinks they are draconian in nature” but that he thinks “the people of the state of Colorado are not under-taxed. We are over-governed” and that the three measures are a reaction to the fact that people feel over-burdened by government.

Maes Thursday said that if the state was flush, he would probably support all three but, given the state is expecting a $1 billion shortfall next year, he said he didn’t think it was a good idea to cut state revenues by an additional billion, which passage of all three might do.

Maes said all three issues garnered more than 150,000 signatures in getting on the ballot and are a reflection of the anger people feel toward state government.

Current Democratic governor Bill Ritter condemned the measures on the campaign trail before exiting the governor’s race and in his state of the state speech in the spring. He said the Colorado government, already one of the leanest in the country, would be transformed by the measures. “Somethings would just have to go away,” he told the Colorado Independent in December.

One-time Republican front-runner in the race Scott McInnis, the six-term congressman who lost to Maes in last month’s GOP primary, also rejected the proposals. He said the “math just doesn’t add up.”

Opposition to the three measures, joined by citizen rights groups and a host of good government groups in the state, is well-funded and well-organized.

Proponents of the measures, however, have been hard to identify and difficult to pin down. Petition gatherers for the measures were a staple at tea party events throughout the fall and spring, many of whom turned out to be paid or supported illegally. A court case against the initiatives argued by attorney Mark Grueskin turned up evidence that Bruce, a controversial former lawmaker and the author of the state’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights, had authored the initiatives and had directed the proponents and petition gatherers behind the scenes. Bruce has sparred with judges and prosecutors all summer over the matter.

[ Image: Hickenlooper, Maes, Tancredo ]

—
Additional reporting by John Tomasic.

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Two years later, voters in Washington state approved a similar measure, outlawing programs that benefit women and minorities in public education, health and public employment. Michigan voters adopted a similar Connerly law in 2006.

And this year, Connerly has high goals for repeats in what he is calling “Super Tuesday for Equal Rights” – campaign efforts in Colorado, as well as Missouri, Arizona, Nebraska and Oklahoma. In Colorado, as elsewhere, Connerly and his supporters are calling their effort a “civil rights initiative” to end “preferential treatment.” Always, they avoid the term “affirmative action” – much to the dismay of opponents, who warn that programs that benefit women and minorities would be gutted if the measure passes.

When he appeared at a kick-off for the Colorado campaign last year, Connerly was flanked by state Sen. Dave Schultheis and Rep. Kent Lambert, both conservative Republicans from Colorado Springs. During the press conference, Connerly announced that it is time to end what he called “double standards.”

“What we’re about to do — what we’re setting upon a course to do — is to bring a single standard to every government agency and every village and hamlet in this country,” Connerly told The Rocky Mountain News.

(Since that initial appearance, neither Lambert nor Schultheis, who are best known for their stances opposing illegal immigration in Colorado, have, not surprisingly, not resurfaced for public appearances promoting Connerly’s Colorado proposal, which will be Amendment 31 if enough signatures are collected to make the ballot. Schultheis in particular outraged many in Colorado when he sent a letter to a Greeley paper in October, 2006, wondering if the family of three children who had died in a car accident were in the state legally.)

But in the dozen years since Proposition 209 passed in California, investigative reports have revealed that Connerly likely has much more than altruism and racial double standards in mind: It’s called money. Lots and lots of money.

In its winter 2008 issue, Ms. magazine published an investigative package detailing the millions that Connerly has raked in over the past 12 years, engaging in what is described as a “good ole boys” cottage industry, whose main beneficiaries are largely lily-white, male members of the building and construction industry – in other words, his consulting company’s longtime clients.

“Connerly and his firm [Connerly & Associates] have long consulted and lobbied for trade associations comprised of some of the most powerful players in the housing, building and public works construction industries – many of which depend on state and local governments for lucrative contracts,” according to the Ms. article, written by Mary Moore and Jennifer Hahn.

In the years since Prop 209 passed, Connerly has been “handsomely compensated,” the article notes. According to Internal Revenue Service filings, between 1998 and 2006 Connerly and his company have raked in a total of $8.3 million from his nonprofit American Civil Rights Institute, and another called the American Civil Rights Coalition.

“In addition to salary and benefits, Connerly receives expense accounts and fees for speaking, media interviews and consulting,” the article notes.

In 2006, Connerly’s compensation from his nonprofits totaled $1.6 million – which has drawn notice from members of Congress, who have called for an investigation into whether Connerly has excessively benefited from his nonprofits (Connerly has been reluctant to disclose the donors who are financing his anti-affirmative action efforts; a California lawsuit revealed that media mogul Rupert Murdoch and a handful of other wealthy conservatives largely financed the measure there).

That 2006 salary of $1.6 million is up – way up – from the $230,000 Connerly collected from his nonprofits in 1998. Since that year, his annual earnings have been steadily rising.

A June 23, 2003, investigative piece in The Sacramento Bee revealed that, the year before, Connerly pulled in more than $700,000 – including $314,079 in salaries from his nonprofits, $407,009 in speaking and consulting fees and $15,000 in fringe benefits. He was also reimbursed $174,353 for travel and other expenses.

The irony was not lost on critical California Assemblyman Fabian Nunez, a Democrat from Los Angeles.

“Clearly the objective here isn’t to create a colorblind society but to promote Mr. Connerly,” Nunez was quoted as saying.

For his part, in an interview with Ms. magazine, Connerly dismissed any claims that he is overpaid, claiming that he made $2 million a year when he was running Connerly & Associates full-time, which his wife now runs. He also rejected the notion that people working for nonprofits should “not make more than a certain amount.”

“That doesn’t take into account who the person is,” Connerly said. “I’m not your typical executive.”

The Ms. package, published in January, also includes a piece, written by Columbia and UCLA Law School professor Kimberle Crenshaw, examining the deceptive campaign tactics that were used in Connerly’s successful past campaigns in Michigan, California and Washington state. Those same tactics, as detailed last week by Colorado Confidential, are being replicated this year in Colorado.

For example, proponents of all the measures have purposely avoided the term “affirmative action” – describing their efforts as “promoting equality in the workplace,” and “ending preferential treatment.”

Crenshaw describes the deception as “the most audacious dimension of Connerly’s masquerade.”

“By selectively sampling from its martyr, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Connerly has appropriated the terminology, symbolism and moral authority of the civil rights movement to undo some of its most important victories,” Crenshaw writes. “The millions of U.S. Citizens((did she really capitalize this?)) who are primed to affirm any proposal framed as advancing civil rights are precisely those most at risk of being tricked into voting against their own interests.

“Women and black people were denied the vote in the past; today, they are deceived out of their votes.”

In Colorado, paid petition-circulators are currently working to collect the 76,047 valid signatures to qualify Connerly’s Amendment 31 for the November ballot.

This is the fourth in a multi-part series. Click here to read the first installment, which provides an overview of Ward Connerly’s Colorado operation and the proposed Amendment 31.

Click here for details about opponents’ plan to introduce another Colorado amendment that would freeze programs that benefit women and minorities in place.

Click here for a story of a young black woman who reported being misled — and a warning to read before you sign petitions that was issued by a state lawmaker.

And click here for an additional tale of warning from a Denver woman who has filed a complaint with the Secretary of State’s office after she was twice misled by petitioners in Colorado.

Cara DeGette is a senior fellow at Colorado Confidential and a columnist and contributing editor at The Colorado Springs Independent. E-mail her at cdegette@coloradoconfidential.com