Face the State

Did we hear that right? Attorney General John Suthers has teamed up with House speaker Andrew Romanoff, D-Denver, to remove key provisions of the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights from the state Constitution?

SuthersUniv. of Colorado

"The current situation with the budget is untenable," says Suthers spokesman Nate Strauch. "It's the best solution that he's seen and it might be one of the only ways to fix the conflict between Amendment 23 and TABOR."

"It" is a plan touted at a press conference today that would ask voters for a change to the Constitution removing both TABOR and Amendment 23, a constitutional mandate requiring large annual increases in K-12 education funding. Those education funding provisions would be moved into state statute.

Romanoff has made clear for months his intention to "clean up" the Constitution with a referred measure. On a conference call with liberal activists in January, he proposed a multi-year plan to first free the legislature from the Constitution's "single-subject" rule for Constitutional changes, then propose a single, wide-sweeping amendment that would not normally pass muster with the state Supreme Court.

The currently-proposed plan would not first ask for a waiver from the single-subject rule, since, according to Suthers, the changes would all be related to education funding.

Gov. Bill Ritter, a Democrat, backs the plan, which has yet to be officially drafted for consideration by the General Assembly. Sen. Steve Johnson, R-Larimer Co., has broken party ranks to join Suthers in supporting the Romanoff plan as its Senate sponsor.

Johnson supported Referendum C in 2005, a statewide "de-Brucing" which lifted state government from TABOR spending caps for five years. Sen. Nancy Spence, R-Calhan, was, like Johnson, a supporter of Ref. C but today spent time with reporters explaining her opposition to the speaker's proposal.

Sources in both the House and Senate tell Face The State that GOP caucus leaders are busy lining up votes to keep the referred measure from obtaining the required two-thirds super majority required to place the amendment on the ballot.

FTS' Brad Jones discusses this story
on 1310 KFKA's "Amy Oliver Show" [Streaming Audio]