Steve Pomerance

  I attended the court hearing last Thursday on the challenge to the ballot title for the referendum on the CU South annexation passed by the council a year ago. (Note: The council could have held a special election last January, avoiding eight months of delay.) The judge ruled that she did not have jurisdiction, basically because of the council’s amendment a few years ago to the Boulder Revised Code that said that no state laws apply to the initiative, referendum and recall processes, other than those related to certain criminal offenses. (The Code contains laws passed by the council; the Charter can only be amended by citizen vote.) Since neither the Charter nor the Code contain any procedure for challenging ballot titles, the judge, and the rest of us, were left hanging.  Additionally, because of this amendment to the Code, there is not even a legally required format for the petition itself. So that gets made up by the city (also unchallengeable, by the way). And that t...

  In 1999, a group of citizens placed on the ballot and voters passed what might have been the most important reform of Boulder’s election laws ever. It limited donations to candidates’ “official candidate committees” to $100 per person. Donations to “unofficial candidate committees” (candidate advocacy groups other than the candidates’ OCCs) are also limited to $100 per person.  And coordination between these UCCs and the candidate’s OCCs is strictly forbidden other than cost sharing for advertising space. The initiative petition process has also been reformed. In 2018, the council-appointed election working group proposed, and voters approved, charter reforms that tied the number of signatures required for initiated ordinances to the actual number of voters rather than to the highly variable number of registered voters, limited council amendments after passage to those consistent with the “basic intent” of the measure, and gave the council power to implement on-line petiti...

Clear information has been lacking about the rules on the city’s petitioning process. Here are the basics from state and local law: The 1970 home rule amendment to the Colorado Constitution Article XX added Section 9. This grants citizens the power to amend home rule city charters, and directs the Legislature to set the rules for such charter amendments. It also added Section 8, which states that this amendment supersedes any parts of the constitution that are not consistent with it. In 1971, the Legislature passed its Home Rule Act to implement Article XX’s amendments. Its legislative declaration in C.R.S. 31-2-202 states that it supersedes all other provisions. In C.R.S. 31-2-210, the act set the signature percentages and timing rules — 5 percent of registered voters for “regular” (council) elections, 10 percent for “special” (all other) elections, 90 days to collect and submit signatures, and signature submission to be done by 90 days before the election. Boulder Charter Sec...

By  MATT BENJAMIN ,  ED BYRNE ,  ALLYN FEINBERG ,  MARK MCINTYRE ,  STEVE POMERANCE ,  EVAN RAVITZ ,  TYLER ROMERO ,  MICHAEL SCHREINER ,  JOHN SPITZER  and  VALERIE YATES We urge city of Boulder voters to vote  yes  on Ballot Question 2G, which reads, “Shall Sections 38, 45, and 56 of the City Charter be amended pursuant to Ordinance 8274 to allow the Boulder City Council to adopt ordinances that permit use of electronic petitions and to permit on-line electronic signing or endorsement of initiative, referendum, and recall petitions?” The city of Boulder’s Campaign Finance/Elections Working Group unanimously recommended this to Council, who unanimously voted to put it on the ballot. (The initiative, referendum and recall processes are the elements of direct democracy. The initiative is where a group of citizens gathers enough signatures to put a proposed piece of legislation on the ballot and asks the voters to ap...

Here we are starting 2018. We have a highly educated and engaged citizenry, a smart City Council, and a hard-working city staff. Yet any number of people I know are worried about the next city project that will likely go awry and leave them, once again, feeling disenfranchised and stuck with a result that they know is far from optimal. Why are we still struggling with this sort of systemic failure? What is the missing piece? The city manager is responsible for the city’s operations and budget, and the city attorney is responsible for writing and enforcing the laws. But in Boulder we also spend a huge amount of time and energy pursuing new paths, dealing with new problems and opportunities, and attempting to be on the cutting edge in many areas at once. However, managing these types of activities is not really anyone’s primary responsibility, nor has there been any focused effort to consider what is required to do so successfully. The Public Participation Working Group touched on th...

The 2017 election was a wake-up call for citizens who thought that Boulder’s campaign finance reform laws would keep our elections open, transparent and not subject to excessive spending. These laws were put in place by a citizen initiative passed by the voters in 1999. They limit contributions to candidates’ official committees as well as to “unofficial candidate committees” (organized by third parties) to $100 per person, and provide matching city funds for candidates up to $10,000 if they abide by a $20,000 total limit. But this year, spending was dominated by “dark money,” paying for mailers, ads, phone banks, etc., in the name of Open Boulder and possibly others. These folks tried to avoid the city’s regulations by carefully avoiding the magic words of “vote for,” “vote against” and synonyms of these. These magic words are what are called “express advocacy” in federal case law, and Boulder’s laws regulate “expressly advocating.” So instead, Open Boulder used words like “endors...

2Q is by far the most dangerous measure that I’ve ever seen the city put on the ballot. Please vote “No” on 2Q! 2Q’s ballot title — which says that it removes some of the Charter’s conflicting requirements and obsolete provisions, and clarifies referendum and initiative requirements — makes it sound like it’s just housekeeping. But 2Q creates huge uncertainty for the municipal initiative process, and so will destroy this valuable aspect of direct democracy in Boulder. Initiatives are done because the citizens are not satisfied with the current city laws, or because they see an issue that has not been addressed by existing legislation. So initiatives are necessarily somewhat adversarial to the local power structure.Therefore, it is critical that the rules be clear and unambiguous, not add unnecessary delays, and not be subject to the discretion of the city staff or the City Council. Currently, Boulder’s municipal initiative process is carefully laid out in the Charter and works ...

Congratulations to Mary Young, Matt Appelbaum, Sam Weaver, Andrew Shoemaker and Macon Cowles for their election to the Boulder City Council. Mary, Sam and Andrew, the three new members, all have served on the city planning board, so have a good start on the steep learning curve that occurs when new council members are faced with the myriad of issues that council deals with. Thanks to all the citizens who worked hard to support and oppose the various ballot issues. Participation is what makes democracy work, and the high level of involvement by Boulder citizens is what will keep Boulder such a great place. I especially appreciate the people at New Era Colorado, who did such a spectacular job of involving younger voters in the No on 310 campaign. For the older folks like me, it is heartening to see this level of engagement. It makes me hopeful that there will be people around to keep Boulder’s activist politics alive and well. The defeat of Ballot Question 310 by more than a 2 to...

The Boulder City Council was on the right track Tuesday night when it unanimously approved a one-year fracking moratorium. Whether fracking can be done in a way that is environmentally benign is still an open question, but it is clear that this is not currently occurring on a consistent basis. So hitting the pause button until critical research is completed is the prudent thing to do. Whether the council will be able to hold that line after the first year is still an open question. It would have been a lot easier if the Legislature had moved forward on some of its fracking bills this session. But that would have required Gov. Hickenlooper to support the citizens rather than the oil and gas industry. Unfortunately, neither Tom Tancredo nor Scott Gessler, who are in the running to be his Republican opponent in 2014, represent a sufficient threat at this point to force the governor to shift his allegiance. Interestingly, new technology is emerging that could reduce fracking’s enviro...

The Daily Camera’s story of a week ago “Judge tosses Boulder ballot case, says there’s no right to a secret vote” discussed a case brought by the Citizens Center, a Colorado organization. This group’s claim, in short, is that the mail ballot election system used by some Colorado counties would allow anyone with a modicum of skill to match names to votes, given that they can get access to the ballots, envelopes, and county data-bases as allowed by the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA). This would violate the Colorado constitution, Article VII, Section 8, which states in part, “All elections by the people shall be by ballot, and in case paper ballots are required to be used, no ballots shall be marked in any way whereby the ballot can be identified as the ballot of the person casting it. The election officers shall be sworn or affirmed not to inquire or disclose how any elector shall have voted. In all cases of contested election in which paper ballots are required to be used, the bal...

Seth Brigham’s recent journey through the legal system points out some of the essential conflicts in how confrontations are dealt with in our society. To briefly and incompletely summarize Brigham’s situation, he was tossed out of a Boulder City Council meeting a couple of years ago for appearing in his underwear and raising issues about council members’ behavior. He sued over his treatment; the city settled and paid $10,000. This year, some council members apparently felt that Brigham was a threat because of some other incidents, so the city attorney asked the court to issue a temporary restraining order against him. On Aug. 6, Brigham had his court date about whether the restraining order was to be made permanent. Per the statute (CRS 13-14-102) and as practiced, a temporary restraining order can be issued “ex parte,” meaning that only one side is present to provide information. The real debate is at the permanent order hearing; in this case the judge delayed his decision so th...

In an excellent Daily Camera article entitled, “Boulder mayor: Financial disclosure, conflict-of-interest rules need review” (June 13, 2012), Mayor Matt Appelbaum said, “It’s really important that people see the council as transparent and that they see us as transparent because we are.” I certainly support Matt’s goal, but the current rules need a whole rewrite, not just a look-over. For example, suppose a Boulder council member said, “I think that the legislation before us would be great for Boulder, but my business will likely be hurt by it.” Most people would say that this council member has a fundamental conflict of interest and probably should not be voting on the matter. But under Boulder’s current laws, assuming that the business is not unique, this would not even be called a conflict of interest, and the council member could participate in discussions and vote. Governments have conflict of interest laws to provide the citizens some measure of assurance that their official...