Steve Pomerance

I was surprised by a recent move in our Legislature by some Democrats who are pursuing House Joint Resolution 25-1023. This resolution, if passed by both houses, would initiate a lawsuit in state court to invalidate Article X, Section 20, of our state constitution, commonly known as TABOR. Their objective apparently is to disempower our ability to vote on state-level tax increases, a power that we voted for ourselves over three decades ago. They want to do this without having to put it on the ballot so we get the final say. The politicians’ position is based on the U.S. Constitution’s Article IV, the “Guarantee Clause,” which requires that states have “a Republican Form of Government.” Their argument is that this does not include “direct democracy,” like citizen-sponsored initiatives. Although the resolution specifically targets TABOR, this could end up being applied to other direct democracy votes, because the arguments would be the same. My first research was to look at which states ...

  “It’s going to be by design, or it will be by disaster.” That was the quote I heard related to how we respond to climate change. Perhaps this, expanded to include other areas, should be the theme for the Council’s upcoming goal setting session. The Marshall fire reminds us that climate change’s drier conditions plus stronger winds makes it incumbent on us to do our best to reduce the risks. We may need to increase the work on our Open Space areas by doing more thinning and using more controlled burns. We also should put some serious focus on helping all homeowners, especially at the city’s edges, reduce their risks and those they might impose on their neighbors, by ensuring that all buildings are more fire resistant. Given climate change’s increased flooding, we really, really, really need a comprehensive flood management plan, so that we know what improvements or other actions are worth doing, which ones should have priority, and how we are going to fund them. With the propo...

On Monday I attended a very interesting meeting that was part of Governor Hickenlooper’s project called TBD (To Be Determined) Colorado. This is a citizen-based effort funded by donations from individuals, foundations and corporations. Its purpose, in short, is to make policy, revenue and expenditure recommendations to the Legislature and the governor to improve Colorado’s quality of life. Apparently 40 similar meetings are to be held statewide, with a second round of meetings in May as well as various follow-up events. Given the attendance at our local meeting, some thousands of people will ultimately be involved. The meeting consisted of video presentations on a number of topics, including education, health, transportation, and the state budget. Each presentation was followed by a discussion in small groups with reporting out of some of each group’s conclusions. There was also a preliminary discussion about why we all value living in Colorado. The clear winner was, no surprise, t...

I`ve been involved in local politics for going on 30 years now, and I was under the illusion that there wasn`t much left that could surprise me. But the recent lawsuit challenging the “Taxpayers Bill of Rights,” TABOR, caught me completely off guard. This lawsuit against the State of Colorado was filed by a group of mostly current and former elected officials. It argues that TABOR violates Article IV, Section 4, of the U.S. Constitution, which in part states that “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” The lawsuit claims, among other things, that TABOR “compromises and undermines the fundamental nature of the state`s Republican Form of Government.” And “By removing the taxing power of the General Assembly, the TABOR amendment renders the Colorado General Assembly unable to fulfill its legislative obligations under a Republican Form of Government.” The New Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “republic” as (1) a government ha...

Once again, the Colorado Legislature has taken up the job of amending the Colorado Constitution to make it more difficult for others to do the same. The current proposal, Senate Continuing Resolution-001, has many similarities with other recent attempts, including Referendum A (1996) and Referendum O (2008). Unfortunately, the Legislature is acting with tone-deafness to Colorado citizens` desire for direct democracy, and without adequate consideration of the effects of the proposed changes. So I expect that, once again, the proposal will lose at the ballot box. This particular attempt to take power away from the citizens is apparently in response to complaints by opponents of the 2010 Amendments 60, 61, and Proposition 101 that they had to spend money to defeat these proposals. While I agree that these proposals were ill-conceived and dangerous, part of democracy is fighting bad ideas. Currently, citizens can initiate legislation by gathering signatures to put either a statute or...

State Senator Rollie Heath has proposed temporarily increasing various taxes here in Colorado to address a critical funding shortfall in K-12 education. His proposal actually just returns some taxes to previous rates, and would generate an estimated $1.63 billion in additional revenue, averaging somewhat over $500 million per year for three years. Although these funds are very important, what`s more important is that this proposal misses a huge opportunity to permanently improve school funding and, at the same time, reduce taxes on ordinary Coloradoans. The Legislature, without going to the ballot, could remove the prohibition on the use of school impact fees that is in the state statutes, and grant the power to school districts to impose such fees. Then school districts could either impose school impact fees on new development (no TABOR ballot vote on the fees is required, but issuing bonds would still require a vote), or try to get their voters to pass tax increases to cover the ...

Of the 15 books I`ve read on the financial crisis, by far the most interesting is “The Origin of Financial Crises” by George Cooper. Cooper`s fundamental observation, backed up by numerous examples and detailed analyses, is that the natural behavior for asset and credit markets is characterized by “positive feedback” where, once started in a particular direction, the market accelerates, leading to a rapidly inflating bubble. Eventually, there is a crisis, and when the bubble bursts, an accelerating collapse. What is frightening is that many societal and political processes follow a similar escalating course, perhaps far more than are self-regulating like the markets for goods and services that we all learned about in Econ 101: Markets operate with “negative feedback” and thus reach stable equilibrium as if regulated by a thermostat, historically called the “invisible hand,” which allocates goods and services to maximize societal welfare, the mantra of laissez-faire economists and f...