Amendment 71, the big lie

By Peggy Tibbetts on November 3, 2016 • ( 0 )

Guest post by Phil Doe*

The propaganda barrage from the corporate sponsors of constitutional Amendment 71 is part of a continuing effort by the oil and gas industry to make the state their oyster. The industry wants no interference from citizens who believe they should have the right to protect themselves, their homes, their children, and their health from unreasonable threat.

The oil and gas industry, by some estimates, has spent over $28 million in the state to silence public opposition to hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas. Other corporate interests, such as hospitality, tobacco and health care have added millions more to stem minimum wage, health care and tobacco tax proposals.

It’s this kind of intrusion by special interests that caused voters in the state in 1910 to choose, overwhelmingly, to add a grassroots process to amend the Constitution. The process is called the initiative or direct democracy. It granted, to the people, the first right to legislate — a right superior even to the Legislature. It was designed to counteract unresponsive or corrupt government.

Despite what corporate interests and the state’s elite say, the truth is that Colorado’s Constitution has been revised by citizen initiative only 47 times over 116 years. Significant among the amendments are term limits, home rule for cities, GOCO funding for protection of public land and recreation, campaign finance reform, limits on taxation, school funding mandates and the decriminalization of marijuana.

The people have mostly used the initiative to foster good government, recognize and deal with existing realities (marijuana use), and find public funds to support public schools and the environment. Proposed constitutional amendments today include a raise in the minimum wage and a form of universal health care, neither of which the Legislature in 2016 could get done.

The 71ers want us to see the initiative process as unfair to rural people. One person, one vote is not a concept they readily accept when their aim is to let voters in low population areas run the show. They will give each of the state’s 35 senate districts veto power over the other 34. This is an ill-disguised attempt to create regional voting preference on a statewide issue. The attempt has been tried and struck down in five states as being offensive to the Equal Protection and Due Process provisions in the U.S. Constitution.

Chief among the fanciers of superior rights for rural voters is former state Sen. Greg Brophy from Wray. The 71ers brought him in as co-sponsor of 71 because a corporation cannot sponsor an initiative. Brophy’s across-the-aisle co-sponsor is former Democratic state Sen. Dan Gibbs. Brophy is receiving about $10,000 a month to pose as 71’s poster boy. Gibbs payoff is unknown.

Although the limited number of initiatives passed over 116 years gives the lie to the 71ers claim the initiative is too easy, they continue undaunted with this prevarication. What they really want is to increase the public costs of running an initiative so that only the wealthy will venture forth.

For example, the 71ers spent nearly $1 million getting enough signatures to have their initiative placed on the ballot. The expenditure comes to about $5 per individual signature. The proponents of the anti-fracking initiatives 75 and 78 spent over $500,000 getting signatures and barely failed. So $1 million is a reasonable threshold number for getting enough signatures on the ballot under the tight time frames the state allows.

Ginning up $1 million is well beyond the capacity of most grassroots organizations, and given 71’s restrictions, the cost of running a citizen initiative will go much higher. It will, in fact, insure the de facto repeal of the people’s right to legislate, but it will still be available to the wealthy power brokers, the very people the initiative was created to help control.

The last, and perhaps biggest, lie from 71’s advocates is that the people aren’t competent to protect themselves against bad ideas. State voters, however, have rejected all but 47 attempts to change the constitution, rejecting hundreds of proposed amendments.

Mostly, what the ruling elite secretly fears is public conversation on public policy, for a public conversation about civic life is at very heart of the initiative process. This fear is justified in a time of rising disgust and disaffection with political parties and legislative gridlock on many important issues facing our state today.

Vote no on 71. You owe it to yourself, and all those people decades ago that fought so hard to give you that right.

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*Phil Doe is environmental director for Be The Change, and has been fighting for Colorado’s water for most of his adult life. He served as Bureau Chief and Environmental Compliance Officer for the Bureau of Reclamation in the Department of Interior and was featured as a whistleblower on 60 Minutes. A former professor of English literature, he has published op-ed features in Rocky Mountain News, Denver Post, Colorado Central Magazine, and Counterpunch. His past grassroots efforts opposed the Animas-La Plata water project in southwest Colorado. He is a registered citizen lobbyist at the State Capitol and testifies at the federal and state legislative level on natural resource issues. He serves on the board of the grassroots group, Be the Change, and directs their environmental issues program, with a current focus on horizontal hydrofracking.