Amendment 42 is a very well-thought-out solution to the problem of the ridiculously low federal minimum wage. It would raise Colorado’s minimum wage immediately from $5.15 to $6.85, and then it woud adjust the minimum wage every year to account for inflation. This would ensure we don’t see a decade go by without a raise to the minimum wage. And since it’s in the constitution, the minimum wage would not be at the mercy of a Governon who doesn’t believe in helping out the lower classes (e.g. Bill Owens).
YES!
Amendment 41 is a mess. Theoretically, it’s supposed to stop government officials from receiving money/gifts from special interests, and create an ethics board for oversight. But the language of the proposed amendment is so vague that it is open for multiple interpretations. And the supposedly objective ethics board can be made up of other government officials, who would probably not be as objective as expected.
I appreciate the ideals and efforts behind this, but it gets a NO! for poor implementation.
Amendment 40 would establish term limits for Colorado Supreme Court and Appellate justices. While I am in favor of term limits in both the executive and legislative branches, I think it’s a very bad idea to do so in the judicial branch. Justices become more effective at their job the longer they are on the bench. Forcing justices to step down after four years will create a major lack of institutional knowledge on our high courts.
That is not a good idea, in my opinion. NO!
Amendment 39 and Referendum J are two different methods to make the same change: require public schools to spend 65% of their budgets “in the classroom.” This sounds like a good idea, if you choose to ignore the support staff that a school needs. Schools need cafeteria staff, they need school nurses, they need busses and bus drivers and fuel for the busses. Schools need to spend money on administrative purposes and secretaries and office managers. In the real world, there’s no way that public education could survive as it is today.
And that gets a firm NO! from me.
Amendment 38 proposes to amend the Colorado Constitution, allowing changes to petition regulations for state and local laws. Theoretically, it gives citizens more of a voice in local politics. In practice, though, what it would do is drastically reduce oversight for petitions. It forbids governments from randomly sampling signatures, reduces the reasons for which a signature can be invalidated, places undue burden on the government to send out information on the proposals from proponents and opponents (instead of unbiased third-parties).
All this adds up to a big NO from me.
Every election year, I spend a lot of time researching the local ballot issues. But I almost never share that research with anyone except for my wife. I figured that I need to start sharing my hard work with others, so I present you with my first ever Colorado Voting Guide.
This isn’t going to be an unbiased guide, however. If you want one of those, there are plenty available on the web. Instead, I am going to point out how I am voting, and why. I will be spreading this guide out into seperate posts for each issue, to make it easy for you to skip to the issue that you are most interested in. Watch this space for more (hey, this’ll be live blogging for anyone here at 2:00pm on 11/2/2006).
