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Broder: Initiative process bypasses Constitution By Bill McAllister <mailto:bmcallister@denverpost.com> Denver Post Washington Bureau Chief March 26 - WASHINGTON - Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., was recalling his four years in the Colorado Statehouse the other day. “You know, the most significant legislation” during that time came not from state lawmakers, but from the public, who used Colorado’s initiative process, he said. It’s unquestioned that lots of important laws got on the books in Colorado via the ballot box. Among them: term limits, revenue limits and restrictions on the Legislature’s power to levy taxes. No sooner had state lawmakers turned their backs on Gov. Bill Owens’ gun-control measures than advocates of the legislation were promising to take the measures directly to the voters. It all sounds as if the initiative process is a vital part of Colorado’s political life. David Broder, The Washington Post’s respected reporter and columnist, is not one to accept such conventional political wisdom without questioning what many leave unquestioned. In a new book to be released April 5, “Democracy Derailed: Initiative Campaigns and the Power of Money,” Broder trashes the initiative process as practiced in Colorado and especially California. He calls it “a radical departure from the Constitution’s system of checks and balances,” one that allows new laws to be enacted without the full airing of their possible consequences. Special-interest money and slick television campaigns have turned this favorite tool of populists and western progressives on its head, he argues. To Broder, the process has robbed state legislators in Colorado and elsewhere of their assigned roles in a democratic republic. They’re supposed to represent the public and to judge and evaluate the impact of new laws, he says in the book published by Harcourt Inc. As Broder sees it, the initiative process has become a playground for special interests, who are delighted to pay millions to run often-misleading campaigns to get the public to endorse their pet ideas. The syndicated columnist is appalled that Colorado voters apparently think so little of their lawmakers that they have robbed them of the power to raise taxes, one of the most fundamental powers of any legislature and a power essential to ensuring that public services are provided. The most damning campaigns Broder cites came in California, where the initiative campaign has created its own industry of consultants, petition gatherers and political advisers. The key to it all has become money. One consultant told Broder he first asks “the million-dollar question” - how much money do you have? - to any one who approaches him about running an initiative campaign in that state. “Whatever its flaws, this republic has consistently provided a government of laws,” Broder argues. “To discard it for a system that promises laws without government would be a tragic mistake.”
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