April 30, 2013

Earlier this year, Colorado Springs’ former City Council placed an initiative on the ballot that would have increased their pay from $6,250 to $48,000.  That measure was soundly defeated, with 80% of voters rejecting it.  I wrote a blog in March, detailing why I thought the ballot language was intentionally deceptive.  The creators of the ballot language did their best to hide from voters the fact that there would be such a huge jump in pay.

Now the politicians are at it again, this time in Salida, CO.  In this case, the Salida Hospital Board is asking the voters to remove their term limits.  They are currently able to serve two four-year terms in this special district.  They are then able to run again after being off the board for 8 years.  If the voters determine it is best for their community to eliminate term limits altogether, that is their choice.  What I object to, again, is the ballot language.

I’m not sure who precisely drafted the ballot language, but the Salida Hospital Board had to approve it.  And this language serves the interest of the board members.

I won’t go as far as calling the Salida ballot language intentionally deceptive, but I will call it intentionally manipulative.  The ballot language states:

“So that the voters of the Salida Hospital District may decide who will best serve them on the Board of Directors, shall the term limits imposed by Article XVIII, Section II, of the Colorado Constitution, be eliminated for the directors of the Salida Hospital District?”

You can see for yourself by looking at the sample ballot.   The real ballot question should be everything after the first comma, starting with the word “shall”.  Everything before the first comma intends to manipulate the voter into eliminating term limits.  First, they are implying that the only way for voters to decide who will best serve them is to eliminate term limits.  Second, they are leading the voter to a yes vote.  Who wouldn’t want to decide who would best serve them on the Hospital Board?  This is clearly a manipulation.

Is there a reason the board had to add editorial commentary to the ballot language?  They act as if they know better than the voter which way this issue should be decided.

If you want more details about the ballot issue, read this informative opinion piece by a Salida resident.

Elected officials, the voters are not uneducated peasants.  You serve us, not the other way around.  Please stop trying to trick us.  We are getting tired of it.

Those who follow politics in Colorado Springs remember the controversy during the 2010 election about deceptive ballot language.  This language was on the question of increasing the term limits of El Paso County Commissioners from two to three terms. But the ballot language used the phrase:

“Shall persons elected to the office of county commissioner be limited to three (3) consecutive terms, a modification of the current limits permitted by Article XVIII, Section 11 of the Colorado constitution?”

What voters want in ballot language is to be completely transparent as to what a ‘yes’ vote actually means.  In the case of the El Paso County Commissioners, if you didn’t already know they were limited to two terms, you would think that a ‘yes’ vote meant you were limiting their term further than where it currently was. Voters were so incensed, that the Commissioners were forced to place the question back on the ballot in 2012 with clear wording.

Now the ballots are out in the City of Colorado Springs and whoever was in charge of the wording did it again.  Issue 2 addresses a City Council Pay increase.  This was brought to the ballot by a slim City Council majority to raise the pay of City Council members from $6,250 to $48,000 per year.  Most voters, who are struggling in this economy, would not be in favor of increasing the pay of government employees by that margin.  In fact, a taxpayer advocate, Paul Kleinschmidt, believes, based on an informal poll his group conducted, that as many as 80% of voters would be against this increase.  Unless you have deceptive ballot language:

“Shall article XIII, section 13-20(B) of the Charter of the City of Colorado Springs, be amended to read:  All Councilmembers shall receive an annual stipend of $6,250 payable pursuant to ordinance; provided, however, that commencing May 1, 2015, all persons holding the office of Councilmember shall receive an annual salary equal to fifty percent (50%) of the Mayor’s salary as authorized in article XIII, section 13-20(A), above, payable pursuant to ordinance, in lieu of an annual stipend.  The City of Colorado Springs shall provide employee benefits to Councilmembers in the same manner as provided to full-time City employees?”

If you are just a normal voter, going through your life working and raising your family, do you know how much the Mayor makes?  Wouldn’t it have been more transparent to say “raise Councilmember pay from $6,250 to $48,000”?

I won’t get in to why I believe a raise of their pay is a bad idea.  That isn’t the point.  The point is this language intends to deceive voters.  Colorado Springs residents were outraged about deceptive ballot language in 2010, and I urge them not to be fooled again.

Doesn’t everyone have the right to self-defense?  Don’t women?  Of course they do, but women are more often threatened and victimized than men, and thus even more in need of firearms than men are.

According to a CDC study, “One in six women has experienced stalking victimization in which she felt very fearful or believed she would be harmed.”  And that’s just here in the United States.  In our beloved Declaration of Independence, detailed among our inalienable rights are the rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  Implicit in the right to life is the right to protect your life—and that doesn’t mean dialing 911 and hoping for the best.  It means having the right to protect and defend your own life.

But what of women in countries where that right is not as defined?  And what if those countries have high crime rates, or where women, under the law, are not created equal?

Guns Across the Planet

"Some people keep guns for fun, but for us, women, it is a necessity."

In Punjab, one of India’s most prosperous provinces, women have been issued 31,300 “arms licenses.”  Women there cite rising rates of sexual harassment and robbery for their need to arm themselves.  This despite having much more onerous firearms ownership laws than in the United States, and a storied history of personal disarmament.

In Turkey, where the patriarchal culture often fails to protect even obviously at-risk women, “honor-related” homicides are all too common. This is a country where a woman’s most likely assailant is her husband, brother, or other male relative, and only now is there even a debate on a woman’s right to bear arms.

In the midst of this culture stands Hayrettin Bulan, a male women’s rights activist, training women in self-defense, including the use of firearms.  Although general access to firearms in Turkey is not a problem of late (there was strict gun control in 1911, followed by genocide of the defenseless Armenians), it is not as socially acceptable for a woman to arm herself as it is for a man.

Sounds like a war on women to me.

And Who Will Stand With Them?

And where is the National Organization for Women (NOW) on this?  Aside from supporting restrictions on perpetrators of domestic violence, they offer nothing to support the rights of women, here or internationally, to protect themselves with firearms.  Aren’t women who don’t live with our constitutional protections entitled to defend their life from those who threaten them?E

Let’s hear it for being “created equal” and having a solid right to keep and bear arms.

Romney took the lead among women voters, who supported the former Massachusetts governor 46 percent to Mr. Obama’s 44 percent, which is within the poll’s margin of error. In April, Mr. Obama had an edge among women voters, with 49 percent support to Romney’s 43 percent.

What caused the President to lose 5% of the women’s vote in the span of one month?  A couple of new data points from this week may help answer the question:

• According to a poll by Rasmussen Reports, 88% of American adults report paying more for groceries this year as compared to last year.
• According to a new USA Today/Gallup poll, 55 percent of those surveyed believe the economy will get better under Mitt Romney, but only 46 percent said the same of President Barack Obama.

In many families, women run the family finances.  They know how hard it has been to manage the family budget under this President’s policies.  They do most of the grocery shopping, buy the school clothes and drive the carpool.  They have seen the incremental reductions in their buying power add up during the Obama administration and are simply more confident in Romney’s ability to turn to economy around.

President Obama also miscalculates how women think.  This is not 50 years ago, where the norm was a family where the man looked after the wife and children.  This is 2012.  Women are strong, independent, running businesses and raising families.  The argument made in the President’s online ad “The Life of Julia” is that women need to be cared for, because they can’t – or won’t – care for themselves.

That is a tired, old argument, and women are not buying it.  In feminist terms, we don’t need to be shackled to anyone.  And that includes the federal government.  We are smarter than that.   Mitt has my vote.

Many Colorado Counties have a position called Public Trustee that oversees foreclosures in the County. This position is appointed by the Governor. If Public Trustees do not perform, you can’t vote them out; they have no direct accountability to the people they serve.

Fifty-four counties combine the Public Trustee duties with the County Treasurer—an elected position. If voters are not happy with this elected official, they can use the ballot box as a remedy.

Makes sense to me. Why should the Governor have the power to appoint a county official? And the icing on the cake: Counties choosing to combine these roles save money. The County Treasurer receives a small portion of the Public Trustee’s salary for the extra responsibility, but there is no longer an additional high-level state employee.

Now, Representative Ray Scott from Grand Junction has offered a bill, 12-1329, that allows counties to place themselves in the appropriate category to be able to combine the roles. Thus far, only 3 Counties (El Paso, Mesa and Weld) are part of this bill allowing them local control over the decision to combine the elected County Treasurer role with the appointed Public Trustee duties. This seems like a straightforward yes vote.

Find the text of this bill here.

After brief testimony on Monday in the House Local Government Committee, with Douglas County joining the three others, the bill was laid over until at least next week for additional hearings.

Today, the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee hears Senator Shawn Mitchell’s bill 12-080, entitled “Concerning Notices of Reported Business Fiscal Impacts.”  You may know that this committee has a nickname:  The Kill Committee – where the Democrat majority in the Senate sends bills to die.  But we can still be hopeful.  This bill takes us in the right direction.

Currently when a bill is offered in the General Assembly, if there is a fiscal impact to a governmental body, there must be a fiscal note accompanying the bill that details what that fiscal impact is.

Senator Mitchell’s 12-080 requires a 5-day period following the introduction of new legislation or the notice of proposed rule-making, during which business may make comments regarding the business fiscal impact.  Following that 5-day period, Legislative Council prepares a notice of reported business fiscal impact.  That notice must accompany the fiscal note on a bill.  In rule making, the notice goes to the executive director of the department promulgating the rule change, and will be posted on the Legislative Council website.

If passed, will our legislators take into account that the bills they are voting on will financially impact businesses?  Again, we can be hopeful.

The only wonder is:  Why isn’t it obvious to a legislator to consider the impact on business when they pass laws and regulations?  It is the least they can do when they are supposed to derive their just powers from “the consent of the governed.”