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Opponents blister business-backed ballot-reform measure in Colorado Legislature

A business-backed bill that would require the state to assign fiscal-impact statements to citizen-generated ballot initiatives hangs in the balance after citizen activists piled into a committee hearing on Wednesday and accused supporters — including Gov. John Hickenlooper — of trying to push the bill through the Legislature to protect the oil and gas industry.

After a roughly two-hour hearing, Rep. Su Ryden — an Aurora Democrat and chairwoman of the House State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee — postponed a vote on the bill for what she said will likely be about a week.

Ryden said she wanted to give committee members time to digest all of the testimony offered on House Bill 1057, but Rep. Patrick Neville, R-Castle Rock, accused Ryden afterward of trying to buy time to twist Democrats’ arms to kill the bill.

HB 1057 — sponsored by Rep. Lois Court, D-Denver, and House Minority Leader Brian DelGrosso, R-Loveland — would assign the nonpartisan Legislative Council to determine the fiscal impacts that ballot initiatives would have on state revenues and spending and require that people gathering signatures for those initiatives’ petitions display the fiscal note. It also would require that the primary supporters of the initiatives be present at hearings regarding the efforts.

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