The 2022 session of both houses of the Colorado state legislature begins next Wednesday. This is a good time to review the history of our state legislature. It has been a lengthy history of the legislature slowly losing its power over state government. That erosion of legislative power continues.

Let’s start with the Colorado legislature back in the 1890s. It was the principal lawmaking body for state government and Colorado cities and counties as well. The legislature created cities and counties and passed laws for them, often enacting legislation that applied to only one specific city or county.

Also in the 1890s the state legislature controlled how long its sessions would last. Adjournment for the year came when legislative leaders decided work was done and it was time to go home. The speaker of the state House of Representatives and the president of the state Senate could keep their respective houses in session as long as they thought necessary.

And legislators could run for reelection as long as they wanted to, even up to a ripe old age. Turnover was relatively high in the 1890s, but a number of individual legislators, many from rural areas of the state, could decide to run repeatedly for reelection and, if successful, become experts in legislative procedure and the problems facing the state of Colorado at that time.

The state legislature in the 1890s had control over all state taxing and spending. The legislature enacted the taxes and set the tax rates.

The revenues that came into the state treasury were spent by the state legislature by passing appropriation bills setting the exact amounts to be spent. Only borrowing money through bond issues required a vote of the citizenry.

Election procedures for the state legislature were decided by the legislators themselves. They had chosen multi-member districts, where a number of legislators were elected from only one district, over single-member districts. The legislators drew their own legislative district boundary lines, usually gerrymandering the legislative districts to favor rural areas over cities.

The state legislature in the 1890s appointed Colorado’s two U.S. senators, a practice authorized by the original U.S. Constitution of 1789. Frequently candidates would campaign for legislative seats by telling voters who they would vote for in the next U.S. Senate election, hoping to borrow the popularity of their chosen U.S. Senate candidate.

At the turn of the 20th Century, many of these powers of the Colorado state legislature began to change.

Voters adopted a constitutional amendment in 1904 that granted Colorado cities the power to govern themselves rather than be ruled by the state legislature. This “Home Rule” movement spread from Denver to almost every other city in the state. Mayors and city councils seized the local government powers that had previously belonged to the state legislature.

Then a blow was struck to state legislature powers in 1910. Colorado voters adopted the Initiative, a constitutional amendment that permitted average citizens to propose new state laws and new state constitutional amendments. If a requisite number of voter signatures could be garnered on a petition, the proposed new law or constitutional amendment would go directly to the voters for approval, bypassing the legislature completely.

Adoption of the Initiative forced the Colorado legislature to share its two most important powers – the power to pass laws and the power to propose constitutional amendments – with the citizenry. Over the ensuing years, laws and constitutional amendments could be adopted, and were adopted, that limited the powers and activities of the state legislature itself.

In 1913, the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution took away the state legislature’s power to appoint U.S senators. Henceforth, U.S. senators in every state were elected by popular vote.

In 1966, Colorado voters adopted a state constitutional amendment mandating that all Colorado state legislative districts be single-member districts – no multi-member districts allowed. And, in 1974, Colorado voters passed another constitutional amendment requiring that state legislative district lines be drawn, not by the state legislature, but by a state commission appointed by legislative leaders and the Chief Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court.

In just eight years, 1966 to 1974, the Colorado state legislature lost the majority of its powers to determine its own election procedures and districting processes.

In 1988, Colorado voters adopted a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment limiting the session length to 120 days. No longer could state legislators, particularly the speaker of the state House and the president of the state Senate, control the length of the legislative calendar.

In 1992 a citizen-initiated and voter approved constitutional amendment took effect that limited Colorado state legislators to eight years in the state House and eight years in the state Senate. The effect of these term limits was to lessen the experience that come from long service on the job.

Also in 1992, state voters adopted the initiated TABOR Amendment (Taxpayers’ Bill Of Rights), which required “a vote on all tax increases.” This removed from the state legislature the power to raise taxes as it sees fit. TABOR made increasing taxes, no matter how great the need perceived by the legislature, extremely difficult.

Since the adoption of TABOR, the state legislature and libertarian-minded anti-tax elements in Colorado have battled at the ballot box over control of taxes. Already an initiated proposal is on the ballot for 2022 that will cut state income tax rates down to a lower percentage, whether the state legislature likes it or not.

Our point is this: the longtime history of the Colorado state legislature is one of eroding authority through citizen-initiated amendments to state laws or the state constitution. We approve of a few of these reforms. Others we believe to be harmful to the effective operation of the state legislature.

The cumulative effect of all these limitations, both desirable and undesirable, is to challenge the state legislature’s ability to come to grips with Colorado’s many problems, fiscal and otherwise.

As the 2022 session of the Colorado state legislature gets underway, keep in mind that this is now a legislative body that must fight to preserve and work to regain its governing powers as well as write our laws.

Tom Cronin and Bob Loevy write about Colorado and national politics.