Democratic lawmakers are proposing what they described as “simple, limited suggestions” to amend the ballot initiative review process, which they insisted would increase transparency and efficiency. 

House Bill 1327, sponsored by Reps. Emily Sirota, D-Denver, and Meg Froelich, D-Englewood, and Sen. Cathy Kipp, D-Fort Collins, would impose the following changes:

• Requires groups or individuals submitting more than five drafts on the same subject in an election cycle to submit a chart explaining the differences between each version. Currently, petitioners can submit several iterations of the same initiative, often with very subtle differences that might be hard to detect upon reading. 

• Requires the Legislative Council to include an estimate of how much the initiative will change state and local government spending and revenue for proposed tax increases

• Requires the title board to disclose whether the initiative modifies, extends, or repeals existing law or creates a new law. For measures with tax increases, the board must include the maximum amount of change to state and local government revenue and spending for either the first or final fiscal year the initiative will be in effect. 

• Moves the title board’s final meeting from the third week in April to the first

• Requires petitioners to notify the Secretary of State when their initiative has received 25%, 50%, and 75% of the required number of signatures and when signatures are no longer being collect. The bill also allows the Secretary of State to impose a fine for noncompliance, not to exceed $1,500.

According to Sirota, more than 200 initiatives were filed in the 2024 election, but only seven made it to the ballot. 

“The volume that we’re seeing can clog up the process,” she said. “It requires significant staffing and is fairly opaque to the general public in terms of what is going on.”

Froelich said constituents often don’t pay attention to a ballot measure’s financial impact, pointing to last election’s Proposition 130, which directs the state to provide $350 million to local law enforcement agencies to help recruit, train and retain officers. In a year where the state faces a $1.5 billion deficit, lawmakers have proposed implementing that funding incrementally, starting with $35 million this year.

Also, implementing what’s called the “Healthy School Meals For All program,” approved by voters in 2022 through Proposition FF, has been a budget headache from the start. The ballot measure anticipated an annual cost of $100.7 million to provide breakfast and lunch to all public-school children, regardless of income. However, the costs, even in its first year, stood at $56 million more than the available funds.

Some lawmakers are gambling on two ballot measures, contained in House Bill 1274, that would ask voters in November to increase funding for the program by $95 million per year.

Froelich said they would like to address what she called “advantages” that wealthy special interest groups have over citizen-led coalitions, but that, due to constitutional limitations, the bill is the most they can do. 

“Where we can, we are trying to add transparency and efficiency to the ballot initiative review process,” she said. “This bill asks for transparency and efficiency in the process. It nibbles at the edges, but I do think it makes a difference.”

Community organizer Natalie Menten said she has run several citizen-led initiatives and agreed that changes need to be made to the process but called the bill “petition suppression.”

“This bill should alarm campaigns of every kind, whether they’re left, right, or center,” she said, adding that a constitutional amendment that proposed moving the deadline for turning in signed petitions up one week failed to pass. This bill would move that deadline up two weeks, and this time, the voters have no say in whether it passes. 

“I understand a desire to tighten up the blue book deadlines; I’ve been through the process enough times, I know,” she said. “But taking away a core constitutional right is not a pro-citizen solution.”

Having circulated a number of petitions herself, Menten said she would never tell volunteers how many more signatures need to be collected. If volunteers hear they’re getting close to 100%, they get lazy and stop collecting signatures, she said. Alternatively, if they hear they still have a ways to go, they get discouraged and give up. If anything, the timeline for collecting signatures should be a year, not six months.

“I can’t think of any reason why we couldn’t do that,” she said.  

The bill passed on an 8-3 party line vote, with Democrats voting in support and Republicans voting against it.