Guest Columns

Last week’s issue of The Colorado Statesman was host to a pair of guest judiciary commentary articles extolling the virtues of the newly-opened Colorado Justice Center.

Admittedly, it is an impressive edifice — as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted, with an “architectural grandeur” imposing a feeling of being “humbled before the majesty of the law.”

During the darkest days of the Cold War, a “hot line” was installed connecting the White House and the Kremlin as a safeguard against the inadvertent launch of nuclear missiles that would trigger the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) of both countries. Picking up this red telephone, at a time when all other phones were black, would ring the companion phone at the other end. A similar arrangement appears to exist between the editorial offices at the Denver Post and Governor Hickenlooper’s policy staff.

In 1963, my Dad and I heard the words spoken by Martin Luther King Jr. to a large crowd gathered at Cobo Hall in downtown Detroit following the Freedom Walk. It was a great speech. We did not know at that time that many of the words contained in that speech would soon be repeated to inspire not just those at Cobo Hall, but would inspire a nation and generations of Americans to bring to life those words of equality and justice for all carved in the bedrock of our country’s foundation and reiterated in the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln 100 years earlier.

Supporters of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) amendment would like Colorado taxpayers to believe it provides a simple braking mechanism on increases in state and local spending. And, for a few years in the mid-‘90s it probably did just that — slow the rate of growth in these governmental budgets. But it didn’t take long for the finaglers (think lobbyists, tax lawyers, JBC members, OSPB staff and the half dozen other legislators who actually understand how the long bill works) to begin constructing TABOR escape hatches for their favored initiatives.