"We're always going to have discrimination," Ed Jones said. "But you don't try to be a colorblind society by discriminating, and that's what this thing was doing. It was discriminating against whites. It was discriminating against everybody else."

Jones, who is black, was talking the other day about affirmative action, the practice of giving consideration to race or gender as a factor in education, employment or contracting. He was also talking about Amendment 46, the first of 14 proposed amendments to the state constitution that will appear on the Nov. 4 ballot, the longest in the state's history.

Amendment 46, one of the most contentious on the long list, would end affirmative action in state college enrollment and the awarding of state contracts.

As a state senator, Jones, a Colorado Springs Republican, introduced a bill that would have eliminated affirmative action. It failed in the Legislature, but he predicted it would win easily at the polls.

CU-Boulder law professor Melissa Hart, co-chairwoman of the No on 46 Campaign, hopes for a different outcome. "The amendment does not target quotas, it does not target point systems," Hart said, referring to two widely disliked affirmative action tools used years ago. "Those things are already illegal."

The real effect of the amendment, she said, would be "to eliminate modest equal-opportunity programs like training and mentoring and outreach, things that people in our state favor. Things that give traditionally excluded members of our community a chance to become included and to have a shot at the American dream. We shouldn't be eliminating those programs."

Valery Pech Orr, executive director of the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, which is campaigning for the amendment, is a former Colorado Springs businesswoman who won a 1995 Supreme Court ruling restricting hiring preferences for minority-owned businesses seeking federal contracts.

She said that as the playing field for minorities and women has become more level, affirmative action is no longer needed.

"The 1964 Civil Rights Act needed to happen," Pech Orr said, referring to the legislative foundation of affirmative action. "Our government did need to intervene. But what happened is the pendulum swung way extreme, and it then became discriminatory against a whole other group of people. And when you give preference to one whole group or an individual, you are just automatically going to discriminate against another group or individual."

Hart disagreed affirmative action is no longer useful.

"The playing field is not level," Hart said. "Women still earn 70 cents on the dollar to men. Women of color earn - I believe it's 56 cents on the dollar to men. That is a dramatic difference. Nobody should think that we have achieved anything like equality in terms of opportunity in our society. So the whole idea that we've gotten to where we need to go and now what we can do is cut off equal-opportunity initiatives, I think, is simply false."

TABOR or not to TABOR

Amendment 59 would halt refunds due to taxpayers under the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights and divert them to the state education fund.

"Saving money when times are good so that we're not forced to cut schools and other services when times are bad - that's just a better way to balance a budget," said Andrew Romanoff, the speaker of the state House of Representatives and godfather of Amendment 59. The Denver Democrat debated the issue Wednesday with Andy McElhany, the Colorado Springs Republican who is minority leader of the state Senate, at a meeting of the El Pomar Foundation's Forum for Civic Advancement in Colorado Springs.

"This may be the only ballot measure this year," he said, "that has brought together both the Boulder Chamber of Commerce and the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce."

McElhany's main objection was that Amendment 59 "channels the major part of that funding into (preschool through 12th-grade education), shorting everything else that's in the budget. The state has other needs besides P-12 education."

Public education "is the biggest part of our budget," Romanoff said. "Public schools account for about 43 percent of our general fund."

"If we protect the biggest and arguably most important part of the budget - public schools - from getting cut when times are tough," he said, "we can finance education in this state without taking it from the hide of transportation and higher education, courts and prisons and other important priorities."

Romanoff said Amendment 59 repeals Amendment 23, which mandates perpetual increases in state funding for public schools, indexed to inflation and enrollment growth, "no matter where revenues come in, and no matter what happens to the rest of the budget. That's a recipe for disaster."

Neither side had much regret about the amendment's final dismantling of the TABOR mandate that excess revenues be returned to the taxpayers.

"I think we have learned in this state the hard way," Romanoff said, "that putting budget policy in the constitution is not the best idea, whether you're talking about automatic revenue reductions on the one hand or automatic spending increases on the other. Our constitution contains both. Amendment 59 fixes that problem permanently and completely while protecting the right to vote on taxes."

"I think it's a grand idea to get rid of TABOR refunds," McElhany said. "But those dollars really should be locked up in a real rainy-day fund so that it smooths out these ups and downs in state revenues."