NOREEN: Constitution gets heavier without more weight
“That government is best which governs least.”
It’s an idea attributed to Henry David Thoreau, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson and it has been embraced by many on both ends of the political spectrum.
You’d think that in Colorado, where solemn speeches attach a nearly religious fervor to the concept of local control, the state constitution would be a simple document that delegates power to local governments.
Hey, those of you who know where this is going, stop laughing. This is serious, because the Colorado Constitution could choke a donkey or an elephant. It’s choking us all.
It’s relatively easy to change Colorado’s foundational document. We’ve amended it 21 times in the last 20 years. Two proposed amendments already are on the November ballot and several more aspire to be there.
We use the constitution to regulate spring bear hunts and medicinal marijuana. It also contains conflicting formulas to limit overall spending and automatically increase school spending. We’ve got gaming laws in there, and an amendment directing how lottery money is to be spent.
The Colorado Constitution consists of 45,679 words, more than 10 times the 4,440 words in the U.S. Constitution.
Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, who is charged with defending all the challenges to this massive collection of gobbledygook, says “the Colorado Constitution is a mess. We need to make it more difficult to change the constitution.”
Suthers — and not enough of the rest of us — supported a measure on the ballot last year that would have increased the number of signatures needed to get amendments on the ballot. The inescapable result is that while Coloradans love to criticize California’s electoral complications, we are headed down the same path.
“We’ve got an absolute disaster on our hands,” Suthers said.
Anti-government activist and California transplant Douglas Bruce likes to note that he carries a pocket-sized version of the U.S. Constitution. Although he is directly responsible for big add-ons to the Colorado Constitution, he doesn’t carry that document because it’s inconvenient to take a forklift everywhere one goes.
But this isn’t partisan. Both the left and the right have contributed to our constitution’s flabby verbiage. Regardless of one’s political leanings, we’re all vulnerable to the next well-funded campaign to change the constitution.
You know, the 10 Commandments were set down in just 497 words. Maybe that’s because when you’re chiseling in stone, you’ve really got to watch out for those prepositional phrases.
Sometimes smaller is better and less is more.
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