Trying to create a groundswell of support behind an undetermined number and scope of 2016 ballot initiatives, Building a Better Colorado heard from Colorado Springs civic leaders Wednesday at The Broadmoor.

A slew of options were voted on including the idea of repealing the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. That wasn’t initially on the agenda, but a small group put it forward and 74 percent voted in favor of repealing TABOR.

El Paso County Commissioner Denise Hisey cautioned that the room was not representative of the public at-large. He said he’s “cried in his beer” too many times over failed ballot initiatives.

Dave Munger, executive director of the Council of Neighbors and Organizations, said it was still a significant statement coming from the birthplace of TABOR, which limits the amount of revenue the state can collect and requires voters to approve tax increases.

Munger said he would vote against an outright repeal of TABOR but supported less extreme fixes.

“We’ve said from the outset that we are looking for ideas that can find broad support, which is why eliminating TABOR wasn’t offered by Building a Better Colorado as an option for discussion,” said Curtis Hubbard, a spokesman for Building a Better Colorado. “As we move forward, we’ll see if other communities, our online engagement and polling produce similar results or confirm our initial view that certain issues are non-starters.”

Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers set the stage for the event with an anecdote about civics and showing a copy of the thin, concise U.S. Constitution and the considerably thicker Colorado Constitution.

“It’s basically a lesson in how not to do a constitution,” Suthers said. “We’ve got minutia in there about trapping animals and marijuana dispensaries. Over time as it has developed we do find ourselves with serious issues in Colorado.”

Suthers is one of 16 members of the Building a Better Colorado coalition. They hope to offer up a fix to three broad issues they’ve flagged for the November 2016 ballot.

The meeting was the ninth in a series of about 40 being held across the state. About 100 civic leaders attended; a poll showed 41 percent were Republicans, 32 percent Democrats and 27 percent unaffiliated.

The group split into three and each discussed one area of proposed reform in detail: election processes, initiative processes and fiscal policies. They came back together to vote on the recommendations brought forward by the smaller groups.

A small table with a school board member for Lewis-Palmer School District 38, a manager of an architectural firm, a self-described community activist and a board member of the Regional Business Alliance debated the merits of changes to Colorado’s fiscal conundrum.

John Magerko, the school board member, said the underlying problem is that the constitution is too rigid and unable to react to the changing environment like a lawmaker would if the rules were in state statute.

“He or she is adaptable and they will respond,” Magerko said. “We need to take out all of the formulas.”

Removing the formulas dealing with state revenue from Gallagher, the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, and Amendment 23 was supported by 82 percent of the crowd.

Andrea Barker, owner of an architectural firm, said the more palpable option would be removing the hospital provider fee revenue – a relatively new fee (sometimes tax) that raised $575 million last year – from the pot of money that is under a TABOR cap for annual increases.

That was by far the most popular financial fix, with 98 percent of the attendees supporting the option. Gov. John Hickenlooper supports the idea because it would delay tax refunds for the foreseeable future and allow the government to retain millions of dollars.

Robert Stovall, with Action 22, said the group that addressed initiative reform quickly narrowed the list down to two options: require more signatures to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot and require those signatures to be geographically representative; and require a super-majority to initiate an amendment but only a majority to repeal one.

Sixty seven percent of the group supported modifying the state’s election process to allow unaffiliated voters to participate in the primary. However, 77 percent favored replacing the existing caucus and assembly process for getting on the ballot with a petition, signature gathering, and process.

The Building a Better Colorado group is backed by Colorado businessman Dan Ritchie, who has led two Colorado universities and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. (Courtesy ritchieschool.du.edu)