Brief by Central Staff
Politics – January 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
We often get to vote on amendments to the Colorado state constitution — and at some point, you have to wonder whether it would make sense to start over with a new one.
That’s not a new question. The state constitution dates to 1876, and one of its framers was Casimiro Barela of Las Animas County. He was a state senator in 1911 when he proposed a convention for a new state constitution:
“Since the time when the present constitution was formed in 1876, many local and state-wide matters have made it necessary to make many changes in that document. The constitution of the State of Colorado has become cumbersome and difficult to manage since, in its original form, it was molded on the constitutions of older states, especially Illinois, and reflects the political thinking of a generation that did not note, nor could it have noted, conditions that reign today. The tenacity of that theory of government, which is now impractical due to the increase in population, advancement in the scientific realm, and the increase in the state’s wealth, gave Colorado a constitution that was the best in judicial thinking at the time it was submitted and approved by the people. But it is a document that has needed to be opened by the wedge of new events, and once opened, its originality has become lost in a mass of amendments….
“The constitution of the state has become a code so large in volume, so imprecise in scope, that it is as a body of statutory decrees…. A constitutional convention will no doubt be costly, but think of the enormous cost that results from the habit of amending the constitution every ten years.”
Remember, that was in 1911. Imagine what Barela might say about our much-amended constitution 94 years later.
