Colorado

Colorado has a plural executive of five statewide officials. Voters elect the Governor and Lieutenant Governor (who run together as a single ticket and so share a party), plus the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the State Treasurer, each elected independently. Because those three run on their own, they answer to voters rather than the Governor and can come from a different party.

The Governor appoints the heads of the executive departments that aren’t separately elected and leads the rest of the state bureaucracy. By national standards Colorado’s governorship is moderately strong on appointments and administration, but, as below, its fiscal hands are tied more tightly than almost any other governor’s.

The Colorado General Assembly is bicameral: a 35-seat State Senate (four-year terms) and a 65-seat House of Representatives (two-year terms). It is a hybrid legislature, with base pay of $47,561 a year plus a per diem, and members are limited to eight consecutive years in a single chamber. Members typically spend more than two-thirds of a full-time job on the work, but the pay is not enough to live on alone.

The defining constraint is the calendar: the constitution limits the regular session to 120 calendar days, convening each January, so the General Assembly must finish its work, including the budget, inside a four-month window. That short, fixed session keeps the body from being fully full-time.

A bill is introduced, sent to committee, and, if it advances, voted on the floor of each chamber, with differences reconciled before final passage. The Governor can sign a bill, veto it, or let it become law, and holds a line-item veto over appropriations; a veto override takes two-thirds of each chamber.

But in Colorado the Legislature is far from the only, or even the final, word on the biggest questions. Colorado has one of the most active direct-democracy systems in the country: citizens routinely pass statutes and constitutional amendments by initiative and overturn laws by referendum. And TABOR adds a hard rule on top of all of it: any new tax, tax-rate increase, or new state debt must be approved by the voters at the ballot box. So even a budget the Governor and General Assembly agree on cannot raise revenue on its own, that decision belongs to the people.

The Governor appoints the heads of the non-elected departments, proposes the budget, can call special sessions, holds broad emergency powers, and wields a line-item veto. The Governor also holds the clemency power. Within the executive branch the Governor shares authority with the independently elected Secretary of State, Attorney General, and Treasurer.

The distinctive limit is fiscal and comes from the voters, not another official. Under TABOR the Governor and Legislature cannot raise taxes or take on new debt at all without a popular vote, and TABOR also caps how fast state revenue can grow, requiring refunds when collections run over. That makes the people, through the ballot box, the ultimate authority over Colorado’s finances.

Colorado uses merit selection plus retention. The Governor appoints justices and judges from a slate offered by a nonpartisan nominating commission, and those judges then face periodic up-or-down retention votes rather than running against opponents. The Supreme Court of Colorado sits at the top, above the Court of Appeals and the trial-level District and County courts. The system is designed to keep judges accountable to voters through retention while keeping party politics out of the initial selection.