Coloradans rejected by a close margin the continued adoption of strict spending limits on state and local government. They just passed 53% to 47% (with 83% of the vote tallied when I read the article) a measure to secure over $3 billion in taxpayer money to pay for those oh so essential services like teachers and roads...
A great link (and great news source for Denver) to the Rocky Mountain News...
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/...
covers the basics.
Interestingly, where I'm from in Wisconsin, TABOR is a huge deal. If you don't know,TABOR is the Tax Payers Bill of Rights, a strict referendum or legislature passed measure that caps increases in spending by state or local governments to the inflation rate (or some similarly low number). TABOR was the brain child of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group that woos right-wing state legislators with lavish conventions featuring speakers who preach the virtues of big business.
ALEC discovered that they could pursue the big business, lower taxes, smaller government agenda more effectively through state government, than through the federal one. This has been particularly true since Bush took office. He has increased both in the budget and in overall size the infrastructure of government like no other conservative in the last thirty years. Arguably, more so than Clinton did (I'm referring here to the restructuring of the Department of Homeland Security and his rampant spending).
Check your local right-wingers schedules. See if they attend ALEC conferences. ALEC's website http://www.alec.org/ even provides explicit examples of model legislation, some of which has shown up in state legislatures virtually unchanged.
Regardless, the rejection of TABOR by Coloradans is a huge step toward sanity. You can be very liberal and argue that spending needs to be reasonable. You can be very conservative but still agree that teachers need to get a raise every once in a while. You have to be crazy to think TABOR, which bankrupted schools, made it impossible to pave roads, made it fiscally impossible to open prisons, etc. etc. is the right road to travel down.
p.s. Denver residents approved the decriminalization of small amounts of marijuana...also a rational step!