HELENA — A constitutional cap on government spending is a “proven failure” in Colorado, whose citizens suspended it last year, and Montanans should think twice before adopting one, a policy analyst from Colorado said Monday.

“What it has done is reduce the services to the people of Colorado,” said Carol Hedges of the Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute. “And people aren’t very happy about it.”

Hedges spoke Monday in Helena at an organizational meeting for foes of a Montana spending cap, which is being proposed as a constitutional initiative.

Backers of Constitutional Initiative 97 hope to begin gathering signatures this month, with an eye toward placing the spending-cap amendment on the November ballot.

Dubbed SOS, which is an acronym for “stop over-spending,” CI-97 says state government spending can grow no faster than the combined rate of growth in state population and inflation.

“SOS absolutely allows government to grow, but at a reasonable rate,” said Rep. Scott Mendenhall, R-Clancy, who chairs the campaign for CI-97.

AARP-Montana, a citizen/retiree group with 148,000 members, and MEA-MFT, the state’s largest union, are leading an already aggressive campaign against CI-97, encouraging people not to sign the petition and prevent it from getting on the ballot.

The two groups organized the meeting at which Hedges spoke Monday.

Hedges said while a constitutional spending cap may sound reasonable — “‘Let’s shrink government’ is a much easier message” — it has been a disaster in Colorado.

“(It’s) a proven failure in Colorado,” she said. “So why in the world would you like to adopt in Montana?”

Hedges said the spending cap, adopted by Colorado voters in 1992, has prevented state lawmakers from adequately funding schools, higher education, health care services for the poor and other items — even if money was available and they wanted to do so.

“We’ve moved from the middle-of-the-pack to the bottom-of-the-barrel (among states) in providing services to Coloradans,” she said.

About 1,100 organizations, including business interests, contributed $6 million to last year’s successful campaign to suspend the Colorado spending cap, she added.

Hedges’ nonprofit, nonpartisan institute supports policies that help poor and middle-income citizens. She travels to states to speak out against proposed constitutional spending caps, telling about their effects in Colorado.

Eric Feaver, president of MEA-MFT, also called on the backers of SOS to identify where Montana is “overspending,” and what services they would restrict if the measure gets on the ballot and passes.

Mendenhall said SOS backers “don’t have an answer for that, because that’s not what we’re aiming to do.”

Elected legislators set budget priorities, he said, and CI-97 merely would set a ceiling on state government spending: “SOS is neutral about where (those priorities) need to be.”

Feaver and others argued that CI-97 would “emasculate the Legislature,” by barring lawmakers from spending available money on priorities that may exceed the spending cap.

Mendenhall also said it’s not accurate to compare Colorado’s spending cap to CI-97, which is less restrictive. Opponents also don’t mention that in the decade after Colorado passed the spending caps, the state’s economy was one of the fastest-growing in the country, he added.

Hedges said the proposed spending cap in Montana has the essential components of the Colorado caps, as well as similar caps proposed around the country: It places the caps in the state constitution, uses a mathematical formula to cap spending and can be superseded or changed only by a statewide public vote.

Opponents of the caps believe government spending can benefit society, and that it doesn’t make sense to cap it arbitrarily, she said.

“This is really about how much of a commitment that we make to one another,” Hedges said. “How much do we invest in the common good?

“Our country has benefited from private-public partnership This makes the public sector such a weak partner that it puts a damper on the private sector’s ability to develop.”