Colorado has become the first state in the nation to impose term limits on elected prosecutors. 13 of Colorado's elected District Attorneys will be leaving office in January, 2005 after a ruling yesterday by the Colorado Supreme Court upholding results of a 2002 election referendum that rejected prosecutors' requests to be excluded from a 1994 state Constitutional Amendment limiting all "non-judicial" officeholders to two terms in office.

We voted against the referendum. Colorado, particularly the Denver area, has some excellent, career prosecutors, most notably in our view, Bill Ritter in Denver, Bob Grant in Adams and Jim Thomas in Jefferson County. Unlike the federal prosecutor's office, where the President appoints U.S. Attorneys from his political party after being elected, the office has never been a political one in the sense of Democrat vs. Republican. We sense that will change.

On election night in 2002, we were at Tom Strickland's headquarters watching the results. Bill Ritter was standing next to us when the first results came in on the referendum and it looked bad. It was like being at a funeral, we offered our condolences, and although Ritter expressed mild optimism that the Court would reverse it, we could see he was reading the writing on the wall. We know he'll land with his feet up, and probably get a job making a lot more money, but we also know his heart is in public service and think that the public is the loser with this decision.