In 2005, we were facing a vote on whether to allow the state government to keep five years' worth of tax money that would otherwise have been refunded to taxpayers.

That was Referendum C, you'll recall, and it sounds boring, especially in today's media climate as exemplified on Thursday by the Rocky Mountain News' front-page headline, "Three ring circus," with photos of the presidential candidates and President Bush.

Ref C was tedious, but the dailies served up intelligent and interesting coverage anyway, explaining why the state wanted the money and what the alternatives were - mostly cuts in government services.

The 2005 coverage in the dailies, as ably tallied by the Ref C opponents at the conservative Independence Institute, included three multipart news series, more than 50 opinion columns and editorials, and more. In the period between Aug. 1 and Sept. 26 alone, the dailies ran 116 news articles.

Now, three years later, we're looking at Amendment 59, which would, as a Sept. 19 Rocky editorial put it, "essentially make Ref C permanent, except that TABOR surpluses would be put into the State Education Fund rather than flow into general revenues."

Amendment 59 would also sunset the state's current requirement to increase education spending at a specified rate each year and free up the legislature to decide for itself how much to spend on education and other priorities.

You'd be forgiven if you didn't know about Amendment 59, because it's received only cursory coverage since Aug. 1 (a total in the dailies of fewer than a dozen articles, with little or no detailed analysis).

But Amendment 59 is the most important among Colorado's 18 amendments. Not only are untold billions of dollars of taxpayer dollars affected by Amendment 59 in the long term, but it addresses basic governance issues and spending that affect all of us.

Journalists by necessity weigh the importance of election stories against one another all the time. They should think back to the importance they attached to Ref C in 2005, and treat Amendment 59 accordingly.

Limbaugh bias. Responding to an issue I raised last month, Clear Channel's Kris Olinger e-mailed me that she won't add a lefty commentator to KOA radio's Colorado Morning News, to balance the daily one-minute commentary by conservative Rush Limbaugh. It's a plug for his show, but it functions as political commentary.

I'm not talking about adding a left-leaning talk show host to KOA for three hours daily. I understand, as Olinger put it, that KOA "leans right and male." Listeners can go elsewhere for liberal talk shows.

I just want a liberal commentator for one minute during KOA's morning newscast, which is supposed to be fair and accurate, to balance Limbaugh.

Olinger rejected my suggestion of Jim Hightower, who would be perfect for the chatty KOA show. You can still listen to Hightower at 8:33 a.m. on KGNU-AM (1390).

Olinger wrote that Hightower would be expensive (he's actually free), and he doesn't have the name recognition of Rush. (Who cares?)

Olinger asked why I'm not demanding that National Public Radio add more "conservative content" to its morning newscast, implying that NPR has a liberal bias.

I'd be happy to do this, but Olinger didn't provide any evidence of bias at NPR, so I can't demand balance there. And the early-morning programming on Colorado Public Radio KCFR-AM (1340) is mostly national news, not local like KOA.

Stop the polls. Here's a Denver Post headline on Thursday: "Poll: Obama regains lead from McCain in Colorado."

A month ago, the Post gave us this headline: "McCain edges past Obama in new Colo. poll."

These snapshot polls are getting more irrelevant by the day. The space should be used for articles about issues and where the candidates stand on them, not the alleged one-day popularity of these candidates.

I'm looking for journalists to sign my "No-More-Stories-About-Individual-Polls" pledge. To sign, you must agree that, for the remainder of this election, any story about polling should focus on polling trends, summarizing a series of polls over time, not a single poll.

Jason Salzman, president of Effect Communications, is the author of Making the News: A Guide for Activists and Nonprofits. Reach him at salzmanj@RockyMountainNews.com.