Douglas County voters reject home-rule issue in special election

A ballot measure that would have given Douglas County a crack at assuming home-rule authority for the first time went down to resounding defeat in a special election held Tuesday night.

The measure was put on the ballot by leaders of the conservative-led county as a way of gaining more local control — and potentially pushing back on what they characterize as overbearing legislation from Democratic state lawmakers.

But the 9 p.m. tally from the clerk’s office showed the measure getting walloped, with 71% of voters saying no and 29% saying yes. More than 63,000 votes had been counted against Question 1A, while more than 25,000 were marked in favor — a more than 2-to-1 ratio.

“This was a crushing defeat for the commissioners,” said state Rep. Bob Marshall, who took a lead role in pushing for the measure’s downfall.

Marshall, a Democrat who admitted to being in a joyful mood Tuesday evening as he watched the first batch of results come in, said he didn’t envision quite such a lopsided result. In his mind, he thought a blowout would be a 65% vote against.

“It was rushed; it was secretive,” Marshall said of the process that placed the home-rule measure on the ballot. “Douglas County is a well-educated place. They are not fools. Rushing it through in secrecy rubbed everybody the wrong way.”

Douglas County Commissioner George Teal, who was the chief backer of the measure, spoke to reporters after the vote and conceded defeat.

“The results right now, given what has been counted, are pretty definitive,” he said in the commissioners’ hearing room in Castle Rock Tuesday night. “We were moving too fast for the people of Douglas County. And the people of Douglas County are going to need more information.”

In Tuesday’s election, voters were asked to authorize the creation of a county charter — essentially a constitution for Douglas County — along with selecting a 21-member commission to draw up the document. Had it passed, voters would have taken a second vote in November to approve the charter, a necessary step before home-rule authority could have gone into effect.

For now, Denver, Broomfield, Pitkin and Weld counties are the only Colorado counties — out of 64 — with home-rule authority.

The campaign surrounding Douglas County’s quest for home-rule authority has been anything but quiet. Three county residents, including Marshall and former Commissioner Lora Thomas, sued the Board of County Commissioners in April, alleging violations of Colorado’s open-meetings law during the run-up to the special election.

They asked the court to stop Tuesday’s election, which was estimated to cost $500,000, from going forward.

But a judge sided with the county in May, saying he didn’t see evidence that the board violated the open-meetings law and ruling that a preliminary injunction to stop the election would “sacrifice the public’s right to vote.”

The Colorado Court of Appeals also ruled against the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction last week.

Signs and billboards sprouted along highways and byways in Douglas County, in favor and against, as the special election drew nearer and mail voting began. In late May, about 100 people crowded into county chambers to ask questions about the process, with the meeting devolving into a shouting match between commissioners and several audience members.

Forty-nine candidates vied for the 21 charter commission seats Tuesday, but as voters rejected the measure, the commission will not form.

Opponents, operating under the “Stop the Power Grab” banner, accused the commissioners of quietly concocting the home-rule plan over a series of more than a dozen meetings starting late last year — and then rubber-stamping the decision at a public hearing in late March. That meeting lasted mere minutes.

“What this has brought out in us is the question of — why now?” Kelly Mayr, a nearly three-decade resident of Highlands Ranch and a member of Stop the Power Grab, told JS this month. “Why are they rushing it? If this is a good idea for the county, why would we not take our time?”

Local control has factored heavily in Colorado politics in recent years, with cities and counties lashing out — even taking legal action — against a state government they accuse of overreach in municipal matters. Just last month, six Denver-area cities — Aurora, Arvada, Glendale, Greenwood Village, Lafayette and Westminster — sued Gov. Jared Polis in an attempt to block two 2024 land-use laws that aim to encourage the building of more housing.

The cities, all of which are home-rule municipalities, argue that the laws, which seek to increase density and eliminate parking requirements near transit stops, violate the provision of the Colorado Constitution that gives local governments the authority to establish their own land-use rules.

Teal sold the effort as a way to give Douglas County the ability to assert its independence from a legislature that has shifted decidedly to the left over the past decade.