Douglas County is trying to do something no other Colorado county has done in nearly 50 years — adopt home-rule authority that would give the conservative bastion south of Denver more autonomy and powers of self-governance.
But the road to that reality has been anything but smooth, with a rally last week in Castle Rock decrying the move, a tense town hall meeting at county headquarters that ended in shouts and jeers — and a lawsuit attempting to shut the whole thing down.
Meanwhile, ballots started hitting mailboxes less than a week ago for the June 24 special election. If voters back the idea, the vote would kickstart the drafting of a home-rule charter by a 21-member commission.
A second vote in November would then seek final approval for the charter itself.
Local control has become a mantra of sorts across Colorado in recent years, with cities and counties lashing out — even taking legal action — against a state government they accuse of overreach in matters of local concern. The resistance ranges from the “Second Amendment sanctuary county” movement of six years ago, which conservative counties launched in response to new gun control laws, to last month’s lawsuit against the state and Gov. Jared Polis by Aurora and five suburban cities. They were attempting to block two recent land-use laws aimed at increasing housing density.
Commissioner George Teal, one of the chief proponents of home-rule authority for the county of nearly 400,000, said the time has come for Douglas County to assert its independence from a state legislature that has shifted decidedly to the left over the last decade.
Home-rule authority, Teal said, will give Douglas County greater legal standing to take on state laws that its leaders believe go too far. It will represent a “shifting of the burden” onto the state, requiring officials to come after the county if the state believes its authority is being usurped — rather than the other way around.
Douglas County has sued Colorado twice recently over disagreements involving property tax valuations and the level of cooperation local law enforcement can give federal immigration authorities. The county lost both cases.
“We will be an independent legal entity under state law — and we are not that as a statutory county,” Teal said. “Home rule is the very mechanism of local control.”
Opponents, operating under the Stop the Power Grab banner, say the run-up to this month’s election has been anything but transparent and open. They accuse 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?” said Kelly Mayr, a nearly three-decade resident of Highlands Ranch and a member of Stop the Power Grab. “Why are they rushing it? If this is a good idea for the county, why would we not take our time?”
Three Douglas County residents, including state Rep. Bob Marshall and former Commissioner Lora Thomas, sued the Board of County Commissioners in April, alleging multiple violations of Colorado’s open meetings laws. They asked the court to stop the June 24 election from going forward.
But a judge sided with Douglas County last month, saying he didn’t see evidence that the board violated open meetings laws and ruling that a preliminary injunction to stop the election would “sacrifice the public’s right to vote.”
Marshall, a Democrat who represents Highlands Ranch, says the fight is not over, and he expects to prevail in the court case at the appellate level.
In the meantime, he is in the running as one of 49 candidates vying to fill the 21 seats on the commission that would be tasked with drafting Douglas County’s home-rule charter — assuming voters give the OK to the idea on the same June 24 ballot. All three Douglas County commissioners are also running for the charter commission.
“If elected, my main goal will be to ensure transparency,” Marshall told JS. “There has been none in this process as yet.”
The June election is projected to cost Douglas County around $500,000.
Weld, Pitkin first to adopt home rule
The state first approved home-rule powers for municipalities in 1902, and it extended the same authority to counties in 1970. Until then, counties were considered a statutory creation of the legislature and had to follow state law without exception.
Sixty Colorado counties still do.
Just two — at the opposite ends of the ideological spectrum — took advantage of the new designation in the decade after the law passed: Weld and Pitkin. Denver and Broomfield, though, have de facto home-rule status because of their combined city-and-county structure.
First to take up the home-rule mantle in Colorado was Weld County in 1976. County Attorney Bruce Barker said its three districts had essentially balkanized around that time, each running its own public works department and making its own purchasing decisions.
“The goal was to make things more efficient,” Barker said about the effort behind the switch.
The new charter included a one-of-a-kind five-member Weld County Council, separate from the Board of County Commissioners. The body sets salaries of elected county officials and fills commissioner vacancies. It can also suspend an elected official who has been criminally charged or indicted and it reviews conflicts of interest between county officers, appointees and employees.
“Remember, there was a complete distrust of government after Watergate,” Barker said of the era. “They wanted to have this County Council as a watchdog group.”
Pitkin County made its transition to home-rule governance in 1978, largely in response to concerns about rapid population growth and the desire to conserve threatened natural habitat in the Roaring Fork Valley, said County Manager Jon Peacock. His very role was created by Pitkin County’s new home-rule charter.
The county, home to ritzy Aspen, requires under its charter a vote of the people before it issues debt, as happened with a recent ballot measure that sought expansion of the county’s landfill.
“Home rule gives authority to counties to decide how they are going to organize to carry out the powers and responsibilities that are defined in state statute,” Peacock said. “We cannot exercise authority that is not given to us by state law.”
According to a briefing paper from the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Council Staff, home-rule authority in Colorado was designed to place several administrative functions under counties’ purview. They involve “finances and property, debts and expenses, and the powers and duties of officials, including elections, terms of office, and compensation.”
“In general, home rule ordinances addressing local matters supersede state law,” the briefing paper states. “However, in matters of statewide or mixed concern, state laws may take precedence over conflicting home rule ordinances.”
Weld County learned that the hard way earlier this year when the Colorado Supreme Court struck down a redistricting plan the county had put into play two years ago. Officials drew the boundaries of commissioners’ districts without adhering to a 2021 state law that required it to follow a different protocol.
The high court concluded that redistricting “relates to the county’s function, not the county’s structure.”
“And because the Colorado Constitution requires home rule counties to carry out statutorily mandated functions, home rule counties, like Weld, must comply with the redistricting statutes,” the court ruled.
How much more power would the county get?
Metropolitan State University political science professor Robert Preuhs said it’s clear from the language of Colorado’s home-rule statute and court cases on the issue that “you’re not getting much more policy latitude” with home-rule status.
“Broader issues like gun control and immigration enforcement and police cooperation with (immigration authorities) are still going to be constrained by state law,” Preuhs said. “You are still a creature of the state, but with more internal flexibility — although Douglas County seems intent on testing that.”
Teal, the Douglas County commissioner, said there are bills passed in the statehouse every legislative session that explicitly exempt home-rule counties from having to comply.
“I would like that opportunity for the citizens of Douglas County to take advantage of these exemptions,” he said.
And there are other laws that sit in questionable territory, Teal said. Home-rule status “gives us new tools in the tool belt. At the very least, it allows the county to challenge the state.”
Teal said he could see the county pushing back on Colorado’s mandatory retail bag fee, the way property assessments are calculated and limits that have been placed on law enforcement.
But first, voters must weigh in. As the campaign over home rule heats up with billboards and signs sprouting up along Interstate 25 and other places in Douglas County, the political temperature is rising as well.
At a May 28 town hall, Commissioner Abe Laydon laid out the stakes in front of 100 or so people in the commissioners’ hearing room in Castle Rock.
“Are we OK with how the state handled COVID-19 and the pandemic?” he asked. “Are we OK with how the state has handled illegal immigration?”
There was some sympathy from the audience, but others were skeptical. When the hourlong session ended, several people stood up and demanded that more of their questions on home rule be answered. Each side accused the other side of “fear-mongering.”
“What are you afraid of?” one attendant yelled as Laydon called for order.
Last week, newly released campaign finance data stirred up a new angle of attack for home-rule opponents. The Yes on Local Control committee raised $110,000 from just five donors — one of them Teal’s wife, Laura. The bulk of the total — $100,000 — came from just two developers.
By contrast, Stop the Power Grab has raised just over $30,000 from several hundred individual donors.
That has Marshall, the state representative from Highlands Ranch, questioning just how much grassroots support the home-rule movement has in Douglas County. And layer on that a recent survey of nearly 1,800 residents conducted for the county that showed respondents opposing home rule by a 54% to 44% margin; some information, including the survey’s margin of error, wasn’t available.
“Where is the outpouring of support for home rule the commissioners claim?” Marshall said.
Amanda Budimlya, who grew up in Colorado and has lived near Sedalia for a dozen years, has been dismayed by the state’s sharp turn to the left and supports the home-rule effort. There will be two opportunities — the June and November elections — for residents to weigh in, she said, giving everyone plenty of time to air out their concerns and grievances.
“It gives us standing so we can try and put things in the charter that we want to protect — like our liberty and rights,” she said of home rule.
Budimlya, 50, said it’s rich that the opposition adopted the name Stop the Power Grab for their campaign in a state where political power has only drifted in one direction in recent years.
“There’s already a power grab happening — the governor, the House and the Senate — it’s all Democrat-run,” she said of Colorado’s political makeup. “Any conservative voice is railroaded.”
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