Douglas County voters decide Tuesday whether to become “home rule.” What they would get from it is up for debate. ...Middle East

By Stephanie Wolf and Bente Birkeland, Colorado Public Radio

Voters in Douglas County are deciding whether to become a home rule county. The election is Tuesday, and the issue has stirred up a lot of strong feelings amidst competing claims about what it would mean for this fast-growing part of Colorado. 

This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at cpr.org.

The county’s three commissioners, who voted in late March to put home rule on the ballot for a June 24 special election, have said this is about local control. They believe establishing home rule will allow the largely conservative county to assert more independence from the Democratic-controlled state legislature and give them stronger legal standing to push back against state laws that they don’t agree with. 

“We see every year the state legislature encroaching in on traditionally local issues with state blanket mandates and I do see the people of Douglas County being aware of that,” County Commissioner George Teal told CPR News. 

The county sheriff has also shown his support, saying it would be good for public safety.

But some residents are skeptical, questioning whether county home rule can actually deliver what their elected officials are promising and concerned about how the entire process has unfolded. There are simply too many unanswered questions, opponents say.

“We didn’t know this was coming, and so most of the community has no idea,” said Kelly Mayr, who’s part of a group known as Stop the Power Grab. “They are trying to change our governmental structure in Douglas County and we don’t even know what that could mean for us.”

The general idea of home rule is that it allows more control for certain local issues, like zoning and local government employment. While Colorado’s constitution allows both cities and counties to have home rule, the powers they get from it are different.

More than 100 Colorado towns and cities have adopted home rule charters. But there are only two truly home rule counties in Colorado: Weld and Pitkin, both established in the 1970s. (Denver and Broomfield occupy their own hybrid category, as combined city-county governments with home rule.) 

Douglas County’s pitch to voters to join the likes of Weld and Pitkin marks the first time in decades for such an effort. 

In Tuesday’s special election, voters have to answer two questions on their ballot: yes or no on home rule; and, if home rule passes, who do they want on the 21-member commission that will draft a charter laying out how the county will be governed.

Voters would then return to the ballot box in November to approve, or reject, that charter. 

The debate heats up in Douglas County

All of the established cities in the county, like Castle Rock and Castle Pines, already have their own home rule charters.

“In many ways this is just the county catching up to our own municipalities who have already made that home rule decision for themselves… So why now? I think the real answer to that is another question: Why haven’t we done it yet?” Teal said.

But as the temperature of the debate has turned up in recent weeks, it’s clear some Douglas County residents aren’t satisfied with that answer.

When participants erupted in anger during a town hall in late May, officials threatened to involve law enforcement to maintain “order in the room.” Kevin Duffy, who identified himself as a 30-year resident of Castle Rock, said he was disappointed that Douglas County Attorney Jeff Garcia used the town hall to give “such a pro-presentation and not show the adverse effects.”

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“It was very clear to me sitting here and listening to your presentation that you’re trying to sell this to us and that’s not your job,” he said during the brief public feedback portion at the end of the event.

Opponents sued earlier this spring, trying to halt the measure from even ending up on a ballot. They alleged county commissioners violated open meeting laws by discussing the proposal out of the public eye. But a district judge denied their request for a preliminary injunction last month, saying there wasn’t enough evidence to support the claim. On Tuesday, the appeals court also denied their motion for a stay.

With the special election going forward, opponents have hit the streets to try to sway voters.

“There’s too many questions and not enough answers. And frankly, I don’t know what problem they’re trying to solve with home rule,” Lora Thomas, a Republican and former Douglas County commissioner who was part of the lawsuit, said during a canvas launch event outside the Highlands Ranch Library in late May.

Thomas and others question both the speed with which the county has pursued home rule status and the cost of the special election — expected to be nearly a half a million dollars. They also don’t like that the whole effort originated with county commissioners.  

“When I think about local control, I think about it coming from the people,” said Angela Thomas, a Douglas County Democrat who was also at the canvas launch. “I don’t think that’s sufficient time to address all the issues that need to be addressed. It’s simply a rushed process.”

Others worry about motive, questioning whether commissioners want to use home rule to make changes to term limits or salaries for county officials. Teal told CPR News he has no interest in making any of those changes. 

Recent campaign finance reports have only added fuel to the question of who stands to gain with this change. 

Filings show that Stop the Power Grab has received more than $30,000 in donations, largely pages of smaller contributions from individuals, including some political figures like Democratic state Rep. Bob Marshall. 

For the Yes on Local Control campaign, its more than $110,000 in contributions come from a handful of donors, including two developers with interests in the area. Ventana Capital gave $50,000 and Westside Property Investment Company gave $10,000. Neither had responded to interview requests from CPR News at the time of publishing.  

Teal told CBS Colorado he doesn’t know why these developers are interested in the county’s home rule election, and insists this is about local control. Home rule counties can gain additional development authority for unincorporated areas. 

The eternal tension of home rule in the state

For proponents of Douglas County’s home rule push, any additional independence from the increasingly blue state leadership is a good thing.

In an interview earlier this month with CPR News, Teal said home rule could help Douglas County chart its own path and preserve its way of life. 

“The neat thing about having a home road charter is we become a separate legal entity from the state of Colorado. It’s not secession. We are still in the state of Colorado, but we are not a legal arm of the state of Colorado anymore,” he said.

But that’s not how home rule works in the state, according to several people CPR News interviewed for this reporting and who are well-versed in the topic. They describe county home rule as being largely about internal affairs — citizens’ ability to make rules “providing for the organization and structure of their county,” as explained in the 2023 Colorado Local Government Handbook.

“A county home rule charter does not provide the ‘functional’ home rule powers found in municipal charters, and, as subdivisions of the state, a home rule county must continue to provide the county services required by law,” according to the handbook.

It’s the power to set internal policies that has Sheriff Darren Weeks supporting home rule. In a post on X, Weeks wrote that the county charter could include things like minimum staffing and funding for his department, and that home rule would allow the county to pass its own criminal ordinances to deal with things like nuisance properties and public safety violations.

Colorado voters approved home rule for municipalities in 1902, and agreed to allow counties to pursue the designation in the 1970s. Weld was the first Colorado county where voters enacted a home rule charter in 1976. County attorney Bruce Barker said residents felt there was dysfunction within their county government and they wanted changes. 

“They were right in the thick of Watergate and there was a massive distrust of government, whether it be federal, state, local, just a mistrust of government… There was a desire to have more efficient government and this concept of having a home rule county was new and so there was a desire to pursue it,” Barker said. 

Weld’s home rule charter included a new watchdog-like council, separate from the county commissioners, to keep an eye on county operations and help things run more smoothly. 

The second county to go home rule was Pitkin, home to Aspen and in a bluer part of the state. County Manager Jon Peacock said residents at the time wanted a local government that could respond better to the county’s environmental and growth issues.

“Real estate prices were going up, there were a lot of growth pressures and there was a real desire at that time to get more local involvement in land use decisions,” he said.

It was about restructuring local government to better serve local concerns.

“What home rule status does is it gives counties more agility in administration, combining departments, adding our own ethics rules, and how we’re structured to make decisions. That structure can support policy goals, but it doesn’t grant legislative independence,” Peacock said.

It also doesn’t give counties the power to opt-out of any state law county officials don’t agree with.

“You’re not going to be able to forgo the provisions of SB-3 [Colorado’s new law restricting the sale of certain semiautomatic firearms],” explained Robert Preuhs, a professor and chair of the Political Science Department of Metro State University in Denver. “You’re not going to be able to move away from another COVID shutdown, partly because on its face often they’re considered state interests, but also because ultimately the state legislature can create new laws if they really need to that would supersede any county pushback.”

Barker thinks home rule has made government more efficient in Weld County. But he also experienced the disconnect between what the public believes home rule can do, and how it actually works.

In 2019, as a red flag gun law was moving through the legislature, Weld joined a number of other red counties in declaring itself a “Second Amendment Sanctuary.” Barker said he was bombarded with phone calls from gun owners thinking the new state laws would “bounce off of anyone who lives in Weld County” due to their home rule status. 

“I’m like, that is not what it means at all. You still have to comply with those state statutes,” Barker said. 

Recent cases testing the limits and powers of county home rule have ended with counties on the losing side. Two civic groups sued Weld County after it adopted new district maps for commissioners in 2023, saying the county was not complying with the state’s redistricting law. The case made it to the Colorado Supreme Court. In the end, the justices ruled against the county, determining that its home rule charter did not exempt the county from the state law in this area. 

Barker “respectfully disagrees” with the decision, for a number of reasons, but acknowledged it could lead the county to re-examine its charter to look for other things that might be crosswise to state law.

Pitkin has also experienced a home rule loss in recent years. The county attempted to raise the age to buy tobacco to 21. And while the city of Aspen was able to do so as a home rule city, the rules were different for the county. 

“Because the county did not specifically have authority granted from the state, in statute we could not do it. So we actually had to go to the state legislature and ask for a bill to be passed, giving counties the authority to raise the age to purchase tobacco to 21,” Peacock said.

Preuhs thinks more counties haven’t pursued the home rule designation because it’s a “big ask.” Some aren’t sure it’s worth the squeeze given the amount of work and resources that go into an election and writing a charter when the scope of what they gain is limited.

That said, Barker sees the value of keeping as much power as possible close to home.

“That really gets down to the issue, which is, is government best at the local level or is it better by having the General Assembly tell you what you can do and what you can’t do?” Barker said. 

Peacock, too, believes home rule has been a good thing for Pitkin County.

“There are benefits to being really deliberate about how the institutions, county government are organized,” he said. “You just have to be really clear on what your goals are and that home rule is the right tool to accomplish them.”

As for the debate bubbling up in Douglas County, Preuhs said it’s important to note that it’s happening as the nation is operating in a “really hyperpolarized political context.”

“The idea that there’s a sense that a state government, particularly in a blue state, is pushing an agenda on red localities, I think that’s part of the underlying impetus or the sense of why this might provide an opportunity to pass home rule [for the] county, whether it’s to try to legally push back or whether it’s for other reasons,” he said.

City or county, the borders of home rule authority are still being tested

Tensions over home rule and fights about local control versus state priorities aren’t just happening in Douglas County. They’re also popping up in other, bluer parts of the state.

Earlier this year, half a dozen home rule cities sued to challenge new state development and density laws, arguing the authority to decide how they develop rests in the hands of municipal govenment. 

“We’re seeing a steady erosion of our citizens’ ability to have a voice in the communities in which they live,” said Greenwood Village Mayor George Lantz in a written statement. “The flurry of legislative proposals continually eroding our Home Rule rights applies a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach, removing all of their uniqueness.”

State policymakers argue that issues that once seem local, like where a city allows apartment buildings and how much parking it requires for new developments, are actually matters of broader concern, because the development decisions in one community can spill over into increased traffic and air pollution in others.

But while the definition of what’s an “issue of local concern” remains a lively debate, there is more clarity on what it means to be a home rule municipality as compared to a county, simply because there’s a lot more case law. 

“Whether it’s land use, taxation, elections, municipal courts, personnel systems, all of those things have a very long history of jurisprudence in favor of home rural municipalities to be able to legislate safely in those areas,” Kevin Bommer, executive director of the Colorado Municipal League said. 

Municipal home rule does grant more power to cities and towns to make rules for their residents, compared to what home rule counties get, but Bommer sees that authority as something local governments must continually defend against incursions from the state capitol.

“This is something that I don’t think that there’s a firm grasp of under the gold dome by a lot of folks, but because it’s constitutional, the legislature can say — and often does, all at once — about something being a matter of statewide concern or mixed state and local concern. But that does not make it so, and only the court of legal opinion can make that ultimate determination.”

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