By Stephanie Wolf, Colorado Public Radio
Voters in Douglas County have rejected an effort to become the next home rule county in the state.
As of 10 p.m. on election night, the measure was down in unofficial returns, 29-to-71 percent.
Reflecting on the results Tuesday evening, County Commissioner George Teal said he’d been reassured that home rule campaigns rarely succeed on their first attempt.
This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at cpr.org.
“So in many ways, this is not a surprising result. And we did hear several times from the public that we were going too fast. The public needed more information,” said Teal. “I myself stand committed to continue to work on home rule for Douglas County.”
Around 30 percent of the county’s voters returned their ballots for the special election.
The fast-growing part of Colorado was the first county to vote on home rule in decades after its three commissioners agreed in late March to hold a special election on the issue.
In the following months, the debate became heated, with opponents packing public meetings and organizing door-knocking events.
Before the results came in on Tuesday night, Highlands Ranch resident Kelly Mayr, a member of the opposition group Stop the Power Grab, said she was surprised to find that concern about the home rule push was “a really unifying issue” across party lines.
“It was people from all sides of the political spectrum in agreement that this was nonsense,” she told CPR News outside a watch party at a restaurant in Lone Tree. “When we go door to door canvassing or when we have canvas launches and people come up to our tables and say, ‘tell me more about this?’ It is really people from every political group saying, ‘what’s the rush? If this is so good for our community, why are we rushing?’”
Castle Pines resident Barrett Rothe, who was also at the Lone Tree watch party, felt the early results sent a clear message.
“I think Douglas County turned out across party lines to say that home rule is not something that we want,” Rothe said. “We want elected officials that put their head down and do their job and don’t try to make headlines.”
Rothe added that he’s not opposed to home rule on principle, and he’d be open to the idea “if somebody wants to come along and make that case from the grassroots up instead of from the top down.”
County commissioners said going home rule was about local control, arguing it would allow the county to assert more independence from the Democratic-controlled state legislature. Opponents have questioned the commissioners’ motives and push back on whether a county home rule charter can deliver on the promises their elected officials made.
The general concept 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 authority, the powers they get from it are different — county home rule is more tied to how a county structures and organizes its government rather than expanding policy-making capacity.
In Tuesday’s special election, voters found two questions on their ballot: yes or no on home rule; and, if home rule passed, who did they want on the 21-member commission that would draft the charter that would have laid out how the county will be governed. Because it appears the home rule effort failed, the results of the commission votes are moot. However, in its victory announcement, Stop the Power Grab noted that nearly all of the seats would have been held by candidates with its endorsement.
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 constitutional home rule provisions, as combined city-county governments with home rule.
This story was produced by the Capitol News Alliance, a collaboration between KUNC News, Colorado Public Radio, Rocky Mountain PBS and The Colorado Sun, and shared with Rocky Mountain Community Radio and other news organizations across the state. Funding for the Alliance is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
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