Douglas County Voters Overwhelmingly Reject Home Rule Proposal

Voters in Douglas County, the wealthiest and most conservative county in Colorado, overwhelmingly rejected a proposal by DougCo's three Republican county commissioners to form a commission responsible for writing a new home rule charter for the county.

County commissioners, Abe Laydon, George Teal and Kevin Van Winkle sprung the special election on voters in late March, rushing the question to the polls in three months. The special election was expected to have cost taxpayers in DougCo, which stretches from Highlands Ranch to south of Larkspur, around a half-million dollars.

With most ballots counted, the home rule question received a resounding 71 percent of "no" votes, with just 29 percent of voters approving of the plan, according to the Douglas County elections division. The Board of Commissioners had pitched home rule to voters as a way to buck the Democratically-controlled state government, giving voters the false impression that home rule would allow the country to opt-out of laws commissioners disagreed with.

Colorado has two home rule counties, Pitkin and Weld, and two home rule city-counties, Denver and Broomfield. The "home rule" legality primarily applies to taxation and land-use issues, along with public works, parks, cemeteries and the salary and term limits of elected officials, and home rule counties are only exempt from a state law if a statute specifically says it's exempt for home rule counties.

It's notable that the commissioners' home rule question wasn't their only loss on the special election ballot. Besides whether to pursue a home rule charter, it also asked voters to choose 21 people to serve on the charter commission. Laydon, Teal, and Van Winkle all ran for the three at-large seats, but in the latest count none had received enough votes to have sat on the commission they'd envisioned.

The day before Tuesday's election, Teal took to the conservative airways of KNUS to blame opposition to the proposal on Chinese communists, specifically referring to a local doctor of Japanese descent who opposed the measure.

Colorado Democrats noted Teal's claim in a celebratory press release after the home rule measure failed, "Those who were leading the effort chose to spread last-minute racist lies about those who opposed their proposition, and put partisan politics ahead of transparency and doing what’s best for everyone."

Former DougCo Republican commissioner Lora Thomas, who resigned from the board last December, called the results "a complete vote of NO CONFIDENCE" for the commissioners in a late night newsletter. Thomas had unsuccessfully sued to stop the special election, asserting that the commissioners ignored public meetings laws in introducing the measure.