Under the Colorado Constitution, cities, towns and counties are allowed to establish ‘Home Rule’ governments, if the voters so choose.
A friend who has been researching County Home Rule governments posed a pertinent question yesterday.
“Why have only two Colorado counties — out of 64 possible counties — elected to become ‘Home Rule’, following the amendment to the Colorado Constitution in 1970 that allowed county voters to establish Home Rule county governments?”
Good question. I have no answer. But Colorado has 272 incorporated municipalities, comprising 197 towns and 73 cities, and according to Wikipedia, 96 of those incorporated municipalities have created a Home Rule government. The Town of Pagosa Springs is among them.
The state also recognizes two consolidated city-and-county governments — Denver and Broomfield — which are both ‘Home Rule’.
Considering that 61 out of Colorado’s 72 cities are ‘Home Rule’, and that nearly 90% of the state lives in urban areas, we can comfortably state that the majority of Colorado residents are already served by a Home Rule government.
But not the people living in Archuleta County outside the municipal boundaries — which is 85% of our community.
Why would that 85% want a Home Rule government, instead of the statutory government we now have?
I mentioned yesterday in Part One a couple of possible reasons.
1. A Home Rule county government would guarantee the citizens’ right to petition initiatives and referendums into the ballot — a right that Archuleta County voters do not currently have. This right is integral to Home Rule governments, but not statutory governments.
2. The citizens might want more than three commissioners sitting on the Board of County Commissioners. Both of Colorado’s existing Home Rule counties — Weld and Pitkin — chose to create five-person Boards in their Charter. Someone once proposed that two heads are better than one, with the implication that five heads are better than three. This allows a level of cooperation among the commissioners that is legally impossible — due to the Colorado Open Meetings Law — when a Board has only three members.
Weld County’s Charter assigns one commissioner to supervise each of the five County departments. (In our current Archuleta County government, the commissioners do not — from what I can tell — have specific supervisory duties. In other words; no one is really ‘in charge’ of any County department. Is that a good thing? Maybe, maybe not.)
There are additional reasons why the citizens might want a Home Rule County.
3. Currently, in a statutory county, the two dominant political parties exercise considerable partisan control over county elections. In a county like Archuleta, one political party tends to dominate the election process. A Home Rule government could help to ‘level the playing field’, if that’s what the voters would like to see.
4. In a Home Rule county, the voters can choose to exercise increased control over county spending and over the accumulation of county debt.
5. The Weld County Home Rule Charter includes an interesting limitation — prohibiting the County government from allowing a prison or jail to be located within the county, unless the voters have approved the location.
6. The Pitkin County Charter creates an ‘Election Commission’ to handle election protests. (I wish we had such a commission here in Archuleta County.) The Pitkin Charter also establishes a process for creating neighborhood ‘caucuses’ that can advise the commissioners on matters of interest to that particular neighborhood. From the Charter:
The word “caucus” may derive from an Algonquin Indian term describing their advisory form of representative democracy. In the Pitkin County experience, the word connotes representative democracy at the most local level where policies are formulated and recommended by the people whom they most affect. Once formulated at the local caucus level, these policies provide elected and appointed county officials with recommendations to enact just laws and policies.
7. The Pitkin Charter also puts limits on County borrowing.
Limitations on Borrowing: No income, sales, excise, property, transfer or any other tax, whether now in force or a new tax, shall be committed in favor of any debt of the County unless and until the commitment of the tax to the indebtedness and the indebtedness shall be submitted to and approved by a majority of the electors voting at an election called for such purpose.
Home Rule counties must continue to provide all mandatory county functions, services, and facilities that are delegated to counties by Colorado law, in addition to powers identified in the charter. Mandatory functions include transportation, street lighting, jails, abandoned property, land management, and providing for the public health, safety, and welfare of its citizens.
So, let’s say that a group of Archuleta County citizens determined that Home Rule might be a good tool for restoring taxpayers’ trust in the Archuleta County government. How would such a group bring the issue before the county voters?
The process is defined in Colorado Revised Statutes 30-35-501 et seq. Basically, the citizen group circulates a petition and gathers a sufficient number of signatures to propose the election of a Charter Commission. The commission will consist of eleven volunteers, including three from each County Commissioner district and two at-large members. Candidates file to nominate themselves for seats on the commission, and the community voters pick the eleven members.
The elected commission then has 240 days after its first meeting to compose a Charter, to be then submitted for voter approval, and then the adoption of the proposed Charter is considered during a special election. The special election may be part of a coordinated or general election, depending on the timing of the Charter submission.
The supporters of the proposed Charter, and its opponents, campaign for a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ vote, as the case may be.
If the voters adopt the Charter, then we’re on our way to establishing the newly formed government.
If the voters reject the Charter, then the County remains a statutory county, and we’ve all had an educational experience.