The Situation

On March 25, 2025, an alarming power grab was publicly launched by Douglas County Colorado Commissioners when they announced a special election, costing an unnecessary $500,000 in tax payer dollars, to turn Douglas County Colorado into a Home Rule County. This vote will be on June 24, 2025.

A team of grassroots citizens, sprang into action to create a special issues committee to oppose this initiative. This team includes long time Douglas County residents with extensive experience in campaigning inside and outside of Douglas County and extensive experience advocating for local issues.

In the coming weeks, we will provide history and data on why this cannot go forward, outline important milestones leading up to the special election, communicate accomplishments, and outline activities to let you know where you can get involved to support this grass roots effort.

Much work is happening in the background to set these grass roots efforts in motion and to fight this blatant power grab by the commissioners of Douglas County. We hope you will find a place where you will want to get involved. If this goes forward, it will drastically change the dynamics of how Douglas County is run and will disproportionately place power into the hands of a very few individuals and this will be irreversible.

What are the Risks?

Charter Language Can Be Vague — by Design

A charter can be written to sound neutral and embed enormous discretion in the hands of the commissioners:

- “The Board shall establish…” gives broad latitude.

- “As determined by the Board…” puts judgment solely with them.

- “May consolidate or dissolve entities…” enables takeovers.

Control Over Appointments

We’ve already seen commissioners override normal procedures by personally appointing library trustees — a major breach of precedent and independence.

Under home rule, they could codify:

- Direct appointment power over boards and commissions

- Removal of independent advisory groups

- Appointing themselves or close allies to powerful roles

Concentration of Power

The Home Rule Charter could redesign county government — including:

- Rewriting the structure of departments

- Eliminating independent boards (like library, planning, or health boards)

- Appointing allies to key roles

- Shifting from elected to appointed positions

- Set their own criminal charges and bonding for crimes committed

- appoint their own judges

- local regulations on collective bargaining and unions

- Their own approach to tax notifications

Undermining Democratic Representation

A new charter could:

- Change the number of commissioners (e.g. stay at 3 rather than expand to 5 for broader representation)

- Redraw district lines in their favor

- Limit or manipulate public input processes

- Create at-large seats that dilute minority or regional voices

What is Home Rule?

A New Government Structure

Home Rule allows a county to write its own charter and improve local governance but it all depends on who writes the rules and the level of transparency in the process. This campaign, however, is being touted as a push back against state law policies via lawsuits against the state of Colorado.

It's a “local constitution” that could completely reshape:

How elections are run
How taxes are managed
What kind of public input is required (or ignored)
Checks and Balances

Home Rule is extremely rare for counties because it can be difficult to reverse, may not produce a balanced outcome and Douglas County already functions effectively under the current system.

Of 64 counties in Colorado, only two have adopted Home Rule status — and both did so back in the 1970s.

Why the Rush?

If Home Rule were to be voter approved, without careful and thoughtful design and input, could result in:

Concentration of power resulting in less local input and representation.
Vague descriptions leading to abuse of power with no legal recourse for the citizens.
Compromised ability to hold elected county officials accountable and no guarantees of accountability.
Costs – $500,000 for the campaign and how much ongoing for lawsuits against the state? Against the Home Rule Commission?

What's the Problem?

Current Douglas County commissioners - George Teal, Kevin Van Winkle and Abe Laydon - without public input on the interest in Home Rule or the $500,000 taxpayer paid initial cost for the Home Rule campaign are rushing through the judicial and legal process in less than half the time allowed, making decisions behind closed doors, and stacking the deck with their handpicked charter committee members to run.

Their timeline – July and August- to design an entirely new government system that has not been done in Colorado since the 70’s is NOT an adequate amount of time to write a multi decade long range strategic Home Rule charter for the fastest growing county in Colorado, conduct legal and public reviews and vote on a completely new form of government during the November 4, 2025 elections.

This shows a complete disregard for input from ALL their constituents, the abuse of taxpayer dollars without representation, and sloppy planning and care of the process.