December 20, 2024 12:02 PM UTC

Weld County Gerrymandering Case Pushes The Boundaries Of Home Rule

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• by: Colorado Pols

A simmering controversy in arch-conservative Weld County is playing out mostly under the radar of preoccupied local media, as the county perhaps best known for being the center of an ill-fated attempt to secede from the rest of Colorado a decade ago defends a county commission redistricting plan that not only divides and reduces the voting power of Latinos, but appears to be in direct contravention of a state law passed in 2021 mandating a redistricting commission and a defined process. As the Greeley Tribune’s Chris Bolin reported last week the Colorado Supreme Court is deliberating the case after hearing arguments on December 11th:

The main question remains whether the home rule charter has the authority to overrule a 2021 state law requiring certain criteria be met when redrawing commissioner districts.

In a lawsuit filed Oct. 23, 2023, the plaintiffs the League of Women Voters Greeley-Weld County, the Latino Coalition of Weld County and Greeley residents Barb Whinery, the former League president, and Stacy Suniga, the Coalition president alleged the commissioners violated state House Bill 21-1047 by not providing proper notice of public hearings on the redistricting process and by improperly drawing a map that divided a community of interest…

The effect of the redrawn map is to divide Latino-heavy population of Greeley across all three county commission districts, something the county’s three conservative Republican commissioners agree is totally fine:

The map moved three precincts in Longmont and Dacono from District 2 to 3 but kept Greeley which is 40% Latino divided into three different districts. Weld County as a whole is about 30% Latino.

Commissioner Chair Kevin Ross, as well as Commissioners Perry Buck and Scott James, all suggested that splitting Greeley across the three districts helps foster a good mix of urban and rural representation at the county level.

Or, it’s a brazen attempt to minimize the influence of Weld County’s most urban population center by splitting it up among three majority conservative districts. It’s not hard to understand why this is being done, so the question then turns to whether Weld County actually has the power to defy state law and ignore the statute governing the county redistricting process:

The county also argues that since home rule counties are not specifically named in the 2021 bill, the commissioners followed the correct protocol in redrawing district lines.

Rep. Chris Kennedy, D-Lakewood, who sponsored the bill, previously said in an email that the law was “absolutely intended to apply to home-rule counties, as the Weld County Commissioners knew from the conversations we had about it at the time.” [Pols emphasis]

There is evidence to support Rep. Chris Kennedy’s position in the fiscal note for the legislation in question, House Bill 21-1047:

From here, the plaintiff’s argument is straightforward: since the redistricting process is not explicitly protected by the home rule authority provisions in the Colorado Constitution, the General Assembly can pass binding legislation regulating the county redistricting process. It’s necessary to establish all of this in order for address the real problem here, which is the attempt by a Republican-dominated commission to divide and undermine Latino voting power in Weld County.

Sometimes it takes some explaining to get to the part that matters. But that’s what this case, and the 2021 legislation in question, is all about.