{"id":99984,"date":"2018-05-03T15:40:57","date_gmt":"2018-05-03T21:40:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bill-to-allow-voting-by-district-in-small-counties-defeated\/"},"modified":"2018-05-03T15:40:57","modified_gmt":"2018-05-03T21:40:57","slug":"bill-to-allow-voting-by-district-in-small-counties-defeated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bill-to-allow-voting-by-district-in-small-counties-defeated\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill to allow voting-by-district in small counties defeated"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/p>\n

A bill that would allow small counties in Colorado to decide how to elect county commissioners was shot down by a 5-to-4 party-line vote Wednesday in the House State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee.<\/p>\n

The bill<\/a> would have allowed small counties to decide whether to hold at-large elections or by-district elections for county commissioners. Currently, Colorado counties with fewer than 70,000 residents elect three county commissioners from three separate districts, but voters can cast ballots in all three districts.<\/p>\n

The Senate\u2019s Local Government Committee approved the bill unanimously 5-0 on April 10, and it was approved by the full Senate on April 17 by a 24-to-11 margin before being defeated in the House committee.<\/p>\n

Former state Rep. J. Paul Brown, who tried to pass a similar bill in 2012, was frustrated by the result.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re real disappointed that the House does not want counties like La Plata County and the people of the county to have true representation in government,\u201d he said Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Brown brought a similar bill to the Republican-controlled House in 2012, where it passed with bipartisan support on a 61-4 vote. It was ultimately killed on a party-line vote in a Senate committee with a Democratic majority.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo have true representation, counties should be allowed at least to go to the people and decide for themselves how they want to elect their county commissioners,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

La Plata County Commissioner Gwen Lachelt has been opposed to the legislation every time it\u2019s brought up. She said the change would create division among county commissioners.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I were elected only to represent my district, the three commissioners would be forever embattled,\u201d Lachelt said. \u201cWhen your task is to sit there with your fellow commissioners and make the best decision on behalf of the entire county, that means you\u2019re working really closely with your commissioners, you\u2019re compromising. You\u2019re discussing what the best outcome is for the entire county and not just your district.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown was encouraged by the testimony during the bill\u2019s run and hopes it gets brought up again in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very hopeful that the state affairs committee would listen and have a different result,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re disappointed, but that\u2019s the way it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

asemadeni@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

commissioners are elected at-large<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":99985,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[1680,1512],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-99984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-la-plata-county-commissioners","tag-la-plata-county-government"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99984"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=99984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}