Weld County may have violated Colorado law with its proposed commissioner district map

Bill passed in 2021 requires counties to adhere to many new requirements when drawing district lines

The Board of Weld County Commissioners are set to vote Wednesday, March 1 on new boundary lines for the county’s three commissioner districts to rebalance population totals. The board has proposed a map of the new districts with few changes from the most recent redistricting effort in 2017.

There’s just one problem: The commissioners may have violated state law as they worked to draw up that map.

In 2021, the Colorado Legislature passed House Bill 21-1047, known as the County Commissioner Districts Gerrymandering bill. Though the bill doesn’t require counties to set up independent redistricting commissions to draw county commissioner district lines — like Colorado voters opted to require for congressional and legislative lines — it does recommend they do so.

The Weld commissioners ignored that recommendation and opted to keep the power to draw their own district lines. But of course, not following a recommendation isn’t violating the law. But this is where things get interesting.

Competitiveness matters

Like many laws, HB21-1047 contains legal definitions. And there’s an important one placed into the Colorado Revised Statutes at 30-10-306(6)(b):

“Commission” means a county commissioner district redistricting commission, whether the commission is an independent county commissioner district redistricting commission or not. A county commissioner district redistricting commission can be made up solely of the members of a county’s board of county commissioners.

In other words, even though Weld didn’t opt to set up an independent commission to propose the new district boundaries, the board of county commissioners itself must adhere to the law’s requirements as they draw commissioner district boundaries.

And they probably didn’t. For example, the law says the group drawing commissioner district boundaries must “maximize the number of politically competitive districts.”

“Competitive” means having a reasonable potential for the party affiliation of the district’s county commissioner to change at least once between federal decennial censuses. Competitiveness may be measured by factors such as a proposed district’s past election results, a proposed district’s political party registration data, and evidence-based analyses of proposed districts.

But according to The Greeley Tribune, Weld Clerk and Recorder Carly Koppes on Feb. 16 told the League of Women Voters that the county follows Weld’s Home Rule Charter, which lays out its own process for redrawing county commissioner districts. And guess what …

The process does not acknowledge competitiveness as a factor in drawing the district boundaries.

In other words, Colorado law requires county commissioner district lines be drawn to maximize political competitiveness, but Weld code has no such requirement. It’s an omission that could very well draw a serious legal challenge to the county’s proposed map.

Are there any other problems?

Yep. State law requires that “communities of interest” be considered for inclusion within a single district “for purposes of ensuring their fair and effective representation.”

So what is a community of interest? The law gives some examples:

• Racial, ethnic and language minority groups;

• Regions with shared public policy concerns, such as:

  • Urban areas;

  • Rural areas;

  • Agricultural areas;

  • Industrial areas;

  • Trade areas;

• Groups with shared public policy concerns, such as:

  • Educational areas;

  • Businesses;

  • Environmental areas;

  • Public health groups;

  • Transportation areas;

  • Water regions;

  • And “issues of demonstrable regional significance.”

In the map proposed by the commissioners and likely to be approved by them Wednesday, the city of Greeley — the county’s largest population center — is fractured, breaking up into thirds an “urban area” and combining those pieces with various “rural areas” within the county. And apparently that was overtly intentional, as The Tribune recently reported.

Because of Greeley’s location in the county, its size and historical precedent, the city is usually split between all three districts, Koppes said. District 1 runs roughly north of U.S. 34 and north of 10th Street in west Greeley, before dipping south of that line at 35th Avenue and reaching southeast of the U.S. 34 and U.S. 85 interchange. District 2 covers from west Greeley south of District 1 to about 23rd Avenue. District 3 covers the rest of Greeley, reaching west of 23rd Avenue south of U.S. 34 Bypass.

Now think about this. Weld County has about 330,000 people, according to the 2020 U.S. Census. Greeley’s city limits contain about 110,000 people, according to the same count. That means Greeley itself could easily make up a single Weld commissioner district. That the commissioners have drawn a map to avoid that possibility is an intentional effort to avoid protecting a community of interest, which again could lead the commissioners’ map to draw a legal challenge.

And these aren’t the only problems with the map. State law also has a host of public notice and input requirements for commissioner district map alterations, and the Weld commissioners have skirted those requirements, too.

Doesn’t Weld’s Home Rule status protect them?

Not necessarily. When it comes to how commissioners get elected and how their districts are drawn, state law may very well supersede county code. That’s exactly the stance of state Rep. Chris Kennedy, the Democratic legislator from Lakewood and House Speaker pro tempore, who co-sponsored the 2021 bill.

“I had a legal memo prepared by staff at the beginning of [the 2021] session to better understand whether home rule would exempt a county like Weld from this law. It does not,” [Kennedy] said. “Home rule for counties is very limited in its application.”

Since Weld County took a neutral stance on the bill, Kennedy was under the impression that it would enforce the new law. He says the state is prepared to sue any county that does not comply.

It sure sounds like Weld County will soon find itself in court.