Debate concerning five commissioners continues

By Dan MacArthur
Correspondent

Is more always better? When it comes to county commissioners, that's a debate unlikely to be settled anytime soon if a forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters is any indication.

There's no question for Gina Janett, who led the Citizens for 5 Commissioners effort two years ago. Expanding the current board from three to five commissioners, she contends, would result in more diverse representation and better-balanced perspectives. Currently, she said, a majority of only two commissioners can take actions affecting everybody in Larimer County.

"We think a county with more than 260,000 population needs more than two people making decisions for all of us," Janett asserted at a Feb. 24 forum. "What we want is good and better government."

The issue is less certain for two-term former commissioner Jim Disney.

"Better representation is a pretty vague term," he countered. "If you don't agree with somebody, they think you're not listening to them."

Disney said he was not necessarily opposed to the concept of increasing the number of commissioners, but had some serious reservations.

"Are we going to get $210,000 of better government by going to five? I don't know," Disney said, referring to the estimated cost of adding two more commissioners. He also feared that adding "two more egos at the table" would simply extend meetings by making them more long-winded.

Disney said he probably would agree to a five-member board of county commissioners providing they were elected countywide in non-partisan elections to "get rid of the lazy voters who vote R(epublican) or D(emocrat)."

But Janett said Citizens for 5 Commissioners are "very strongly in favor of district representation." She insisted that electing commissioners by districts rather than through an at-large vote brings government closer to the people, attracts more candidates otherwise unable to afford a costly countywide campaign, and encourages greater voter turnout. Further, she said commissioners elected by residents of their district would feel a greater connection with their constituents.

"If you have a district representative, it's their job to find out what's going on," Janett said, citing her previous experience as a district representative on the Fort Collins City Council as an example.

Disney said he was just as firmly opposed to separate district elections because they tend to result in distasteful favor-trading and make elected officials less aware of the big picture at a time when regional cooperation is increasingly important in Northern Colorado.

He also feared pure district representation would further increase the county's "Fort-centric" tendency of catering to the largest city at the expense of the rest of the county.

Janett countered that, according to a districting alternative developed by the state Division of Local Government, both Fort Collins and the unincorporated areas would be represented by two commissioners and Loveland represented by one.

County manager Frank Lancaster agreed that Fort Collins, with half the county's population, would be in multiple districts under that scenario. But he also pointed out that the city could be included in two or more districts, depending how they're drawn--further diluting Fort Collins' influence. In Weld County, for example, Lancaster said the commissioner districts emanate from Greeley like the spokes of a wheel with each taking in a portion of the county's largest city.

The League of Women Voters debate continues one that started in 2002 when Citizens for 5 Commissioners circulated petitions seeking the creation of two additional county commissioner districts. The group collected some 9,500 signatures calling for the issue to be placed on the election ballot. To spare the county the cost of verifying the signatures, however, the group decided not to formally submit the petitions after the commissioners indicated they would put the proposal before voters. The commissioners, however, reneged on their commitment, insisting they never had promised to place the issue on the ballot.

Janett said the nearly 50-member group has not since convened to consider launching another petition drive. She said earlier that they were unlikely to do so during this general election year with a full ballot already confronting voters.

The county commissioners have said they are satisfied with the current system and have no interest in placing an alternate proposal on the ballot.

In lieu of placing the five-district issue on the ballot, the commissioners instead asked the Division of Local Government to analyze alternative governance structures in Larimer County.

The 61-page report identified four alternatives:

• Sticking with the current system in which the three commissioners must live in their respective district but are elected at large in a countywide election.
• Converting to a five-commissioner system in which all five are elected entirely by district, or three are elected by district and two at large.
• Becoming a home-rule county, offering greater flexibility in structuring the government, but not as much independence as a similar designation affords cities.
• Taking a consolidated city-county approach such as with Denver - a highly centralized approach dismissed as all but impossible here because of many municipalities within the county.

Panelist Vicki Harimon, a staffer in the election office of the Arapahoe County Clerk and Recorder's Office, said that south-suburban county's experience was a positive one in converting from a three- to a five-commissioner, five-district system.

"It's more of a personal feeling," she said. "You know your commissioner."