When there are only three commissioners, a county may elect commissioners in only one of two ways. In either case, each commissioner must live within one of the districts and then is either elected by the district, or elected by the whole county. When there are five commissioners, there are five methods for electing commissioners. (See C.R.S. 30-10-306.5 and 30-10-306.7)
There is also an entire section of laws dedicated to explaining how a county may increase the number of commissioners from three to five outside of becoming a home-rule county. One method simply allows the existing three commissioners to put the question on the ballot. The other method allows citizens to gather signatures in order to put the question on the ballot. Approximately 18,000 signatures are required (C.R.S. 30-10-306.5).
FAQs: No
additional staff is required to support two new commissioners. No new office
space is required. A commissioner's salary is $87,300 with a benefits package of $18,000, plus office supplies. The entire budget for the three-member DC BOCC is about $407,757. The cost of two additional commissioners would range from about
$210,600 to $271,838 (at most) or no more than $1 per resident per year.
FAQs: There is actually no way for the County to increase taxes to add any kind of personnel to the the county payroll whether that new staff be in maintenance or administration. Income is limited to property tax assessments, which are controlled by property values, and sales tax income, where increases and decreases are controlled by a vote of the people. Having five commissioners on the payroll is simply a budget allocation change. In normal economic times, the County has more than enough income to afford five commissioners; in lean years, other reductions in staff would allow the county to easily retain five commissioners.
2)
“Five commissioners will lead to financially wasteful pork barrel projects as
commissioners seek favor with districts that elected them.”
FAQs: A county
commissioner has no opportunity to fund “pork barrel projects.” The budget for
the county is allocated to department directors. Commissioners are not
allocated any discretionary dollars with which to fund their own personal
projects. There are more issues with commissioners approving projects submitted
by developers
who have contributed large sums to their campaigns. (Currently, there are no
contribution limits for county commissioners. A developer can make whatever
personal contribution to a commissioner’s campaign that they like.)
3) “Five commissioners would lead to factionalism and disunity with commissioners
acting to benefit their districts over the good of the entire county thereby
destroying what has been a reasonable system of cooperative governance.”
FAQs: Any time
you have a representative (Republican) form of government made up of two
or more people you risk creating a diverse mixture of experience, motivation,
values and interests. This is the purpose of representational government.
FAQs: After the
five commissioner districts are approved, the new districts can be created in
such a way that all factions of the county are represented in all districts
thus keeping the interest of each commissioner diversified while providing
better representative government for the whole county.
4) “Five commissioner districts will dilute the strength of the Douglas County
Republican Party, thereby making it much more likely that a Democrat will be
elected County Commissioner.”
FAQs: If the Republican philosophy is to have only one voice in government, this might be a legitimate concern.
5) “Adding more commissioners is ‘growing government’.”
FAQs:
Increasing individual representation in government to the extent that the law
allows is typically not what “growing government” means. “Growing government” refers to increasing spending on old programs and creating new programs
or adding more laws that restrict individual freedoms. Increasing
representatives to the extent of the law, enabling a more responsive
government, does not conflict with “small government” values.
6) “Arapahoe has problems because they went to five commissioners.”
FAQs:
Initially, there were some political conflicts in Arapahoe, but those were
resolved quickly and now Arapahoe has a very efficient five-member commission. Commissioners in El Paso county say that they don't know how large 3-Commissioner counties get all the work done.
Arapahoe, El
Paso, Weld, and Pitkin Counties all have five commissioners. I think that the
only reason other counties have not gone to five commissioners is that the
people in the county simply don’t know that the Colorado Constitution allows
and even expects them to have five.