Some excerpts from an article in the 3/25/25 Denver Post described the DougCo board's attempt to get home control. Some excerpts are below.

Douglas County is embarking on a nearly yearlong effort to establish home-rule authority — a power that leaders in the conservative suburban county hope to wield as a defensive weapon against what they consider legislative overreach by state lawmakers.

Establishing home-rule authority “will allow us to keep what we have and allow us to push back on the state on things we really care about in this county,” Commissioner George Teal told The Denver Post. “We like to talk about local control in this state, and yet the mechanism for local control is home rule. Let’s put our money where our mouth is.”

The first question of course, is "what things do we really care about?"

Douglas County would become just the third of the state’s 64 counties to possess home-rule authority as a standalone county. The other two are Weld and Pitkin counties. Denver and Broomfield, which operate as dual city-and-county governments, have home-rule powers by virtue of their status as municipalities.

“Home rule gives you enhanced standing to challenge the state,” county attorney Jeff Garcia said.

Legal challenges of state

Last year alone, Douglas County [sued the state Board of Equalization][2] over the board’s decision to overrule the county’s attempt to provide $4 billion in property tax relief to its residents, while months later filing suit against the state over two immigration laws.

Earlier this year, just before President Donald Trump returned to office, Douglas County’s commissioners [adopted a resolution backing his plans][6] to deport immigrants living illegally in the country.

The county’s legal volleys haven’t found much success in the courts. A Denver judge dismissed much of Douglas County’s challenge on the property tax matter, while a different Denver judge struck down the county’s immigration lawsuit in December, ruling that the county didn’t have standing to bring the action against the state.

This is a county that seems to love lawsuits

County leaders even envision home-rule authority allowing them to set aside the state’s 10-cent grocery bag fee, which lawmakers mandated in a bill passed four years ago. Teal said he could see home-rule power being used to shore up local land-use policies in Douglas County to counter state mandates and challenge gun-control laws being considered in the Capitol.

“When we get gun-control laws that come down, we’re going to have latitude,” the commissioner said. “When you talk about gun control, that’s a big issue for folks in Douglas County.”

How much power would county gain?

Paul Teske, dean of the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado at Denver, isn’t so sure that Douglas County will be able to use its hoped-for newfound powers to meaningfully bend policy in the face of state law. He characterized the county’s move Tuesday as the “politics of defiance.”

Home-rule authority, he said, typically applies to more pedestrian matters, like tweaking the organization and structure of county government.

“There’s a history of precedence of states being able to preempt local decisions on important policy issues,” Teske said. “This move seems to mainly be a political statement asserting some independence from a state legislature that has gone further left in recent sessions.”

Douglas County’s June special election for the charter commission is projected to cost the county about $500,000 to conduct.

Asked if the cost of the special election in a fiscally conservative county bothers him, Teal was adamant that it doesn’t.

“It’s money well spent,” he said.