On July 8, the Douglas County Board of Commissioners held their first regular meeting since the results of the June 24 Home Rule special election. The meeting ended in a chaotic scene when the board chair, Commissioner Abe Laydon, cut off public comment to spare Commissioner George Teal the embarrassment of resident after resident — from all political persuasions — admonishing Teal for claiming that Home Rule was defeated due to foreign influence from the Chinese Communist Party. Far from a graceful concession.
Home Rule, initiated by the county commissioners, went down in flames by a 43-point margin with turnout comparable to a school board election. In any political contest, that’s nothing short of a knockout drubbing. If it was a boxing match, they would have stopped it.
I’ve won elections and lost elections. Even when I lost, I was able to walk out of the ring under my own power. The margin of defeat on Home Rule saw the county commissioners, metaphorically, picked up off the mat and carried out on a stretcher. After being accused of backroom deals and receiving a stinging rebuke at the ballot box, it’s no surprise they couldn’t stomach their first public appearance to face the voters of Douglas County.
However, cutting off public comment speaks to a larger problem with the county commissioners: they deliberately silence their citizens. Commissioner Laydon often grabs the microphone to accuse dissenters of being Democrats, as if that settles the argument. On July 8, several angry residents stood and shouted that they were unaffiliated or Republican voters, and that partisanship had nothing to do with their assessment of the commissioners’ conduct.
It was at that point that Laydon ended the meeting. Faced with the prospect of hearing backlash from even their own party, the commissioners fled the scene and called in sheriff’s deputies to protect them from their neighbors as they retreated into the backrooms where all their decisions are made.
The community’s discontent is not going away. The commissioners can hide for a time, but speaking from within the supermajority who opposed Home Rule, they would be far better off clearing time on the agenda for public comment and facing the music. The only way to clean up the mess they brought upon themselves is to hear people out and move on.
Barrett Rothe
Castle Pines