Northeast Colorado county commissioners have had their fun. Now it’s time get back to work.
A handful of rural county commissions in the northeast part of the state have agreed to ask voters this fall to move ahead with a plan to secede from Colorado and form a 51st state.
It’s an impractical waste of time that only serves to make these county officials look foolish on several levels.
The biggest mistake is the impetus for such melodramatic displeasure. Commissioners from these northeastern counties are foaming at the mouth because they believe that urban lawmakers, Democrats in particular, are ruining their quality of life by steamrolling dangerous legislation at the Capitol. They believe that the powerful urban centers of Colorado are oblivious and insensitive to the needs of rural Colorado residents.
It’s hooey.
A quick look at the bill titles of hundreds of measures approved by all state lawmakers and signed by Colorado governors for decades makes it clear that the state is extremely protective of its rural and agricultural residents, communities and industries. To say that rural, northeast Colorado counties are being shaken down or abused by a gang of urban, liberal shysters is an outright lie. The very basis of the state’s school finance law requires the state to pump extra money into rural schools to ensure they have everything urban schools do — often at very great expense. The state spends massive sums of money on government programs targeted at aiding farmers, ranchers and miners. We don’t mean that every Aurora lawmaker thrives on ensuring the wellbeing of all outstate residents. State lawmakers get it that we are all in this together. A healthy Weld County means a healthy Colorado.
More than anything else, these angry county commissioners are incensed by recent gun-safety reforms, illegal immigration reforms, gay rights reforms, and some environmental reforms enacted by the state. What state lawmakers actually did is reel in a few ridiculously lethal and dangerous weapons, close gaping background check loopholes while protecting the rights of law-abiding gun owners. The measures were so tame that it was remarkable how little change was actually enacted. And gay Weld County residents are just as pleased with a bipartisan civil union law as are gay residents in Aurora. These commissioners’ melodramatic complaints are just plain baseless.
The very foundation of the secessionist arguments are fabricated legends, and so, too, are the arguments for secession. You don’t have to be an urban Ph.D. to see the folly of what Sedgewick, Washington, Kit Carson, Weld, Logan, Yuma and Cheyenne counties are trying to do. There are about 300,000 people living in those counties, most of them in or near Greeley. Make no doubt about it that the bulk of the state’s economic engine is driven by services, just like most of the country. And in Colorado, tourism is huge — except for inside the counties that are talking about secession. Even if the insurmountable process to create a breakaway state were overcome — approval of seceding counties, the Colorado Legislature and Congress — these commissioners would be creating a state with huge need, little revenue and fleeting resources. Commissioners point to underground gas and oil as a way to fund their new, fledgling state. Anyone who’s lived in Colorado longer than the life of a car can attest to what the oil boom and bust cycle does to the local and state economy. If there would be winners from a breakaway state involving those Colorado counties, it would be the rest of Colorado not having to pave, pay for social services, educate and protect vast tracts of open land.
Commissioners made their point. They don’t like losing when it comes to Colorado politics. The only realistic answer is to persuade voters to elect officials who see it all their way. These antics aren’t likely to do that. Voters in those counties, especially Weld County, should end this distraction now and insist commissioners focus on real issues at hand.
No, the only answer is not to just elect politicians who agree with those counties! The real answer is to change the way the state devices up how the number of senators and representatives are determined. Colorado can determine the makeup of the Senate and the House the same way the Federal government does. The US House is determined by population in each state. The US Senate is determined by the number of states with two senators elected from each state regardless of population. Colorado could do the same thing – by the State Senate being made up of two senators elected by each county. The state house could remain as it is – the number of members being determined by the population of each county. That would give the low population counties better representation.
Lier is the best you have; guess it reflects the progressive instinct to label rather than use logic, facts and reason.