Douglas County is not OK.
Alarming behavior in a county that for months has been checking all the boxes for “this doesn’t look good,” ended last week as an indisputable cry for help.
Elected officials there have virtually nuked their sheriff department, the regional health department, the county clerk’s office and any remaining shreds of credibility.
On Friday, they pretty much burned down the state’s third-largest school district.
If you don’t live there, you should still care because we’re all in the same metroplex lifeboat together. It’s just that Douglas County officials are no longer able to hide their crazy. They flaunt it like the neighbors who fill their yard full of poison oak and wild sumac trees and then enter the best garden contest.
This is going to get ugly.
After watching economic development gurus for decades, I can tell you two things quality businesses avoid are communities with shaky schools and kinky governments that keep generating worrisome headlines.
Few things say “falling property values” like Douglas County’s trifecta of “oh hell no.”
Here are a few of the headlines that make Douglas County a place begging for intervention:
– 2019: Far-right Republican county commissioners undermined Republican County Sheriff Tony Spurlock by threatening to withhold department funds for his supporting a state law that works to get guns from people with critical mental health issues. The law was named after a Douglas County sheriff deputy gunned down by a man suffering a mental health crisis who was able to keep his gun to go on a murderous rampage. Spurlock accused Republican commissioners of trying to “extort” him with their scheme.
– 2020: State Rep. and House Minority Leader Patrick Neville, R-Douglas County, sues Gov. Jared Polis over a statewide mask mandate, saying the governor was on a “power trip.” No Colorado court would even hear the lawsuit. Neville went on to draw scorn on himself from fellow Republicans for using about $1 million in GOP campaign funds to hire his brother as a contractor. Ousted as minority leader by his own party, Neville doxxed the two Denver Post reporters who covered the story, publishing their home addresses on social media. In a scathing editorial, The Denver Post told Neville, “good riddance.”
– 2020, 2021 and 2022: Since the beginning of the pandemic, just about every level of public official elected in Douglas County has fought against mask mandates. Douglas County was, until just a few months ago, part of the Tri-County Health Department, the largest health department in the state with a sterling reputation for efficiency and expertise. Despite that, recommendations of mask mandates, like those across the state, the nation and the world, elicited outrage among Douglas County elected officials. They planted extremist representatives on the Tri-County Board of Health, frothing disinformation and quackery about the mandates.
After months of miserable public battles, Douglas County commissioners decided to abandon the three-county health cooperative — to avoid mask mandates. The move will cost their constituents and others millions in duplicative taxes to create a board they can control that won’t impose mask mandates. Despite their efforts, the local Douglas County school district worked to keep its mandate, generating a lawsuit backed by local Republican elected officials.
– 2022: Recently, Douglas County commissioners bragged that they’ve hired from California a chief for their go-alone nascent public health department. This, after they abandoned Tri-County Health Department, run by a Harvard MD who is an expert in public health and especially communicative diseases. They bragged that they now have latched onto a guy who has a master’s degree in public administration “as well as a bachelor’s degree in biology.” Two of the three Douglas County commissioners appointed themselves to their new health department board.
– 2022: Last week, Douglas County Clerk Merlin Klotz joined two other Republican county clerks in Colorado accused of providing sensitive, confidential voting machine information to voter fraud conspiracy theorists who are part of Donald Trump’s debunked Big Lie effort to undermine voter security.
– 2022: Also last week, newly elected, far-right Republican Douglas County Schools board members were caught bending and possibly breaking state open meeting laws while conspiring to force Superintendent Corey Wise to resign or get fired. That prompted a “sick out” from the vast majority of Douglas County teachers and a huge protest, along with students. Sneaking around in pairs in a clear attempt to avoid state open meeting laws, the new conservative tribe are using a current playbook from across the nation where far-right extremists subvert government transparency and accountability laws to get their way.
– 2022: The threatened sick out prompted former GOP District Attorney George Brauchler, a Douglas County resident, regular Denver Post columnist, failed state Attorney General candidate and right-wing talk-radio host, to call for using state open records laws to doxx teachers, by making public the names of those who called in sick. “The public ought to know who you are,” Brauchler told listeners of his talk-radio show.
– 2021: Wise had come under fire from local extremists for his support of a district equity program and for supporting mask mandates in schools, similar to every school district in the metro area in hopes of keeping schools open and students and staff safe.
– 2022: During a lurid hours-long meeting Friday night, the school board publicly sacked Wise, even as he asked them to allow him time to attempt to address the bizarre and contradicting demands of the new school board. Wise himself summed up the circus side show saying, “There are times when I wonder if you want to fire each other or fire me.”
The move will cost taxpayers at least a quarter-million dollars and probably much more.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was Jenga.
No doubt this kind of thing goes on all the time in rural Missouri and all over Texas. But this is Colorado, a place where conservatives have served for generations with pride in a large part because of their level-headedness and push for diplomatic pragmatism.
Douglas County is being run into the ground by a group of elected officials who individually would create a clear and present danger to everyone who lives there. But working in tandem? All the dash lights are flashing.
It isn’t like the rest of the metro area can just shake our heads and be glad we don’t live there.
No doubt, there will first be a stampede of teachers out of the school district. Since Colorado is an open school district state, students will soon follow.
Leadership this bad and this far-reaching signals a future where everyone else in the metro area, and pretty much the state, will have to bail out what looks to be one disaster after another.
Everyone inside and out of Douglas County has a responsibility to shore up whatever credible leadership remains and to work to oust, overturn or elect someone that isn’t drowning in a sea of Trumpism.
Now would be a good time.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com.
Thank you for the excellent Opinion Article on the demise of DougCO. Appreciated the documentation of ignorant decisions by elected Republican destroyers.
On a broader scale, this should provide some insight into why the Republicans in Washington work to stop legislation, rather than work to improve it: they know they cannot govern, so best to ensure that nothing happens. Look at the track record of Buck, Lamborn, Broebert and the other embarrassments before them. Please identify anything of substance that they’ve accomplished that has made our state and our country a better place to be.
Douglas County is a great example of what would happen if likeminded conservatives get into power in the upcoming elections.
ALL YOU have to do is look at the beginnings of what the new conservative council is about in the Aurora City Council 🙁
This technique is being repeated all over the country: Infiltrate the lower contests like school board and then spread the MAGA far and wide.
It must be resisted.
And there’s the pretense–that anyone challenging the left’s political monopolies are “infiltrating” these areas.
The resistance, Jeff, is actually coming against you and your side due to the fact that you can’t keep your will to power in check.
Douglas County is one of the safest, high-trust, economically well-off places in the metro area to live, Gene, unlike dirty, crime-ridden, gang-infested Aurora.
Oh, it’s a white paradise.
You don’t want a “safe” community: You want a community safe from ideas you disagree with. There are many pampered, entitled places like this all over the country. They are united by one guiding principle: Some people are “real” Americans (read: white and conservative) and some are not “real” Americans (read: white, black, Hispanic, and Democratic).
We’ve seen this movie before, and it never ends well.
And there it is–the hatred of white people inherent in the white neomarxist left.
They harbor resentment of those above them, and contempt for those below them, and eternally demand that white people marinate in the same self-loathing they possess.
Your ethics of “repressive tolerance” and “the critical consciousness” have been shown to be socially and morally bankrupt, and you can’t stand the fact that people might resist you dragging them down in to the cesspool with you.
The Douglas County voters let the election get away from them. Now they can see what’s in store for them when the true radicals take charge. Authoritarianism is what you get and it’s a form of government characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of a strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting. Just go back and revisit ANIMAL FARM and wake up.
Although it’s been some time since I read Animal Farm, I believe it is a take on how communist thought overcomes a dictatorship then reverts to a different form of a new communist dictatorship. Now I feel awake, thanks Doug.
LOL, when was the last time you read Animal Farm, Doug? That book is all about how a radical left revolution ends up eating its own.
LOL
“Falling property values?” Hahaha! Do you even know any realtors!?!
I can’t believe author Dave Perry is actually the editor of this dying news outlet. Maybe, it’s because he only writes one-sided misinformation like this obvious hack-job. We didn’t get our way so we’re going to hurt the students now. Unbelievable.
This person got fired for holding secret meetings without conservatives present and for refusing to back down on a mask mandate. Show me the peer-reviewed journal articles in favor of this worldwide fraud. It’s about control, and Wise couldn’t see that. People like Dave can’t either, and his writing is full of false information and half-truths.
There is a reason CNN lost 90% of its viewers and is firing all of its hosts. People aren’t buying the propaganda and cancel-culture from the left anymore. Everything the left touches turns to crap – inflation, gas prices, Afghanistan, election integrity… name one thing that has actually gotten better under Let’s go, Brandon.
And just read all the nasty comments this honest post will get. Ha! And we don’t care. The truth hurts.
Wake up sheeple! The Dems better hope they can cheat in elections because they will get destroyed in the midterms. I love it!
Just a bit of clarification about CNN’s audience: TVNewser describes the drop this way.
Fox News looks pretty good — but the context there is worth a mention, too.
Dang Jim, don’t you hate those pesky facts? They can really get in the way of the lies and misinformation that you get fed. And cancel culture? Take a look at DougCo’s governance and its impact on the Sheriff’s department, school district, and health department. Or look at the firing of the librarian in Weld County, or the most recent actions of the Aurora CC, the forced resignation of the Jeffco public health department, or the three Election Commissioners and their unethical and perhaps illegal actions in support of the Big Lie, i.e. attempts to cancel the last Presidential election.
So you’ll be joyful if the party of ‘no’ gets into power? Be careful what you wish for, buddy; you’re already getting a glimpse of the chaos that will ensue when decisions are made fueled by fear and hatred.
We have fired it out: “Cancel culture” is a mere projection by the republicans, who will squelch anything and anyone with whom they disagree.
LOL, please. Every accusation from the left is a confession.
While you are correct, please understand that they don’t see it that way. But this sort of thing will continue to happen, county by county, until Denver is surrounded.
We need to duplicate DougCo across the state.
I’m so happy. For months, I’ve thought that the comments were so much more entertaining than the editorials and twisted mannerisms of presenting the news of this newspaper.
So many more individuals are commenting and/or voting making my theory carry more weight. I started noticing with the Regis HS, abortion fiasco but thought at that time it was just teens. Then I decided it didn’t matter, just the high numbers mattered. Thank you readers who comment for “making my day”.
You missed the DougCo Commish water resources meeting where the 3 commishs bickered and needed to be told to act like adults by a zoom participant. PS Someone needs to ask Lora Thomas and George Teal is they support the big lie.
Not sure I get the problem, everything you cited as a problem, actually is a good thing and is correctly bad practices.
FAR RIGHT!!!! EXTREMISTS!!!!!! FEEAAAARRR!!!!!!! Laughable