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A rare red-alert crossed my computer last week, warning that I would be expelled from the National Association of Sages, Pundits & Dispensers of Cliched Wisdom if I failed to write about the finale of the Seinfeld Show.
As far as I'm concerned, the last episode of Seinfeld could have aired years ago without affecting me. I tried watching it several times, and never managed to finish an episode without picking up a book.
If I want to watch shallow, selfish egomaniacs in action, talking interminably about nothing that matters, there are many public meetings I could attend, and also pick up some brownie points for being a good citizen.
So at some career risk here, I'll move to another topic. On our ballot this November will be a proposed constitutional amendment to create a new county for Broomfield, which sprawls into Adams, Jefferson, Boulder and Weld counties.
Thus simple acts like registering to vote or transferring a car title can be diverted to the appropriate courthouse in Brighton, Golden, Boulder or Greeley. That's confusing, but it demonstrates that our political boundaries do not reflect current reality.
Our county geography reflects sound 19th-century thinking. A much larger proportion of the population lived on remote farms or ranches then, and roads were wretched.
As always, people had to venture to civilization for marketing, shopping, church, saloons, etc. Make the area's market town the county seat, so that governmental business could also be transacted when it was time to hitch the team to the buckboard and go to town.
Our county boundaries were generally drawn with this in mind. Other factors were political patronage (creating counties created jobs for commissioners, clerks, judges, sheriffs, etc.) and, judging from a map, just plain ignorance.
For instance, the town of Marble sits in Gunnison County, so a winter trip to the courthouse means 120 miles, when other county seats -- Aspen, Glenwood Springs, Delta -- lie closer. To get from Basalt to its county seat at Eagle means going through Glenwood Springs, seat of Garfield County.
But in general, our county boundaries reflect the commercial geography of Colorado at the end of the 19th century, when Colorado politicians didn't see it as any big deal to adjust county lines.
They abolished Greenwood County in 1874. They created counties freely (Colorado has 63; California, half again as big as Colorado with eight times our population, manages with only 58).
When conditions changed, Colorado made a new county. Silver in the Wet Mountains? Then carve Custer County from Frémont County in 1877. Gold at Cripple Creek? The cobble together Teller County from El Paso and Frémont in 1899. Powerful state Sen. Billy Adams wants his hometown to have its own county? Take a slice of Conejos County and create Alamosa County in 1913.
But since then, there haven't been any new counties, even though our economy has changed considerably. Park County, for instance, made sense in 1870 when the miners and ranchers of South Park all visited Fairplay to trade. Now Fairplay is a suburb of Breckenridge, Bailey belongs to greater metro Denver, and the Lake George area is Colorado Springs West. This may help explain why Park County probably leads the state in recall elections and lawsuits.
Within recent memory, Leadville was the center of the regional universe, its Safeway store drawing customers from as far away as Kremmling. Now the Lake County has been annexed by Eagle County, except that the old lines remain on the political map.
In short, the political boundaries do not reflect contemporary commercial geography, and that leads to all manner of problems in financing government -- i.e., Vail's county gets the money, while Leadville's county gets the burdens.
In olden days, our politicians faced this problem forthrightly and drew new boundaries. These days, well, Broomfield is trying, and Aurora, split between Adams and Arapahoe counties, has as good a case as Broomfield.
But it will be a struggle when common sense has to
contend with dumb comments like that from Elaine Valente,
an Adams County commissioner who commented that There
must be another way to fix this [Broomfield's multiple
counties] without creating another layer of
government.
Replacing one layer of government (several counties)
with another layer of government (one county) is not
creating another layer of government.
It would
create a new government, but not another layer of
government.
But these days, it's fashionable to decry adding a layer of government, even though that isn't what's happening. A century ago, it was fashionable to create a county that fit the needs of the citizenry.
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