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Last Tuesday, a few hundred voters in northern Chaffee County participated in one of the rarest kinds of elections in Colorado. They got to elect a director of a water conservancy district.
Why is it worthy of comment when a special district has an election? After all, Colorado has an abundance of special districts which can levy taxes and condemn property and otherwise exercise the functions of government -- school, fire, hospital, etc. -- and they are accountable to the public because they have elections to select their directors.
But Colorado's 50 water conservancy districts are different. Their directors are almost always appointed by judges.
It is possible to hold an election in a water conservancy district -- possible, but not easy. Water conservancy districts generally comprise several geographic divisions, each represented by one or more appointed directors who serve four-year terms and can be re-appointed indefinitely.
To hold an election for one of those directors, you need to get the signatures of 10 percent of the registered voters in that division, and submit them to the court 90 days before that director's term runs out.
By contrast, you need only 5 percent of the total vote in the most recent election for secretary of state to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot in Colorado. So the hurdle for amending our constitution at an election is considerably lower than the hurdle for holding an election for one board member in a water conservancy district.
One the petitions have been circulated and turned into the court, and the signatures survive the inevitable challenge by the conservancy district, the judge schedules an election.
Since the current state law concerning conservancy district elections took effect in 1996, there have been only three such elections. The first two were in 1999 and 2000 in the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District, where the High Country Citizens Alliance has pledged to circulate petitions every time a term expires.
No Gunnison terms expired in 2001, so there were no elections there, but several terms did in the Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District, which comprises Chaffee, Custer and western Frémont counties. A group called Citizens for Water Integrity circulated petitions last winter for an election for one seat -- the division with the same boundaries as the Buena Vista school district.
The resulting election was Tuesday. Incumbent Gary Merrifield chose not to seek another term. The contest was between Jeff Ollinger, who campaigned for better cooperation between the district and the municipalities, and Lloyd Johnson, who wanted to continue current policies and who implied that Ollinger was a tool of evil Front Range special interests with a no-growth agenda for Chaffee County.
So, two candidates with different views campaigned, and the voters picked one, giving Ollinger 456 of the 791 ballots that were cast. That's how things are supposed to work in America, isn't it?
But it seldom works this way in Colorado, where the legislature continues to make it very difficult to hold a water conservancy district election, despite the persistent efforts of small-d democratic activists like Jeanne Englert of Lafayette and Richard Hamilton of Fairplay.
Occasionally they persuade a legislator to carry a bill
that eliminates the taxation without representation
aspect of our water conservancy districts by making all
seats subject to election, but the water buffaloes always
arrange for its demise.
Apparently we voters aren't competent to make decisions about water. We can elect the school boards that direct the education of our children, and we can elect the legislators who write the laws.
But when it comes to something really important, like water, we Coloradans are just too stupid to elect the right people -- unless we go to a lot of trouble to circulate petitions for each term for each seat.
That trouble extends to the conservancy districts, which rightly claim that some provisions of the current law are vague and others cause needless costs. For example, director terms are now based on the date the district was organized with the court, and so elections may have to be held in June or July, rather than with the general elections in November or the other special-district elections in May.
Since the dangerous concepts of democracy and no
taxation without representation
haven't fared well at
the General Assembly, here's what I hope happens: dozens of
election petitions at the grassroots, all across our state
from the Sedgwick-Sand Draws WCD that's almost in Nebraska
to the Mancos WCD near the Four Corners, and thus many more
complicated and expensive elections.
Then it will be the conservancy districts asking the legislature for a better law, one that makes elections simpler and cheaper, or maybe even routine. And the legislature might listen to them -- after all, they're not just some citizens who want a voice in how their tax money is spent.
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