By C. J. Garbo | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
Douglas County voters will soon be asked to make a consequential decision about the structure of their county government. A citizen-initiated ballot measure proposes expanding the Board of County Commissioners from three members to five, with the expanded board composed either of five commissioners elected by district or three elected by district and two elected at large. The current commissioners have referred a separate measure that would allow voters, if they approve expansion, to preserve countywide elections for all five commissioners.
Supporters of the expansion have framed their argument around representation, accountability, and population growth. Douglas County has unquestionably grown, and it is reasonable to periodically examine whether governmental institutions remain suited to the communities they serve. Yet the language of “better representation” carries an assumption that deserves considerably more scrutiny than it has received: that Douglas County residents are presently underrepresented in some meaningful way, and that the existing three-member commission has consequently become inadequate to the task of governing the county.
Before accepting that premise, voters should examine the county that the present system has helped govern.
Douglas County is hardly an example of government in need of rescue. By most meaningful measures of local governmental performance and quality of life, it is an extraordinarily successful county. Its finances are strong, its government carries no debt, its residents report remarkable levels of satisfaction with public safety and essential services, and its elected officials have continued making substantial investments in roads, transportation, wildfire protection, parks, and law enforcement while exercising considerable fiscal restraint. The county has accomplished this while absorbing decades of rapid population growth and confronting many of the same economic, regulatory, infrastructure, and demographic pressures affecting the rest of metropolitan Denver.
If that is evidence of a governmental structure that has ceased to work, proponents of expansion have a peculiar definition of failure.
A record worth examining before we change it
The case for retaining Douglas County’s existing governmental structure rests on more than political preference. It begins with results.
Douglas County’s 2025 citizen survey found that 94 percent of respondents considered the county a safe place to live and work, while 89 percent regarded it as a good place to raise a family. Satisfaction with parks and trails reached 91 percent, the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office received an 84 percent satisfaction rating, election management received 81 percent, and none of the county services measured in the survey received a satisfaction rating below 60 percent. Even amid the political polarization that the survey’s independent researcher identified as a significant influence on respondents’ attitudes, 64 percent agreed that Douglas County has good county government.
Those figures deserve to be considered seriously in a debate premised upon the supposed need to improve representation and governance. They do not establish that Douglas County government is flawless, nor should anyone pretend that every decision made by its commissioners has been correct. They do establish that the people actually receiving county services report high levels of satisfaction with many of the governmental functions that matter most to their daily lives.
The financial record reinforces the point. Douglas County adopted a balanced $650.8 million budget for 2026 that maintains zero debt, creates no new full-time positions, imposes no new fees or fee increases, and directs $225.1 million toward transportation and $139.4 million toward public safety. The county budget also projects that the average resident will experience approximately a 5 percent reduction in property taxes paid in 2026. Even the operating portion of the budget is increasing at a rate below the combined measure of population growth and the county’s three-year average inflation rate.
That is a record of fiscal restraint that should matter to taxpayers regardless of party affiliation. Douglas County has demonstrated that a growing government does not necessarily require a proportionately expanding political structure, particularly when the existing structure continues to deliver core services, invest in infrastructure, protect public safety, and maintain fiscal stability.
The county has also continued expanding its capabilities in areas that directly affect quality of life. Its 2026 public-safety investments include additional wildfire mitigation resources, a rapid-response helicopter and Helitack team, and development of a dedicated firefighting response and training facility. Transportation funding includes major interchange reconstruction and expansion of the county’s Link On Demand transportation service.
These are not abstract accounting achievements. They represent the kinds of governmental priorities that determine whether residents experience their community as safe, functional, accessible, and well managed.
Douglas County residents, therefore, have every reason to ask why a government producing these results requires two additional elected officials.
Population growth is a reason to ask the question, not an answer to it
The strongest argument for expansion is also the simplest: Douglas County has grown enormously.
There is no dispute about that fact. A county that once contained a fraction of its present population now approaches 400,000 residents, and the responsibilities of county government have necessarily grown with it. The workload associated with transportation, land use, public safety, human services, infrastructure, economic development, and constituent relations is substantially greater than it was several decades ago.
Population growth, however, does not by itself establish governmental inadequacy. It merely gives voters a legitimate reason to examine the question.
The proper policy inquiry is whether Douglas County’s three-member commission has become incapable of governing the population it serves, and whether adding two commissioners would produce measurable improvements sufficient to justify restructuring county government permanently. That case should be demonstrated through evidence of deficient outcomes, inaccessible representation, inadequate oversight, deteriorating services, fiscal mismanagement, or some other identifiable institutional failure.
Instead, Douglas County presents voters with an unusual situation in which the argument for structural reform exists alongside substantial evidence that the existing structure continues to perform effectively.
If residents were abandoning Douglas County because of declining public safety, if county finances were deteriorating, if infrastructure investment had collapsed, if essential services were routinely failing, or if the county had accumulated substantial debt while struggling to accommodate growth, the case for reconsidering its governmental structure would be much easier to understand. Those circumstances would at least establish a problem for which reformers could propose a remedy.
That is not the Douglas County described by the available evidence.
The question is therefore more demanding than whether five commissioners could govern a county of this size. Of course they could. The question is whether five commissioners would govern Douglas County materially better than three commissioners already do, and whether that improvement would justify the financial, institutional, and electoral consequences of the change.
The proponents of expansion should have to answer that question before voters are asked to redesign a successful institution.
More government is not automatically better representation
There is an understandable intuitive appeal to the proposition that five commissioners must provide more representation than three. Each commissioner would theoretically represent fewer residents, and district-based commissioners might develop a closer relationship with the communities within their districts.
That is a legitimate argument, but it represents only one conception of representation.
Douglas County currently has three commissioner districts, and candidates must satisfy the residency requirements associated with those districts. The important distinction is that commissioners are elected countywide. Every Douglas County voter therefore participates in choosing every member of the governing board.
That arrangement reflects an equally legitimate principle of representative government: officials who exercise governmental authority over the entire county should remain electorally accountable to the entire county.
The citizen initiative would permit a substantially different arrangement. If voters approve expansion, the five-member board could consist entirely of commissioners elected from individual districts or of three district-elected commissioners and two elected at large. The existing Board of County Commissioners has responded by placing a separate measure on the ballot that would allow voters to retain countywide elections for all commissioners even if the board expands.
This distinction should receive far more attention because it changes the meaning of the proposal. The debate is no longer simply about whether Douglas County needs two additional commissioners. It is also about whether voters should surrender some of their present ability to hold the people governing the county electorally accountable.
Under a five-district arrangement, a resident would directly elect one of five commissioners while the other four would participate in decisions affecting that resident’s taxes, roads, public safety, land-use environment, county services, and quality of life without ever appearing before that resident on a ballot.
Reasonable people may conclude that the benefits of localized district representation outweigh that loss of countywide accountability. What should not be accepted without examination is the claim that such an arrangement is self-evidently “more representative.”
It represents people differently. Whether it represents them better is precisely the question voters must decide.
The political consequences should be discussed openly
The initiative describes itself as nonpartisan, and citizens of different political affiliations have participated in the effort. That fact deserves acknowledgment. There is no basis for claiming that every person supporting five commissioners shares the same political objective, and doing so would unfairly reduce a legitimate policy debate to an accusation about individual motives.
There is equally little reason to pretend that changing an electoral system has no partisan consequences.
The Douglas County Democratic Party has publicly promoted the 3-to-5 petition effort, recruited volunteers to circulate petitions, and repeated the argument that expansion would provide better representation, enhance accountability, and reduce concentrated decision-making. Democrats have every right to advocate for an electoral structure they consider preferable, just as Republicans and unaffiliated voters have every right to evaluate what that structure could mean for the future political governance of the county.
The relevant question is not whether every supporter secretly intends to change Douglas County’s partisan composition. The relevant question is whether the proposed structure creates an electoral opportunity that does not exist to the same degree under the present system.
It plainly can.
Under countywide elections, any candidate seeking a seat on the Board of County Commissioners must ultimately persuade voters throughout Douglas County. Republican candidates must do so, Democratic candidates must do so, and unaffiliated candidates must do so. A political movement seeking control of county government therefore faces a straightforward democratic requirement: it must build a coalition capable of winning across the county.
District elections change that political calculation because a party no longer necessarily needs to persuade a countywide majority before acquiring governmental power. It may instead concentrate candidates, campaign resources, organization, and turnout within a smaller geographic electorate where its support is stronger. One favorable district can produce a seat even when the same candidate or political program could not prevail throughout Douglas County.
There is nothing illegitimate about that feature of district elections. It is one of their inherent political consequences, and it is precisely why Douglas County voters should consider it before altering a system in which every commissioner must presently answer to them all.
For Democrats who have struggled to achieve countywide control in Douglas County, district elections offer an obvious strategic opportunity. That observation does not require a conspiracy theory, nor does it require imputing hidden motives to every citizen who signed a petition. It requires only an elementary understanding of electoral politics.
A party that cannot reliably win the county as a whole has an obvious interest in an electoral structure that permits it to win smaller portions of the county separately.
Douglas County voters are entitled to decide whether facilitating that possibility constitutes desirable representation or an unnecessary alteration of a system that already requires governing coalitions to command countywide support.
Douglas County has something worth preserving
The larger question extends beyond partisan competition because governmental structure ultimately matters only insofar as it affects how a community is governed.
Douglas County has spent decades establishing itself as one of the most desirable communities in Colorado. Its residents have access to extensive parks and trails, strong public-safety institutions, substantial transportation investment, growing communities, valuable residential property, and county government that remains financially stable despite extraordinary population growth.
These accomplishments did not result solely from the number of commissioners, and it would be intellectually careless to suggest otherwise. Municipal governments, special districts, businesses, nonprofit organizations, schools, law enforcement agencies, community organizations, taxpayers, and generations of residents have all contributed to what Douglas County has become.
County government nevertheless plays an important role in maintaining the conditions under which a community prospers. Budget priorities matter. Land-use decisions matter. Public-safety investments matter. Infrastructure planning matters. Tax and regulatory policies matter. The willingness of elected officials to distinguish between essential governmental responsibilities and opportunities for unnecessary expansion matters.
Douglas County’s current governing structure has existed throughout a period in which the county has managed tremendous growth while preserving fiscal stability and a quality of life that residents continue to rate highly. That record does not prove that three commissioners caused the county’s success, but it certainly undermines any casual assumption that three commissioners are preventing it.
This distinction becomes particularly important when residents compare Douglas County with neighboring jurisdictions. Counties throughout metropolitan Denver confront many of the same statewide laws, economic cycles, housing pressures, transportation demands, population changes, and regional challenges. Their policy choices and governing philosophies nevertheless differ, sometimes substantially, and those choices inevitably influence taxation, public safety, development, infrastructure, regulation, and the character of their communities.
Partisan control alone cannot explain every difference in quality of life among neighboring counties, and serious policy analysis should not pretend otherwise. Geography, municipal composition, demographics, tax bases, historical development patterns, and state policies all matter. Yet it would be equally unserious to pretend that political philosophy and public policy have no effect on governmental outcomes.
Douglas County has generally emphasized fiscal restraint, public safety, transportation, property rights, economic vitality, and preserving the characteristics that attract families and businesses to the county. Residents can judge for themselves whether those priorities have produced results worth maintaining.
The available evidence provides a compelling reason to believe they have.
The burden of proof belongs with those proposing change
There are circumstances in which governmental institutions should be restructured despite a history of success. Population growth may eventually require it. New responsibilities may make an old structure impractical. Concentrations of authority can become unhealthy. Electoral systems can cease to provide adequate representation as communities change.
None of those possibilities should be dismissed merely because Douglas County is presently successful.
Neither, however, should voters reverse the burden of proof.
The fact that five commissioners might work does not establish that three commissioners no longer work. The fact that smaller districts might provide more localized representation does not establish that localized representation is preferable to countywide accountability. The fact that Douglas County can afford additional elected officials does not establish that taxpayers should pay for them.
Government should not expand because expansion is financially possible or administratively conceivable. It should expand when the public benefit of doing so has been demonstrated.
That demonstration is particularly important in Douglas County because voters are not being asked to repair an obviously dysfunctional institution. They are being asked to alter a governmental structure that currently oversees a balanced, debt-free county government, directs substantial resources toward transportation and public safety, and serves a population that overwhelmingly describes the county as safe and a good place to raise a family.
Those facts should create a presumption of caution rather than a presumption of change.
If it is broken, show us where
The most persuasive case for three commissioners is ultimately not nostalgia, partisanship, or resistance to change. It is the absence of compelling evidence that Douglas County needs two more.
If commissioner workloads have become unmanageable, voters should be shown objective evidence of the resulting governmental failures. If constituent access has become inadequate, proponents should demonstrate where and how residents are being underserved. If county oversight has deteriorated because three commissioners cannot reasonably supervise the institution, those deficiencies should be identified. If five commissioners would produce measurable improvements in services, fiscal management, public safety, transportation, or accountability, those improvements should be explained with enough specificity for voters to evaluate them.
Without such evidence, “Douglas County has grown” becomes an observation rather than an argument.
The county has indeed grown, and it has done so spectacularly while the three-member commission remained in place. The governmental structure now characterized as inadequate has overseen a county that remains financially strong, invests heavily in essential services, carries no debt, and receives unusually favorable assessments from its own residents on some of the most fundamental measures of community well-being.
There is considerable wisdom in periodically examining institutions. There is equal wisdom in recognizing when an institution continues to accomplish what it was created to do.
Douglas County voters should therefore approach this proposal with confidence rather than insecurity. They do not need to accept the premise that a successful county must enlarge its governing board simply because its population has increased. They should instead require proponents to establish that the present structure is producing a meaningful deficiency and that five commissioners would correct it without sacrificing something more valuable in the process.
The political consequences deserve the same clear-eyed examination. District elections would create opportunities for political factions that cannot presently command countywide support to acquire governmental power through smaller geographic constituencies. Democrats are entitled to recognize that opportunity and advocate for a system they believe serves their interests and principles. Republicans, conservatives, and unaffiliated voters are equally entitled to conclude that officials exercising countywide power should continue to earn countywide consent.
There is nothing antiquated about requiring someone who wants to govern Douglas County to persuade Douglas County.
Perhaps the most important fact in this entire debate is therefore the simplest one, although it requires more than a slogan to appreciate. Douglas County is not being asked to restructure its government after fiscal collapse, declining public safety, deteriorating services, or widespread dissatisfaction with the community itself. It is being asked to restructure its government while remaining a prosperous, financially disciplined, highly regarded place where 94 percent of surveyed residents say they feel safe and 89 percent say it is a good place to raise a family.
That is an unusual foundation upon which to build an argument for more government.
Before Douglas County adds two elected offices, assumes their recurring costs, and potentially changes the relationship between commissioners and the countywide electorate, proponents should be able to identify the failure that requires the remedy.
Until they do, the more prudent course is to preserve the structure that is working and require anyone who wants the authority to govern Douglas County to continue doing what representative government has always demanded of them: persuade the people of Douglas County to give it to them.
C. J. Garbo brings an unusually broad perspective on Douglas County government, having served the community across local government, public safety, civic leadership, Republican Party organization, and state legislative policy. A former Douglas County resident, he served as Chairman of the Douglas County Planning Commission, Chairman of the Castle Rock Election Commission, a Community Safety Volunteer with the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, and a member of the Cobblestone Ranch HOA Board of Directors. His political service included roles as a District Captain for the Douglas County GOP, Chairman of the Douglas County Young Republicans, and Senior Legislative Aide to State Representative Max Brooks of Castle Rock.
Garbo holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Metropolitan State University of Denver and a Master of Science in Human Resource Management from Regis University. He has also managed political campaigns at the local, county, state, and federal levels. His experience at the intersection of land use, elections, public safety, legislative policy, and political strategy gives him a practical understanding of how governmental structures shape accountability, representation, and public policy.
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.