Cortez

Cortez, Montezuma County deserve legislative unity

June 16, 2001

by Earl Rohrbaugh

The decennial task of redistricting, like the flu season, is here again. The Colorado legislature — both houses — will be redistricted according to a design that will last for the next 10 years. With a fixed number of house districts (65) and senate districts (35), the latest census figures will be so divided as to give an average or mean figure of 66,173 persons for each house district and 122,893 persons for each Senate district. A 2.5 percent plus-or-minus variance from those figures is allowed to accommodate other considerations.

Currently, Montezuma County and the city of Cortez are divided between the 58th and the 59th house districts, which are multi-county districts. Both the 58th and 59th house districts currently exceed these population limits. These are precise characteristics. Other criteria are less precise and more subjective but are things the courts have looked at in passing judgment on redistricting plans: 1) absence of racial discrimination; 2) compactness and contiguity of districts; 3) preservation of communities of interest, and 4) preservation of county or municipal boundaries.

It is to be expected that political parties and their partisans and elected officials and hopefuls will want to see the lines drawn to their advantage. It is the process of negotiation, compromise and possible court review which will determine the district boundaries for the next 10-year period. Incidentally, this will exceed the elected terms of any incumbent or future state representative.

For the past decade Montezuma County has been divided, being partly in both the 58th and 59th house districts. Also the city of Cortez has been divided similarly. Rather than doubling our representation in the state legislature, it is more likely that our political "weight" is divided and the bulk of population (voters) in each district lies outside of Montezuma County. Both of these districts are contrary to both criteria 3 and 4 noted above.

There are two possibilities for redistricting which remedy those shortcomings. Both rely on restoring Cortez and Montezuma County to a legislative wholeness. One combines Montezuma with La Plata County. The combined population is 67,771. The other combines Montezuma County with Dolores, San Miguel and Montrose counties. Their combined population totals 65,700. Both plans are within allowable population limits.

The proposal presented by Rep. Larson builds on and largely maintains the current arrangement of a divided city and a divided county. In order to reduce this present population surplus he would remove Towaoc and the rest of Precinct 6 from the 59th district and add it to the 58th. Additionally, he recommends splitting off four precincts in Delta County to bring the 58th district within the new limits.

I find his argument persuasive regarding the community of interest between Archuleta and La Plata counties. However, I find the same argument even more persuasive when applied to Towaoc and McElmo Canyon. Transportation, tourism, commerce, employment, education, medical care and geography all tie those areas closely to the rest of Cortez and Montezuma County. To allow those divisions to remain and even add to them seems to me to do a disservice to the citizens of Montezuma County.

While these and other configurations are possible, the highest consideration ought to be the elimination of division of both Cortez and Montezuma County in to separate legislative districts in order to restore them to a single legislative district.