ÌÇÐÄvlog´«Ã½

© 2025
NPR News, Colorado Stories
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Colorado Capitol coverage is produced by the Capitol News Alliance, a collaboration between ÌÇÐÄvlog´«Ã½ News, Colorado Public Radio, Rocky Mountain PBS, and The Colorado Sun, and shared with Rocky Mountain Community Radio and other news organizations across the state. Funding for the Alliance is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Why is Douglas County so worked up about home rule?

No on Home Rule organizers prepare for canvassing behind a sign on the grounds of a Douglas County library, May 31, 2025.
Stephanie Wolf
/
CPR News
No on Home Rule organizers prepare for canvassing behind a sign on the grounds of a Douglas County library, May 31, 2025.

Voters in Douglas County are deciding whether to become a home rule county. With ballots due June 24, the issue is stirring up a lot of strong feelings, amidst competing claims about what it would mean for this fast-growing part of Colorado.

County commissioners say home rule status would give Douglas County more legal standing to fight back against Democratic policies coming out of the State Capitol. But the experience of Colorado's only two existing home rule counties shows that home rule is more complicated, and less far reaching than they may hope.

On this episode of Purplish, joins to break down home rule: from how the idea got its start in an armed conflict on the steps of Denver's city hall, to the role it's playing today in the fight over housing policy.

Purplish is produced by CPR News and the Capitol News Alliance, a collaboration between ÌÇÐÄvlog´«Ã½ News, Colorado Public Radio, Rocky Mountain PBS, and The Colorado Sun, and shared with Rocky Mountain Community Radio and other news organizations across the state.

Funding for the Alliance is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.This episode was edited by and sound designed and engineered by . Our theme music was composed by Brad Turner.

Bente Birkeland is an award-winning journalist who joined Colorado Public Radio in August 2018 after a decade of reporting on the Colorado state capitol for the Rocky Mountain Community Radio collaborative and ÌÇÐÄvlog´«Ã½. In 2017, Bente was named Colorado Journalist of the Year by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), and she was awarded with a National Investigative Reporting Award by SPJ a year later.