Opinion ID: 1171467
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Montezuma County House Districts

Text: The reapportionment plan splits Montezuma County in half between House Districts 58 and 59. House District 58 includes the counties of Dolores, Montrose, San Miguel, and Ouray, and the northern portion of Montezuma County. House District 59 lies south of House District 58 and includes the counties of Archuleta, La Plata, and San Juan, together with the southern portion of Montezuma County. The Commission justifies the splitting of Montezuma County on the basis that, once the boundaries of House District 60 in the San Luis Valley were fixed, the split of Montezuma County was necessary to achieve equality of population in both House Districts 58 and 59. According to the Commission, it could not combine Montezuma County (population 18,672) with La Plata and Archuleta counties (total population 37,629) because the total population of that district would be 56,300 and thus greater than the population level of 50,683 applicable to an ideal house district. The Bipartisan Committee to Keep Montezuma County Whole objects to the plan as violative of the constitutional prohibition against splitting counties except to achieve equality of population and submits an alternative plan, pursuant to which District 59 would be comprised of Montezuma, La Plata, and Dolores Counties, and District 58 would consist of San Juan, Ouray, San Miguel, Montrose, Delta, and the southernmost tip of Mesa County. The Commission dismisses the alternative plan by stating that it might have adverse effects on minority representation in front range districts and would not totally eliminate the splitting of counties. In my view, the alternate plan illustrates that there is an alternative to splitting a sparsely populated rural county such as Montezuma County in order to avoid the so-called ripple effects of compliance with the Voting Rights Act. It bears repeating here that the absorption of ripple effects can best be achieved by utilizing densely populated cities for that purpose rather than rural counties where the community of interest is often robust and where the county frequently is the primary provider of governmental services. To be sure, the preservation of communities of interest is the lowest constitutional priority, but that priority nonetheless has a role to play in the constitutional scheme. I am not satisfied that the Commission has made an adequate showing that splitting Montezuma County was necessary to achieve the more important and superseding constitutional requirement of equality of population. I accordingly join Justice Mullarkey's dissent from the court's approval of the Commission's plan for Senate Districts 32 and 35 in Denver, and I further dissent from the court's approval of the Commission's plan for House Districts 27, 29, 31, 33, 34, 35, and 62 in Westminster and House Districts 58 and 59 in Montezuma County. MULLARKEY, J., joins Parts I and IIA of this concurrence and dissent.