Opinion ID: 1171467
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Pitkin County

Text: The second portion of the Final Plan that we disapprove is the division of Pitkin County and the City of Aspen into House Districts 57 and 61. The Pitkin County Board of County Commissioners objects to the division of Pitkin County into two house districts and the resulting division that the City of Aspen and the economic-related and dependent communities of Aspen and Snowmass Village. The Commission asserts that the Pitkin County splits occurred as a result of the need to obtain the required population level in the districts involved. District 61 is made up of five counties and two parts of counties, all located in a mountainous area of the state. It includes Lake County, with its county seat in Leadville; Park County, with its county seat in Fairplay; Chaffee County, having Salida as its county seat; and the northern part of Teller County, with Cripple Creek [10] as its county seat. All these counties are on the eastern slope. The balance of District 61 consists of the western slope counties of Gunnison, with its county seat in Gunnison; Hinsdale, with Lake City as its county seat, and part of Pitkin, with Aspen as its county seat. It is the division of Pitkin County between House Districts 57 and 61 that concerns us. District 61 contains 50,329 residents. Of these, 5,297 [11] are from Pitkin County. The remaining 7,364 Pitkin County residents, including a small number of Aspen residents, are placed in District 57, including as well most of Garfield County (county seat in Glenwood Springs), and all of Rio Blanco County (county seat in Meeker) and Moffat County (county seat in Craig). The redistricting boundaries in Pitkin County adversely affect the explicit constitutional criterion of maintaining counties and cities intact. In addition, District 61 lacks compactness. It ranks seventh poorest under both the Schwartzberg test and the Reock test. Visual inspection of the map of District 61 shows that the inclusion of part of Pitkin County as a peninsula jutting out from the mainland of the district contributes to the lack of compactness of the district as a whole. [12] The division of Pitkin County can only be defended on the basis that it is necessary to meet the paramount equal population requirement of section 46 of article V. In addition, the preservation of communities of interest criterion of section 47(3) has been seriously compromised by combining the up-valley, eastern part of Pitkin County with other counties across the continental divide. Although this area of Pitkin County is contiguous to Gunnison County, Lake County, and Chaffee County, reference to any highway map discloses that there is no improved road directly connecting principal population centers in Gunnison County to Pitkin County, [13] and the only access from Aspen to the eastern slope counties is across Independence Pass, which, as the Pitkin County objectors point out, is closed for about six months each year. See Colo. Const. art. V, ง 47(3). The Pitkin County objectors also assert a strong community of interest between the residents of the resort City of Aspen and the all but contiguous recreational resort of Snowmass Village, and with other residents of the Roaring Fork Valley, from whom they will be separated by the district boundaries created by the Final Plan. The Commission states that if Pitkin County were not divided, it would be necessary to divide either Summit County or Eagle County in order to achieve substantial equality of population among districts. It does not suggest why such divisions would be equally or less adequate constitutionally than the one adopted. We conclude that the Commission's explanation for dividing Pitkin County and the City of Aspen, and for the further division of Snowmass Village from Aspen, does not rise to the level of an adequate factual showing that less drastic alternatives could not have satisfied the equal population requirement of the Colorado Constitution. Furthermore, the explanation does not provide a basis for meaningful judicial review of the Commission's decision. We, therefore, disapprove that part of the Final Plan which divides Pitkin County and the City of Aspen into House Districts 57 and 61. We return that part of the plan for reconsideration, revision, modification, and resubmission. If, after considering alternatives, the Commission concludes that the present Final Plan for Districts 57 and 61 is still constitutionally preferable to the alternatives, it may resubmit the present plan. In that case, the Commission should provide the court with additional information detailing the alternatives considered and the reasons for their rejection.