CENTENNIAL, Colo. — An Arapahoe County District Court judge said she will rule by Monday whether a ballot initiative to change Aurora’s structure of government violates the state’s single subject rule.
On Thursday afternoon, lawyers for former Aurora City Councilman Charlie Richardson and lawyers for the city of Aurora and the citizens who initiated the petition argued before Judge Elizabeth Volz. Richardson sued the city and the petitioners, claiming the initiative approved by the city clerk violates a state statute that bars multiple unrelated issues in a single initiative.
“We believe it conclusively demonstrated that thousands of Aurora voters were duped into signing a purposely misleading petition,” Richardson said outside the courtroom.
The heart of Richardson’s argument is that the proposal would change many elements of the city charter, including increasing the mayor’s salary, decreasing council salaries, taking away power from the city council and changing term limits for city council members.
“What council would be left doing on a Monday night at a council meeting, to me, would be essentially proclamations recognizing community service,” Richard said, noting the comment was somewhat facetious. “This is so sweeping that the council’s role is so diminished.”
Suzanne Taheri, who represents the citizens who collected signatures to get the item on the ballot, argued her clients don’t believe Aurora has a single subject requirement for initiatives. But she said the changes Richardson cites are all related to the same subject.
“Everything you’ve mentioned is related to the idea that we’re changing from a city manager form of government, where the city manager is in charge of things, and we’re empowering a mayor who’s accountable to the voters to do the same things,” Taheri said. "Now the mayor’s duties have gone up…the city council’s duties have also changed.”
Taheri said the issues Richardson raises are implementation details that her group is working to sort out, so courts don’t have to sort them out down the road.
“We set the term limits and created this new office to settle the constant litigation around what is a term, what is an office… and we just saw that happen up in Thornton related to the election that’s about to happen there,” she said.
Richardson’s lawsuit also argues that Aurora’s city clerk approved a ballot title that wasn’t clear enough. His legal team suggested language that included information about all of the changes.
An attorney for the city argued the clerk followed state and local law on the ballot title, which requires brevity. The attorney said the language Richardson requested would encourage a no vote.
Richardson heartily disagreed.
“You know what…they’ve encouraged a no vote by trying to overload this ballot issue with all of these myriad unrelated items,” Richardson said. “It’s their fault that an accurate description of what they’re trying to do could encourage a no vote.”
Volz told the parties she'll have an opinion on all the issues in writing by Aug. 21.
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