Local Control Matters Because Your Community is Not the Same as Someone Else's

Coloradans believe in something simple and important. The people who live in a community should help decide what that community becomes.

That principle is called local control. It is not a technical concept. It is a promise. It means your neighborhood is shaped by the people who live there, raise families there, and invest their lives there.

That promise is being tested at the State Capitol.

In recent sessions, the legislature has passed and proposed a series of housing bills that override local zoning authority across Colorado. These include mandates eliminating local parking standards, forcing higher density development near transit corridors, requiring approval pathways for housing on church and school property, and allowing certain housing developments to bypass local zoning entirely.

More recently, the HOME Act allows public institutions, transit agencies, housing authorities, and nonprofits to construct housing projects on qualifying land regardless of local zoning rules.

These policies may sound technical. They are not. They directly affect whether your community keeps its character or loses its voice.

I serve on the House Transportation, Housing, and Local Government Committee. That means I see these proposals early. I hear the arguments. I watch how they move through the process. I also hear from local officials across Colorado who are increasingly concerned that decisions once made locally are now being made centrally.

Cities across our state are already pushing back. Colorado Springs joined multiple home rule municipalities in a legal challenge against state housing mandates that override local zoning authority. Their position is straightforward. These policies bypass community input and impose one-size-fits-all planning decisions on places that are very different from each other.

Colorado is not one community. It is hundreds of communities.

Castle Rock is not Boulder. Douglas County is not downtown Denver. Highlands Ranch is not Capitol Hill. Yet the state continues advancing policies that treat them as interchangeable.

Supporters of these mandates argue they are necessary because Colorado faces a housing shortage of roughly 106,000 units statewide.

The housing shortage is real. It deserves serious solutions. But solutions that override local governance do not solve the problem. They move decision-making farther away from the people affected by those decisions.

Local governments understand their infrastructure limits. They understand water availability. They understand traffic patterns. They understand school capacity. They understand emergency response coverage. They understand what their residents actually want their community to become.

State-level mandates cannot replicate that knowledge.

Recent legislation has also attempted to prevent communities from limiting residential permit growth, further reducing the ability of local leaders to align development with infrastructure readiness.

This is not planning. This is preemption.

Even more concerning, the state has signaled that discretionary funding may be withheld from municipalities that do not comply with these housing mandates. That includes hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and program funding.

That is not partnership. That is pressure.

The people of House District 45 understand something important. Growth must be responsible. Development must match infrastructure. Neighborhoods must remain places where families choose to stay, not places they feel forced to leave.

Free people value the ability to protect what makes their communities unique.

They value open space.

They value safe neighborhoods.

They value schools that are not overcrowded.

They value roads that work.

They value the character of the places they chose to call home.

Those priorities are not obstacles to progress. They are the foundation of stable communities.

When decision-making shifts away from residents and toward distant policy frameworks designed for entirely different places, communities lose something that cannot easily be restored.

Local control is not about resisting housing. It is about ensuring housing decisions happen responsibly and with the participation of the people who live with the consequences.

Colorado’s strength has always come from its communities. Protecting their voice protects the future of our state.

I will continue working in the legislature to defend local authority, protect community input, and ensure that the people closest to the consequences of growth remain the people closest to the decisions about growth.