Colorado county's secession plan would split Erie in half

For Erie, the burgeoning secession movement in northeast Colorado is doubly troublesome as half the town lies in Boulder County while the other half is in Weld County, which last week referred to the November ballot a measure that will ask voters whether they want to break away from Colorado and form a new state, dubbed North Colorado. The Weld County commissioners join their counterparts in seven other counties in rural northeastern Colorado -- including Logan, Phillips, Kit Carson, Washington, Yuma, Cheyenne and Sedgwick -- in placing on the ballot a 51st state initiative. Proponents of the campaign say they are pursuing secession because of rural residents' extreme dissatisfaction with laws the legislature passed this year, including oil and gas bills, gun-control bills and a bill that doubled the amount of energy rural electric cooperatives had to obtain from "green" sources. Erie, with 20,000 residents, is largely suburban with single-family homes marching off toward the horizon in all directions. Trustee Paul Ogg, who lives on the Weld County side of town, said Erie probably has more in common with Boulder County and the Denver metro area than small rural towns in the northeast corner of the state. But he said there are plenty of residents in town, especially on the Weld County side, who sympathize with their eastern brethren. Ogg said he heard plenty of consternation from constituents after gun accessories manufacturer Magpul Industries Corp. announced earlier this year that it would abandon its Erie headquarters and relocate to another state in the wake of a series of gun-control laws passing in the state. "There are people in Weld County who are far more conservative than I thought when I first got elected," Ogg said...more