Broomfield Shouldn't Help a Prosecutor Buy a Third Term

At its August 11 meeting, the Broomfield City Council will take up a resolution that sounds bureaucratic on its face: a change to district attorney term limits for the 17th Judicial District, from two consecutive four-year terms to three. If both this council and the Adams County Commissioners sign off, the question goes to voters in November. That process sounds fair enough. It isn't. The council should vote this resolution down, and if it doesn't, voters should treat it as what it is: an attempt to extend one official's hold on power dressed up as routine housekeeping.

Term limits exist for a reason that has nothing to do with the competence of any particular officeholder. They exist because prosecutorial power, more than almost any other function of local government, benefits from turnover. A district attorney controls charging decisions, plea deals, and the discretion to prosecute or decline to prosecute entire categories of offense. Eight years is already a long runway to build institutional relationships with judges, police departments, and defense bar alike. Twelve years starts to look less like public service and more like tenure.

What should trouble Broomfield residents even more than the substance of the change is the mechanism. This isn't a citizen petition drive. It isn't even a stand-alone council debate driven by public demand. It's a resolution moving through a Wednesday meeting alongside proclamations for National Nonprofit Day and updates on a drainage channel, decided jointly by two governing bodies, the city council and the Adams County Commissioners, neither of which is the 17th Judicial District's electorate in the way that actually matters. Voters in Broomfield, Adams County, and the rest of the district will eventually get a say, but only after two rounds of institutional gatekeepers agree the question is worth asking. A measure to loosen limits on power is itself being decided through a process that concentrates procedural control in the hands of a few elected bodies rather than the public directly.

Defenders of the change will point out, correctly, that many Colorado district attorneys serve under similarly extended limits, and that eight years may simply not be enough time to see complex prosecutions or systemic reforms through to completion. There's a real argument buried in there. Building a functioning special victims unit, reforming diversion programs, or overhauling how a DA's office handles mental health cases takes longer than one term. But the answer to “the job is complicated” is not automatically “give the incumbent more time.” It could just as easily be “build institutional continuity that survives changes in officeholder,” which is a healthier goal for democratic accountability than extending any single person's run.

There's also a timing problem specific to this moment. This resolution surfaces the same summer the council has been quietly expanding its own procedural footprint: closed-door performance reviews of top appointed officials stretching across three separate special meetings this fall, a ward boundary review triggered without much public fanfare, a Model Service Plan tightening rules for how metro districts operate. None of these are scandalous in isolation. Taken together, they describe a local government comfortable making structural decisions about power and accountability through routine agenda items rather than dedicated public debate. A term-limit extension for a regional prosecutor fits that pattern precisely. It is exactly the kind of decision that deserves its own hearing, its own scrutiny, its own moment separate from consent-agenda logic, not a resolution that rides through on a Wednesday between a NatureFest invitation and a floodplain funding item.

If the council believes the case for a third term is strong, it should make that case loudly and specifically, not procedurally. Put the reasoning in front of residents. Explain what an incumbent DA could accomplish in years nine through twelve that couldn't be accomplished in years one through eight, or handed to a successor. Absent that argument, the council should decline to forward this resolution to Adams County, and if it does anyway, voters in November should ask why a limit on power needed loosening in the first place.