County recall committee is legal, petition could be open to challenge

Signature collection still ending May 28

The committee calling for a recall election of all three Gunnison County Commissioners is complete with three members, which is the limit required by law. But the petition the committee is circulating could be open to challenge if the county doesn’t recertify the language.

Almost immediately after Gunnison County resident Robert Allen was left as the lone remaining member of the committee early this month, one of the committee posts went to Gunnison resident George Willis. A week later another county resident, Bob Delahay, volunteered to take the third spot.
And while the committee is legally complete, Gunnison County Clerk and Recorder Stella Dominguez says she hasn’t seen the petition that it is circulating. If the petition is the same one that was filed by the original committee, with different names on it from the current committee, the petition might be open to challenge by the commissioners, who petitioners are seeking to recall.
The only way to remedy the discrepancy now is to withdraw the latest petition and submit a new one, or the recall committee could submit the same petition with a different—current—list of committee members.
But that would start the 60-day signature collection clock all over again, and the window for the petitioners to successfully recall commissioner Jim Starr is closing.
Dominguez says Starr, who is up for reelection this fall, cannot be recalled in a special election within six months of a regular election. That gives the committee until July to have the signatures in hand and checked against the voter registration, or watch Starr escape the possibility of a recall election.
The deadline for getting signatures on the current petitions for all three county commissioners is May 28.