Archuleta County voters rejected a new jail in 2017. They rejected it again in 2018. In 2019, the county built it anyway — a $13 million, 54-bed detention center on a 20-year payment plan that will cost taxpayers $20.6 million total. No ballot measure. No voter approval. County commissioners approved a financing structure that Colorado courts have twice ruled is not legally “debt,” which means TABOR’s voter approval requirement never applied.
That financing structure is called a Certificate of Participation. And every county in the High Country uses it.
A Certificate of Participation — COPs in government finance shorthand — works like this: a government creates or designates a nonprofit corporation. That entity holds title to the public building. The government makes annual “lease payments” to the corporation. Investors buy certificates representing their share of those payments. Because the government can theoretically walk away from the lease without defaulting on a debt obligation, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in two separate cases that COPs fall outside TABOR’s definition of government debt. No ballot. No voters.
The Colorado legislature renamed the instrument a “financed purchase of an asset” in 2021 to align with updated accounting standards. The voter bypass is unchanged.
Chaffee County has used COPs so extensively that it created a dedicated entity — the Chaffee County Facilities Corporation — with the sole stated purpose of facilitating county financings. The corporation’s only function is to hold title to public buildings and lease them back to the county. Annual audits going back to at least 2012 show continuous COPs issuances. In July 2021, the county sold a new series through investment banking firm Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, rated AA- by Standard & Poors, to fund three projects simultaneously: an expansion of the Sheriff’s Office and administrative building in Salida, a new EMS Public Safety Building in Buena Vista, and a Detention Facility adjacent to the courthouse on Crestone Avenue in Salida. The certificates were sold in $5,000 denominations with maturities running 2 to 20 years. Investors were told the COPs were “secured by an annual appropriation pledge by the County to make lease payments from available funds and by a leasehold interest in the County jail.” They were not general obligation bonds.
The Public Safety Complex in Buena Vista opened in December 2024. The county’s own issuance documents noted that if the county ever stops appropriating the payments, certificate holders have no recourse.
The 2024 Chaffee County budget is blunt about what funds the debt service: Payment in Lieu of Taxes dollars — federal payments to counties with large amounts of public land — that are “not allocated to existing Certificate of Participation commitments are transferred to the Road & Bridge Department.” Federal money intended to compensate Chaffee County for land it cannot tax is first applied to COPs payments. Roads get what’s left.
Fremont County has been issuing COPs since at least 2003. The county’s 2023 annual financial audit documents four active or recently retired series. Series 2016 covered $5.1 million in jail upgrades — kitchen, laundry, and security systems. Series 2019 issued $5.77 million to refinance an earlier issuance, saving $428,908 in interest. Series 2021 issued $11.68 million to refinance the 2013 series and fund new construction, with interest rates between 4.0 and 5.0 percent running to 2038. A fourth series in 2022 financed $656,000 in Sheriff vehicles at 4.75 percent. Debt service on the 2021 series alone runs 17 years.
Park County issued $5.5 million in COPs in December 2016 to fund Phase II of its Consolidated Office Building in Fairplay. The county solicited competitive bids for an underwriter and closed the sale without a public vote.
The City of Salida used lease purchase financing — the same legal structure as COPs — through Collegiate Peaks Bank to finance its new $16.6 million fire station, built by Neenan Archistruction and completed in late 2024. When the Salida City Council approved the $16.6 million contract in September 2023, a council member described the city’s finance director as “a canary in the coal mine” watching the financing. A separate lease purchase agreement with the same bank financed a police facility extension. Neither went to voters.
Hinsdale County — population 774, the least populated county in Colorado — authorized lease-purchase financing for a new County Operations Center at an April 22, 2025 special BOCC meeting. The agenda noted the board would also discuss groundbreaking activities for the building.
The City of Gunnison approved a lease purchase financing for utility cost-savings measures in 2023 and a loan to finance a centralized water treatment plant in 2024. The Town of Pagosa Springs used COPs to finance its Town Hall on Hot Springs Boulevard. The same financing structure paid for the Grand Fire Protection District No. 1’s facilities in Grand County, where the district carried $6.88 million in COPs outstanding as of its 2023 audit.
Collegiate Peaks Bank, headquartered in Salida and Buena Vista, has positioned itself as the primary COPs lender for the mountain corridor. The bank explicitly markets “Certificates of Participation, General Obligation and Limited General Obligation, Lease Purchase, Moral Obligation” financing to Colorado municipalities on its commercial lending page, noting it works “with legal teams highly experienced in structuring financings that align with the legal and fiscal frameworks of local governments.” The bank financed both Salida projects. It was named Salida Chamber of Commerce Business of the Year.
The pattern runs statewide. Colorado’s own Treasury Department has issued hundreds of millions in COPs under the Rural Colorado program — $500 million in 2021, $500 million in 2022 — using public buildings as collateral to fund highway and capital construction projects the legislature couldn’t otherwise fund under TABOR limits. The state’s Building Excellent Schools Today program finances school construction through COPs. Denver issued $243.9 million in COPs in 2023 to refund an earlier series. The template flows downward from state government to counties to cities to fire districts.
TABOR passed in 1992 because Colorado voters wanted a say in government debt. The Colorado Supreme Court’s COPs rulings created a parallel track that routes around that requirement entirely. Governments that want to build something voters might reject — or simply don’t want to risk putting on a ballot — have a reliable legal mechanism to do it. Every county in the HCA coverage area has used that mechanism. Most residents have never heard of it.
The Archuleta County jail voters rejected twice is fully operational. Payments run through 2039.
Support Independent Local Journalism — High Country Advocate was created as a real alternative to regional media that too often silences dissenting voices while taking sides in the political struggle. Producing in-depth, unflinching reporting like this series and others is expensive: servers, editing, research time, and legal review all add up quickly. If these articles have informed you or given you new perspective, please consider supporting HCA with a paid subscription — every subscriber helps keep this reporting strong and independent. 