Douglas County forms task force to cut business red tape

Douglas County has put its business-permitting process under a microscope, launching a Red Tape Reduction Task Force on April 2 to find where commercial and industrial projects get slowed by county rules, reviews and internal steps.

County leaders said the task force was created to streamline development processes, reduce unnecessary regulatory burdens and improve speed to market while still protecting safety, quality and community character. It grew out of a December 2025 resolution from the Douglas County Board of Commissioners that called for cutting regulatory barriers, and the county said the effort is being run with the Douglas County Economic Development Corp.

The task force is expected to review each step of the county’s development process, from the first filings to final approvals, and identify bottlenecks that can stretch timelines for builders, employers and property owners. The county’s message is clear: Douglas County wants to move faster on investment and construction, but it also wants to keep public health and safety in place as development accelerates.

That local push lands in the middle of a broader Colorado argument about whether the state is becoming too expensive and too slow for employers. Updated Colorado Chamber Foundation data cited in the 9NEWS Business Buzz segment showed 98 business relocations or lost opportunities in Colorado since 2019, including 27 in the last year alone. Colorado Politics reported that Texas accounted for 21 of those losses, with California, North Carolina, Arizona and Florida also drawing companies away from Colorado.

The same debate has spread beyond permits and into the cost of everyday transactions. In a related segment, NFIB State Director Michael Smith backed SB 26-134, a bipartisan bill in the Colorado General Assembly that would bar payment card networks with more than $60 billion in assets from charging percentage-based fees on the sales-tax portion of a purchase. 9NEWS reported that Colorado businesses paid $217.5 million in swipe fees on state sales tax in 2024 alone, a cost that lands directly on merchants before it is ultimately folded into prices paid by consumers.

Douglas County Commissioner Kevin Van Winkle has framed the county’s effort as part of making the region more speed-to-market friendly. The county’s 2026 budget shows it is still putting major dollars behind core services, with 42% allocated to transportation and 32% to public safety, even as it tries to loosen the administrative friction around private investment. For Douglas County, the new task force is as much an economic signal as a policy review: the county wants to compete for projects, not lose them to faster-moving places.