Mayor Harrington announces run for Albany County Commission
Mayor Harrington announces run for Albany County Commission
The announcement kicks off what could be the most expensive and hotly contested local race of 2024. As city councilor, Harrington has pushed to reform housing and protect the environment.
Laramie Mayor Brian Harrington has entered the race for Albany County Commission, announcing his candidacy during the Albany County Democratic Convention Saturday.
Harrington was elected to the Laramie City Council in 2018 to serve a two-year term. He was re-elected in 2020 and became mayor during the council’s first meeting of 2023.
Harrington will compete for the one county commission seat on the ballot this year. That seat is currently held by Commissioner Sue Ibarra, who declined to run for re-election and approached Harrington to run in her place. Both Ibarra and Harrington are Democrats.
“Brian is an effective advocate for social justice, clean and safe drinking water, affordable housing, economic development, and social services that work to improve the lives of all citizens, especially our marginal communities,” Ibarra writes in a statement to the Laramie Reporter. “Brian understands how local government works — and how to make it better.”
During Harrington’s tenure among city leadership, the council passed housing reforms and rental regulations, committed to carbon neutrality and supported renewable energy projects. It also sought to expand the city’s available sources of drinking water by finalizing a city-county Aquifer Protection Plan and by purchasing the Bath Ranch, a property bearing significant water rights.
Throughout these projects, Harrington said the city worked closely with county leadership, aiming for consistency between the government bodies.
The mayor said he hopes to continue that close partnership from the other side of the equation.
“My time in public service is certainly not over; it’s incredibly rewarding and I want to continue to do that for my neighbors,” he said. “When I mulled over the things that I had really truly enjoyed working on — they all felt like they could continue quite smoothly at the county … This general partnership between the city and the county that’s developed over the last three years, I think, has really been really beneficial to the taxpayers.”
On the day he launched his campaign, Harrington raised more than $1,000. He said he wanted to start on the right track but acknowledges he’ll need more than that to secure the commission seat.
The competitions that decide county leadership are consistently among the most expensive races in Albany County. Candidates in 2022’s commission race raised $41,000 competing for two open seats. Candidates in 2020 raised $51,000 competing for one.
The race … and the Democratic outlook
The Albany County Commission has three seats, only one of which will be on the ballot in 2024. The race for this County Commission seat could be the most significant local race this election cycle and is likely to be the most hotly contested.
Simply put: the party that wins this seat wins control of county leadership.
The two seats not up for election this year are split between one Democrat and one Republican. If Harrington wins the third seat, replacing Ibarra, the commission will remain in Democratic hands. If he loses to a Republican, the balance will shift.
Ibarra won the seat in 2020 in an extremely close race that drew more than 18,000 votes and was decided by less than 60.
Candidate filing does not officially begin until next month and the Albany County Republican Party did not respond to a request for comment, so it’s not yet clear who besides Harrington will enter the race for this coveted seat.
It is “really unlikely” Harrington will face a primary challenger, according to Albany County Democrats Chair Mike Selmer. Selmer said the party is struggling to find candidates to compete for open seats.
“I think we’re at 20 people that someone on our search committee has spoken to who have declined to run,” he said. “And I would say half of those folks expressed an interest in running for office, but just not this cycle. I think there’s an undertone of nervousness … about how this cycle is going to develop, given the animosity between the Trump camps and the Biden camps.”
Selmer said he doubts election-related violence will occur in Albany County.
“I don’t think we’re going to have disruptions at the polling places, or anything like that,” he said. “But even if we don't have it here, if it occurs in other places — and especially in the lead up to the election — it’s going to make people nervous. I mean, how can you not be nervous looking at the way the dialogue is proceeding in our country?”
Selmer confirmed that Rep. Ken Chestek (HD-13), Rep. Trey Sherwood (HD-14) and Rep. Karlee Provenza (HD-45), all Democrats, will run for re-election. The local Democratic Party is seeking candidates for House District 46 and Senate District 10, which are both currently in Republican hands.
Albany County voters will also decide city council and school board representation in 2024, but those races are non-partisan.
Council accomplishments, from rental protections to climate action
Looking back on his soon-to-be-six years on the Laramie City Council, Harrington said he’s proud to have helped with, advocated for and voted in favor of several measures that directly impact residents of Laramie.
“On a 30,000-foot view, I think the council has done a really good job at improving people’s quality of life at all levels,” Harrington said, noting the council and city staff work that went into establishing Hollyhock Commons and other public outdoor communal spaces downtown, securing public access to the Pilot Hill area, supporting local nonprofits via the specific purpose tax, enhancing Laramie’s bikeability and launching a city human rights commission.
A significant focus of the council during Harrington’s tenure has been housing reform. This involved passing rental regulations to protect the health and safety of renters while reining in the worst excesses of the city’s least scrupulous landlords. The regulations require landlords to keep their properties weatherproofed, free of pests and mold, and outfitted with working carbon monoxide detectors and fire escape windows.
Landlords fought the new regulations in council chambers and court rooms, even as they raised rents and blamed the hikes on the new rental housing code. As of January, more than half of the city’s landlords have failed to comply with the new law.
But the city also took aim at housing more generally, passing progressive reforms that allow for greater density in both multi-family and single-family zones.
“I think the city of Laramie is really leading the nation on a lot of that stuff — things like reducing lot sizes, allowing accessory dwelling units to be built anywhere in the city, so that everyone can have some level of density in their neighborhood,” Harrington said.
In recent years, the city government has also served as an arena for debates about police reform, accountability and transparency.
Harrington voted in favor of the creation of a civilian oversight board — in line with the demands of George Floyd demonstrators who filled Laramie’s streets in the summer of 2020. But that proposal was defeated in a 4-5 vote. The city did later establish a police advisory board, which has been meeting every other month since last fall. The advisory board has no oversight powers; instead, it provides a space for law enforcement to explain its policies and for the wider public to offer feedback.
The city has also sought to reduce its carbon emissions. In 2020, councilors officially committed to going carbon neutral by 2050 and joined another program that seeks to help the city hit carbon neutrality in the next decade. Since then, it’s sought to invest in renewables and make city services more energy efficient.
Harrington said the council’s environmental goals are driven by concern for the environment and the worsening climate crisis affecting communities across the globe. But they are also driven by a desire to use taxpayer dollars wisely, such as when it comes to energy efficiency.
Many climate solutions result in net savings.
“When we’re purchasing fleet vehicles, we’re adding optional environmental upgrades — whether it’s idle reduction or hybrid vehicles — wherever it’s applicable,” he said. “We’re looking into those small add-ons that make big changes over time. [And then] investing in solar on municipal buildings and things like that to produce some of our own power and save the taxpayers dollars over the long run.”
Harrington said he wants to continue this work as a commissioner, and there will likely be ample opportunity to do so if he’s elected. Just last month, the Albany County Commission submitted an application for its first Blue Sky grant award. If successful, the award would fund the installation of solar panels on some county buildings.
Holding the line on aquifer protection
The Casper Aquifer, located just east of Laramie, serves as the city’s main source of drinking water. For years, activists have led a campaign to establish stronger protections for the aquifer. In 2023, they achieved two significant victories.
In February of that year, the Albany County Commission passed new amendments limiting what can be built on the ground above the aquifer. By reducing the number of septic systems at work in the aquifer overlay zone, the amendments seek to limit the amount of nitrate and other contaminants that can seep through the ground and into the water supply.
In July, the Albany County Commission and the Laramie City Council approved a unified guiding document known as the Casper Aquifer Protection Plan.
Neither of these achievements would have happened if Democrats had not taken control of the county commission in 2020 and held onto power in 2022.
Throughout the aquifer protection debates, Democrats argued for greater protections while Republicans argued against. Both the amendments and the plan are now in place, but Harrington said they will require further work and stewardship and that the community needs a local government willing to “hold that line.”
“I think the bigger part of that job is going to be actually having a government in place that’s willing to enforce it,” he said. “And being willing to say, ‘No,’ when somebody brings something that you know will have a catastrophic event in the long run to the entirety of Albany County’s drinking water.”
Harrington’s council voted unanimously to approve the Casper Aquifer Protection Plan, which was a joint city-county project. But that wasn’t the only action the council took to secure clean drinking water for the city.
In 2022, the council approved the $7.6 million purchase of the Bath Ranch, a 4,600-acre property that came with significant Laramie River water rights. That water is currently being used for agriculture, but could be tapped in the future to provide water for Laramie.
“Those two things paired means Laramie has drinking water — not indefinitely but far beyond what most of our neighbors will have,” Harrington said. “Our water portfolio is substantial and diverse enough that we should feel confident in what the future of clean water looks like here.”
Candidate filing runs from May 16-31. The primary election is Aug. 20 and the general election is Nov. 5.
Correction: An earlier version of this story stated Brian Harrington was appointed in 2018. This is incorrect. Harrington was elected in 2018 to finish out an abbreviated term.