Update, April 8: A proposal that would take salary increase approval power away from Denver City Council will appear on the fall ballot. The move to place the proposal on the ballot was approved by City Council members on Monday. The proposal would be a change to the city's charter.
Denver voters might have a chance to weigh in during the 2024 election on how elected officials’ salaries work.
On Tuesday, City Council’s Finance and Governance Committee voted to move forward a bill that would take away power from City Council to approve raises for elected officials. If all of City Council passes the bill in the next few weeks, it will go to voters as a ballot measure in the fall.
The proposal would not change how elected officials’ salaries are calculated or make any changes to actual raises — something set by the city charter.
Under the current system, the charter mandates a formula that calculates raises every four years based on the consumer price index and other raises citywide. But the charter also requires City Council to vote on approving those changes — even though Councilmembers have no control over what those raises actually are.
If the initiative passes through Council, makes the ballot and voters approve it, raises would be calculated using the existing formula set in the charter and then be automatically adjusted without requiring Council approval. The move would affect all elected positions, including City Council, the Mayor, the Auditor and the Clerk and Recorder.
Councilmember Amanda Sawyer, who is sponsoring the proposal, said the current system creates a conflict of interest, and that taking salary voting power away from Council is a transparency issue.
“The problem we’re trying to solve here is that this sets up what feels to our residents like a lack of transparency around this process,” she said. “It looks like we’re voting on our own raises when we are not.”
Sawyer said her office looked at how a number of other cities set and approve their elected officials’ raises.
Some cities have an independent commission, which Sawyer ruled out because City Council appoints and approves independent commission members. Other cities base raises around county staff, but Denver encompasses the city and county. Sawyer said basing raises on neighboring counties would lead to massive pay raises.
“Giving ourselves extraordinary raises is not the point of what we’re trying to do here,” she said. “This is a transparency and accountability measure for our voters.”
