A longtime effort to reform the city’s whistle-blower laws is closer to completion but met with a minor setback Tuesday when Denver Mayor Michael Hancock raised concerns about the proposed anonymous reporting.
Hancock at Tuesday’s weekly mayor-council meeting asked that the proposed legislation be pulled back from consideration from the entire council because he was concerned the change would create more problems than it would solve.
“Some of the language may lead us to a place that we don’t want to be,” Hancock said, adding that he worries that it would allow people to use ethics complaints to “infuse political games in the city of Denver’s operations.”
City Attorney Doug Friednash said he simply wants language added to the bill that would require any anonymous complaint to be accompanied by “collaborating” or independently verifiable evidence.
“Someone cannot file a complaint unless there is separate information,” Friednash said. “We will consider the anonymous complaint, but there has to be reliable evidence in support of it.”
The Denver Board of Ethics has been working to change the city law that now requires any complaints for investigation by the ethics board to be signed by the accuser and delivered to the person who is being accused.
Ethics Director Michael Henry said he believes that type of reporting has had a chilling effect and that some people won’t make a complaint about unethical behavior fearing reprisal.
Last year, the ethics board considered 28 signed complaints.
Henry has been pushing for anonymous reporting for a while, meeting with the council’s government and finance committee three times in the past four months to push for a change.
Last week the committee approved the legislation and sent it forward to the full council for a vote. But Hancock on Tuesday stopped the process on Tuesday, saying he didn’t like the legislative wording that gave too much protection for anonymous reporting.
Denver Councilwoman Robin Kniech said she was surprised that the mayor had interceded.
“It is a little disappointing that we didn’t hear about these concerns sooner,” she said. “One of the things I would urge the city attorney and your administration in reviewing this is to really focus on the difference between where is this information coming from rather than the finding.”
Kniech likened the process to CrimeStoppers, which allows people to anonymously report crimes.
“Anonymous complaint simply creates an opportunity for the board to investigate,” she said.
But Friednash said the accused should have an opportunity for due process.
“People may have good motives and bad motives,” he said. “The system must protect people who go through it when they have an accuser who is has an unfair and biased and political motive. We simply want to create guardrails around the law so it can’t be misused. We aren’t trying to derail it just want to clean it up.”
A performance audit in 2010 from the Denver Auditor’s Office said “anonymous allegations of wrongdoing should be encouraged and protected.”
Leslie Lawson, chair of the ethics board, said 45 of the 77 governmental ethics jurisdictions in the United States that belong to the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws boards allowed anonymous complaints.
“They have reported to us that it hasn’t caused a flood of complaints,” Henry said. “The complaints are no more frivolous or malicious than the signed complaints.”
Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com
