Denver’s public officials can accept free meals and sports tickets even when donors might have a contract or other benefit to gain under city ethics rules, but they must disclose those alongside other gifts in an annual report.
However, recent filings for 2014 are inconsistent or at times even scant on details, making it difficult to see a full picture of gift-giving in city government. In part, that’s because the form asks for so little information.
Mayor Michael Hancock, some Cabinet members and some City Council members detail what was given, who gave it and may even estimate the value, sometimes in attached spreadsheets. The gifts listed on their range from sports and event tickets to commemorative items to seats at luncheon events.
But other officials provide less information.
A few current and recent council members — president Chris Herndon, Albus Brooks and former member Chris Nevitt — simply listed names of gift-givers, the minimum information requested for gifts exceeding $25, without saying what they received.
That is one reason why some ethics advocates are hopeful that the City Council this fall will transfer responsibility for collecting and monitoring those reports to the Board of Ethics from their current home in the clerk and recorder’s office. The board’s members to recommend to the council, as The Denver Post reported Thursday.
“It seems like we need enough detail to be able to see who exactly is giving gifts to elected officials and what they’re actually giving them,” said Katie Dahl, associate director of good-government group Colorado Common Cause.
Ethics board chairman Brian Spano said it was worrisome that some officials provided little gift detail. He had not looked at the statements lately, “but I expect if that becomes our responsibility that we would look (at the gift question). We all would benefit from a degree of specificity there.”
The question requests only “the names of sources of any gifts” exceeding $25, including meals or tickets. That makes responses listing only that information technically compliant.
Clerk and Recorder Debra Johnson has suggested transferring responsibility for the disclosure statements to the ethics board, saying they don’t fit well with the other functions of her office.
There is lag time in filing the year-end statements, which aren’t due until the start of August. The public must obtain copies on paper, paying 25 cents a page, since they aren’t available online.
Johnson’s office has said it doesn’t upload disclosure statements online because they contain family and personal information, but Dahl argues the public’s interest should accommodate online access to all but sensitive information, which is rare.
Besides gifts, the statements include basic information about business interests, outside sources of income, transfers of assets to family members in excess of $5,000 and creditors owed more than that amount.
On his statement, Hancock’s staff filed a four-page spreadsheet detailing gifts that included more than $30,000 worth of tickets to Broncos, Rockies and Nuggets games — sometimes donated to charity — and tickets to the 2014 Super Bowl.
Most Cabinet officials and elected officials also provided more information than requested, to varying degrees, or noted they received no gifts exceeding $25.
Jon Murray: 303-954-1405, jmurray@denverpost.com or twitter.com/JonMurray
