The Denver City Council voted Monday night in favor of requiring more frequent reporting, more detail and easier-to-access records of the meals, tickets and most other gifts they receive from donors with a city interest.
Council members and other elected and appointed city officials, including the mayor, will by July 31, with the next cycle due Jan. 31, 2018. Those will be available online within seven business days.
The new rules replace a system of annual reporting in which those gifts and other financial disclosures weren’t viewable by the public until seven months after the end of the reporting period — and could be obtained only by visiting the clerk’s office and paying for copies.
Denver officials now will file separate annual financial statements disclosing their interests in the prior calendar year by every Jan. 31, instead of by early August.
The council approved those changes 12-0.
The proposal was one of three ethics measures considered by the council in recent months. Last week, the council approved another proposal, also submitted by Clerk Debra Johnson, that will make lobbyists’ registrations and bimonthly reports of spending on city lobbying activities available online.
The remaining measure hasn’t made it to the council floor yet and is set for another committee discussion Jan. 17. Councilman Kevin Flynn to the Denver Code of Ethics that includes placing more annual limits on gifts from donors with a city interest and their lobbyists.
Those individuals, businesses and groups currently can give officials and employees a maximum of four meals and tickets per year, with no restriction on value, but most other types of gifts are barred. Flynn proposes a new $300 limit on the value of event tickets and up to four meals per donor each year, with exceptions for group working lunches and certain charitable event admissions.
The gift-reporting proposal that the council approved Monday anticipates those changes down the line.
For their 2016 gifts, though, officials and regular city employees — who will continue to report gifts annually — are expected to file reports under the old requirements (and with less detail required) by Jan. 31.
The new gift-reporting rules contain one trade-off. Council members narrowed the scope of gifts that must be reported from nearly anything valued at $25 or more to only gifts from people or businesses that stand to benefit from direct official decision-making. But there no longer will be a minimum-value threshold for a covered gift to be reported, making it possible to check if donors or officials violated the gift limits.