Face the State

Face the State Editorial Staff

The Denver City Council is on an election spending spree. The problem: No one is watching.

After last fall's election day fiasco, where technical snafus forced outraged residents to give up on voting after waiting hours in endless lines, the council held a January special election to dump the city’s traditional election management system of a three-person commission in favor of an elected Clerk and Recorder. Predictably, disgusted voters approved the change and will elect Denver's new Clerk & Recorder in the May municipal election.

In drafting the Charter change, Council gave itself the job of setting the new Clerk's pay and asked Denver's Career Service Authority to conduct a wage survey to see what that pay should be. Or so it appeared. At the February 13 General Government Committee Meeting, Councilwoman Carol Boigon admitted that there were two philosophies for setting the pay - looking within the "city family for comparables" or at other County Clerks, and also admitted that she didn't feel the State model for setting County Clerk pay took into account the cost of living in Denver or the competition for bringing in good candidates.

Career Service's national wage survey of 14 organizations in Colorado and comparable states - the same states they use to survey all Career Service employee and elected official wages - found that the wage should be in the $87,000 to $90,000 range. But Council was feeling generous, and took the unusual and bizarre step of adding 40% to the recommended pay, bringing it to $125,924. This is on top of the $543,000 cost of holding the January special election.

Denver relies on annual wage surveys to set pay for all other city employees and elected officials without adding obscene increases at taxpayer expense. Council has never in recent memory added anything to what a wage survey finds. Why this sudden deviation from normal procedure? "Internal equity" is the reason given, to make the Clerk's pay equal to the City Auditor's. And how is the Auditor's pay set? You guessed it, a wage survey of other Auditors. Why make the pay equal to the Auditor's? Why not the Manager of Public Works, at $154,418?

The only "no" vote on this inflated wage was District 2 Councilwoman Jeanne Faatz, the council’s sole Republican.

The current appointed Clerk, Stephanie O'Malley, daughter of former Mayor Wellington Webb, gets a salary of $95,000, already well above other Clerks. The Denver Clerk's duties are not exactly the same, but they're substantially equivalent. Council must have fun spending other people's money like a pack of drunken sailors! Let's hope, for the taxpayers' sake, that this mood of generosity soon passes.

Ms. O'Malley is the perceived front-runner in the election to fill the new position. She has some experience as the current Clerk, and a real incentive to win - she'll do the same work she's being overpaid for now with a huge increase in salary, thanks to Council's largess. Oh, and then she'll get to hire a Director of Elections to do the part of the job that got us in this situation to begin with.

Could the half-million dollar special election have waited until May? Certainly. Council claimed urgency because they wanted to make sure the new Clerk would have time to prepare for the '08 election. Wouldn't an experienced, competent Clerk be prepared? It's almost as though they expected all candidates for the job to be unqualified, which would seem a reason to decrease the pay, not increase it. But remember that Council and the Mayor are up for reelection in May. They didn't dare risk long waits at the polls when it's their careers on the line, and the outgoing Election Commission didn't dare risk another embarrassment. Just to make sure, the May election will be by an all-mail ballot, as recommended by the Mayor's election task force. Interestingly, state law forbids all-mail ballots in partisan, candidate elections, but since Denver is a home rule city and this is a "non-partisan" election, they're exempt.

A very dangerous precedent has been set here, one which could cost the taxpayers of Denver well into the future. Now every City employee can claim the high cost of living in Denver and competition for finding good applicants as a basis for a 40 percent pay increase. City Council should take a cue from its own voters: the time is now to “Just Say No.”