A bill for an ordinance amending the Denver Code of Ethics, and making conforming amendments to the Article V of Chapter 2, D.R.M.C. concerning financial disclosure requirements. Approves amending the Denver Code of Ethics. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 2-21-17. This bill was approved for filing by title only by Council President Brooks.
Now I'll do a recap. Under resolutions, we have nothing called out under bills for introduction, we have nothing called out under bills for final consideration. Councilman Flynn has called out Council Bill 1202 for a comment. Councilwoman Kennedy has called out Council Bill 156 for a vote and Councilman Cashman has called out Council Bill 153 for a vote . Under pending, we have nothing called out and miss anything. All right, Madam Secretary, would you please put the first item on our screens? Councilman Flynn, go ahead with your comment on Council Bill 1202. Thank you, Mr. President. Pro Tem Council Bill 12 zero two Series of 2016 consists of several amendments to the Denver Code of Ethics. About every 2 to 3 years, the ethics code has had amendments made to it. But this is the first time in 16 years that some fairly substantive issues are going to be addressed. Primarily, it is that in place of the limit on meals and event tickets that was adopted in 2001 after a very, very, very contentious 18 months of debate and division on the council finally being mediated by Mayor Webb. There was in place a limitation that consisted of the number of times and the number was four, that people could accept a meal or a ticket to an event from a person who had over whom we had direct official action. What we're doing here is bringing the Denver Code of Ethics into line with every other city and state code of ethics that we could find on the task force last year to put a dollar cap instead of a number of times. So we're using a dollar cap of $300 on an event ticket and other things that fall under those limitations on the task force. There was a lot of debate about this. My colleagues, as you know, there were a number of people, myself included, as a former journalist, who would rather have seen just enhanced transparency and no limitation on the dollar amount. And that has as if I were still a reporter, I'd love to have that in place because I'd love to write a story that said, you know, Councilman Flynn accepts trip to the Bahamas for $10,000, but it's better for the public good. Actually, I wouldn't rather see that story just to clear that up. Right. But it's not good for public confidence in this body and what we do. It's not sufficient that we go to bed each night knowing in our hearts that we have behaved and conducted ourselves ethically. We have. And but that's not enough. It's important that the people of Denver go to bed each night feeling the same. And by putting a dollar limit. On the amount that we can accept from people with whom we do business is the way to do it. I wanted to thank a number of folks. I want to thank, first of all, the council member right next to me on my right, Councilwoman Canete, who has helped me through this process. It's been very valuable to me. Thank you very much. I want to thank council members Ortega, who is not here, Gilmore and Black for the input that they gave me that I think improve this. And I also want to thank our clerk and recorder, Deborah Johnson. In January, we passed amendments to the disclosure requirements that now require us to keep track of every penny. That we received from someone who has business with the city. Under the old rules, the $25 was the threshold. But what we did was we limited our reporting to people with whom we do business. But starting from the first penny. And because we now must keep track of that, what this ordinance does, what these amendments do is it just says, stop when you hit $300. So with that and also, I should thank the task force that worked all last year on this consist of the city attorney's office, some other city employees and outside stakeholders, including the League of Women Voters, Ethics Watch and Colorado Common Cause. So with that, Mr. President, I would ask all my colleagues to join me in voting yes. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Flint. Councilman Espinosa. Yeah. I just wanted to thank Councilman Flynn for champion this and doing that work with the task force and with council and committee. I think this took a long time. I mean, took quite a bit of time before, you know, this could have been presented to council some time ago. But it it did sit in committee. We did talk about it and we debated some of the points. And I think this, along with a whole host of things that we vote on and pass and opine on, are benefited from that dialog and and may not be where it originated. But I do think that that it it was improved by the process. And I just wanted to thank the Councilman Flynn for having done that that work, because I know it wasn't easy at times. Thanks. Thank you, Councilman Espinosa and Councilman Flynn, I just want to clarify, you had said asking everybody for your vote, but you're still okay with us going on the block vote. You want to call it out for voting no.