December 19, 2006 05:55 PM UTC

Public Comment needed

•  
• by: Dan Willis

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

On Tuesday, Dec. 26th, Denver City Council will be taking public comment on a proposal to hold a special election on Jan. 30th to get rid of the Electon Commission and go to an elected Clerk and Recorder.

The details are “below the fold”. We are asking anyone who opposes this idea to please make the time to come to the City County Building on Dec. 26th, at 5:30 pm and express their opposition.

Thank you,
Dan Willis, Campaign Manager
Karen Morrissey for Election Commission

The details of the proposed Charter Amendment:
1. It would eliminate the Election Commission and incorporate those staff members into the current County Clerk’s office.
2. It would make the County Clerk an elected official.
3. It gives the current Commission employees (who are not civil service) the option of joining civil service. If they choose to join, they have to re-qualify for their positions. It leaves the handling of those employees who do not join up to the County Clerk.
4. It calls for a special election Jan. 30th and dictates it will be a mail-ballot election.
5. I calls for the appointment of a Director of Elections who has be confirmed by City Council.

Here are our reasons we oppose this amendment:
1. There are real managerial, logisitical, and technological problems at the Commission. This proposal does nothing to fix those. A special election next month will consume the attention of the Commissioners and staff and none of the needed reforms will get underway until after this election, causing more doubt on the ability to pull of a municipal election in May.
2. There were no problems on Election Day that would have been solved had the top official been a County Clerk vs. the Eleciton Commissioners. This change is major and simply not needed.
3. A County Clerk has a lot of duties and Denver’s City Clerk has many more on top of that. This proposal keeps all of those duties intact and then adds the running of elections to them. This means elections will be a small portion of the Clerk’s overall job. Denver deserves to have our top election offical focusing 100% of their attention on the elections.
4. Denver is different than other counties in that we have at least twice as many elections. We are never more than 8 months from the next election. This is a primary reason why the Election Commission was created as a independent agency to begin with over 100 years ago. It is also another reason why we need an elected official(s) whose only responsibility to the voters is the running of the elections.
5. City Council demanding to confirm the Director of Elections defeats the concept of an independent agency. There is no other office in city government that needs confirmation. It is unfair to single out this one.
6. The civil service “compromise” creates a very messy situation where we will have some employees who are civil service and others doing the exact same job who are not. This will affect equity of pay/benefits issues in a wide variety of ways.
7. Please feel free to add anything we have left off.