With its hands tied, Denver City Council on Monday approved a collective bargaining agreement with the Denver Police Department’s union that was decided earlier this month by an independent arbitrator after council members rejected the contract in September. 

The move was the first time in recent memory that the city council had tossed out a police union contract proposal since police were granted collective bargaining rights in 1995. 

The two-year deal with the Denver Police Protective Association – which the council was legally bound to approve – suspends paid holidays for police officers in 2021 but gives them two raises in 2022, including a 2% bump at the start of January, and another 1.5% raise in July. The terms mirror those the council originally voted down three months earlier in an 8-5 tally, which sent the agreement into arbitration and boiled the blood of Mayor Michael Hancock, who called the council’s decision “short-sighted and irresponsible.” 

On Monday night, however, the legislative branch had no choice but to pass the agreement; otherwise, the city would face litigation, a spokeswoman from the City Attorney’s Office cautioned. 

But some council members – namely Candi CdeBaca, Chris Hinds and Amanda Sawyer – nevertheless voted no, reaffirming their previous decision primarily on the basis that the deal was not reached in “good faith,” because the council was largely excluded from the negotiation process when it first kicked off. 

Another point of contention throughout the process has been that city employees, who have been forced to take furloughs this year to help stem a bleeding economy, have yet to be promised a pay raise from the Hancock administration.

Council members Stacie Gilmore, Paul Kashmann, Robin Kniech, Amanda Sandoval and Jamie Torres, who had voted against the contract in September, begrudgingly agreed to pass it on Monday night. However, some council members warned that they would soon be pursuing ordinance changes to ensure the body was never left out of negotiations again.

“This outcome happened because of a disappointing failure to … negotiate with this council,” Kniech fumed, her words aimed directly at the mayor’s office. “That … was a perversion of the charter and requires a systematic solution such that the good-faith obligations extend between the branches of government in the same way that they do to our bargaining partners across the table.

“With that, I will be voting for this tonight because of the legal consequences that will occur,” she said, “but I could not remain silent in what I consider to be a bad-faith outcome between the branches of government that requires rectifying.” 

“Denver’s Charter very clearly lays out the process requiring equal representation from both the mayor’s office and City Council during negotiations,” CdeBaca said in a statement. “But because Council has not safeguarded the process via an ordinance to require transparency and timely notice, we are left with an egregious back-door, bad-faith negotiation right before the city gets hit with a wave of excessive force litigation,” referring to more than 50 lawsuits headed straight for the city and the police department as a result of DPD’s response to demonstrations this summer against police brutality and racial injustice. 

“Council has held our ground,” Council President Gilmore said. “We are now viewed as an equal partner in the negotiation process, which, as we all know, we haven’t been viewed as an equal partner in a very long time.”

Hancock’s office did not immediately respond to Colorado Politics’ request for comment. 

The police agreement was molded during closed-door negotiations that began in July. Typically at the table, according to the city’s chief negotiator, Rob Nespor, are several union officials, advisers and a labor attorney representing the police union. On the city’s side are representatives of the mayor, the Budget Management Office, the Department of Safety, DPD, the Human Resources Department, the City Attorney’s Office and the City Council.

However, the negotiation process began without City Council representation, despite Denver’s charter deeming it the “obligation of the bargaining agent to serve written notice of request for bargaining on” the mayor and the city council, “or their representatives.”

“It was an oversight, not an intentional one,” Nespor has told council members, “which was rectified as soon as it was made.” 

Because the council and the mayor’s office could not agree on police officer salary hikes, the city government did not submit a final offer to the arbitrator, who ultimately chose the police union’s original offer, which includes the reinstatement in 2022 of holiday pay premiums and the city’s full contributions to the retiree health trust. 

DPD’s union has agreed in writing that, should the economic situation from the pandemic not rebound, “all that needs to be done is for the City to reopen this contract – as has been done more than once in the past – and we will partner to make sure we always do our part to make this City strong again.”

“The PPA Board thanks the Mayor, his staff, the City Attorney and her staff, as well as Council members Kevin Flynn, Kendra Black, Jolon Clark, Christopher Herndon, and Debbie Ortega who have continued to show unwavering support for the PPA’s members and the Denver Police officers by supporting this contract outcome,” the police union said in a statement.