At its last regular meeting of 2020, Denver’s City Council introduced a bill to set District Attorney Beth McCann’s salary for her next four-year term, which begins in January. 

According to the bill introduced Monday, McCann, who won reelection in November, would get a 1% raise in 2022, followed by 3% raises in 2023 and 2024. The raises are contingent on the city lifting its freeze on employee merit pay increases; McCann said last week she does not want a raise if Denver’s economy has not bounced back from the coronavirus. 

City Council sets the elected DA’s salary at the outset of the term, and raises amend Denver’s municipal code . McCann’s current salary is $228,478, which would remain the same in 2021, according to the bill. The action was approved on an 11-1 vote, with Councilwoman Debbie Ortega absent. The council will vote on the bill when it meets again in January. 

A few council members debated at the meeting whether it made sense to tie the amounts of McCann’s raises to the pay increase amounts received by city employees each year, making her raises variable. District 2 Councilmember Kevin Flynn said he would prefer to see McCann’s raises pegged to the average raise received by career-service city employees each year. 

However, at-large Councilmember Robin Kniech, who is vice chair of the Finance and Governance Committee that discussed the bill last week, pointed out that method would be a unique way of calculating an elected official’s salary. Although salaries of City Council members, the mayor and other elected positions in Denver are based on a formula that takes into account the raises that other city employees received in recent years, the salaries are distributed as certain amounts each year. 

“There is no other elected official whose salary is set to be variable based on that factor,” Kniech said. “So I think that this is already unique in saying that the salary increase may not happen at all if the city employees don’t get it, and I think to make it further contingent would just be a little bit inconsistent with how we treat the clerk and recorder and the auditor.”

Bill for raising Denver DA’s salary moves to full City Council

The committee did not receive any public comments at its discussion of the bill last week. It was not decided in Monday night’s council meeting whether to allow additional comment before the council votes on the bill. District 9 Councilmember Candi CdeBaca, the lone vote against introducing the bill, had raised the question of having another opportunity.

The salary floor set by law for Colorado’s elected district attorneys is $130,000. The state pays 80% of that minimum – $104,000 – and counties that make up a judicial district fund the remaining amount along with the rest of the DA office’s budget, with each county paying a proportional share based on its population percentage. The City and County of Denver stands alone as the 2nd Judicial District, and the DA office’s budget is part of the mayor’s yearly budget request.

McCann said last week she has the second-highest salary out of the state’s 22 elected district attorneys; the 1st Judicial District DA’s salary is $235,000.