Den­ver City Council’s com­mit­tee process — meant to work­shop mea­sures with­in the group — worked against Coun­cil­woman Can­di Cde­Ba­ca Mon­day night as the group delayed two of her pro­pos­als meant to check the mayor’s authority.

Cde­Ba­ca had pro­posed two bal­lot mea­sures, intend­ed for the Novem­ber elec­tion, to lim­it the abil­i­ty of May­or Michael Han­cock — and sub­se­quent may­ors — to appoint the city attor­ney and the inde­pen­dent mon­i­tor, Denver’s cit­i­zen dog of law enforcement.

Dis­trust­ful of the com­mit­tee process, which Cde­Ba­ca said had been “weaponized” against her, the coun­cil­woman filed her mea­sures direct­ly onto the council’s Mon­day agen­da. But that meant the group had lit­tle time to read and under­stand the pro­pos­als and cost her the votes she need­ed to move the mea­sure forward.

Instead, coun­cil vot­ed to refer both mea­sures back to com­mit­tee, not killing them but ensur­ing they won’t be ready before the state’s Sept. 4 dead­line for such bal­lot measures.

Cde­Ba­ca expressed her dis­ap­point­ment in the out­comes, though not sur­prise. She said she expect­ed her col­leagues to move against the measures.

With each pass­ing week, Cde­Ba­ca appears to be increas­ing­ly at odds with Hancock’s author­i­ty. The two have exchanged barbs recent­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly over the city’s law enforce­ment response to the George Floyd protests.

Her first pro­pos­al would ask vot­ers for per­mis­sion to cre­ate a com­mis­sion that would present nom­i­nees for city attor­ney to the may­or. Cur­rent­ly the appoint­ment is entire­ly in the mayor’s hands.

The coun­cil vot­ed 7–6 to send the mea­sure back to com­mit­tee where it can be tweaked fur­ther. Sev­er­al mem­bers voiced sup­port for the notion, just not the trun­cat­ed time­line on which it had been set.

The change in how the city attor­ney is hired is need­ed because there is too lit­tle account­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy and sep­a­ra­tion between the city attor­ney and the city agen­cies the posi­tion rep­re­sents, Cde­Ba­ca said.

“We have a sit­u­a­tion where we have a city attor­ney that rep­re­sents the cops, the may­or, the City Coun­cil and the inde­pen­dent mon­i­tor,” Cde­ba­ca said.

Had the mea­sure passed, it would have joined Coun­cil­woman Aman­da Sawyer’s mea­sure already on the Novem­ber bal­lot, which will ask vot­ers whether the coun­cil should have approval author­i­ty over may­oral appoint­ments.

Coun­cil­man Kevin Fly­nn ques­tioned the proposal’s inclu­sion of an out­side group rec­om­mend­ing appointees and said the coun­cil hadn’t had enough time to dis­cuss the mat­ter ful­ly in the council’s com­mit­tee process process.

Oth­ers on coun­cil agreed.

“Here we are, mak­ing sausage at the last minute,” Fly­nn said.

Plus, there’s lit­tle urgency in the mea­sure, he added, because cur­rent City Attor­ney Kristin Bron­son — as far as any­body knows — will hold the posi­tion for anoth­er two years.

Sawyer said she ful­ly sup­ports the idea behind the mea­sure, but wants more time to vet the idea.

“Even though we want imme­di­ate action, I get it,” Sawyer said. “We don’t want to change the char­ter of the city and coun­ty of Den­ver lightly.”

CdeBaca’s sec­ond pro­pos­al would ask vot­ers to shift appoint­ing pow­er for the inde­pen­dent mon­i­tor from the mayor’s office to the coun­cil. The mon­i­tor pro­vides cit­i­zen over­sight for Denver’s law enforce­ment agencies.

“The may­or is the inde­pen­dent monitor’s boss and the chief of police’s boss and the sheriff’s boss,” Cde­Ba­ca said. “This is not to change who the mon­i­tor is, but who the inde­pen­dent monitor’s boss is.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, oth­er coun­cil mem­bers voiced gen­er­al sup­port for the idea, but com­plained that they hadn’t had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to tweak the mea­sure in com­mit­tee. And like the city attor­ney, there is lit­tle urgency for plac­ing it on the Novem­ber bal­lot because the cur­rent inde­pen­dent mon­i­tor isn’t plan­ning to leave, Fly­nn and oth­ers noted.

Nine coun­cil mem­bers vot­ed to delay the mea­sure, three opposed it entire­ly and Cde­Ba­ca abstained from voting.