I agree

By my count, I have clicked “I agree” on roughly 4,000 terms of service agreements¹ and read zero of them.

You have, too. Everybody scrolls, nobody reads, and the button gets clicked because the alternative is not getting to play Minesweeper. “I have read and agree to the terms” is the most universal lie in America, and I tell it weekly.

Here’s the thing: the city clicks that button, too.

Except when Denver clicks it, it’s your money, and somebody is supposed to read the terms before the vote. We pay ‘em big salaries to. So I started pulling the city’s contracts off Legistar, the public records site where anyone can download them, and reading.

Here are a couple goodies.

The scooters

Start with the scooters, because you’ve met them. On the sidewalk, going 75, while you were playing Minesweeper.

In April 2026, the city approved a new three-year license with Veo, 9,000 maximum scooters/bikes/hover scooters. The whole thing is public, and the sidewalk section is where I stopped (unlike a scooter at a stop light).

The contract requires every vehicle to carry technology that detects sidewalk riding “with a high degree of certainty.” Then, when a vehicle knows it’s on the sidewalk, the system “shall have the technical capability to implement deterrent features,” like an audible alert or cutting the throttle.

That phrase, “technical capability,” is doing a LOT of work here.

Nothing in the license requires those beeps or slow downs to ever have the on switch flipped. It’s a smoke detector rule that only requires the smoke detector to have the capability of beeping.² The scooter can know, with a high degree of certainty, that it’s about to ruin your morning, and the contract is satisfied.

To be fair, the same document proves the city knows how to write this sentence correctly. The geofencing section says Veo “shall implement and maintain” slow zones and no-ride zones, names 16th Street and Union Station specifically, and gives Veo 48 hours to update them when the city says so. Somebody wrote that part with the batteries in.

But the pattern runs through the rest of it. The app “shall have the ability to require” a parking photo at the end of your trip. Veo “shall have the ability to suspend” repeat offenders. Veo “shall have the ability to implement” late-night alertness checks. Denver bought a features list.

And if Veo falls short? The word “fines” appears once in the whole license, with no dollar amount anywhere. The process is a strongly worded email (technically, a notice), then Veo gets 10 business days to submit a Remedy Plan™, then maybe a temporary fleet reduction.

None of this means Veo is breaking the deal. As written, scooters that never do what we wanted are doing what the contract says. The scooter isn’t the villain here. The paperwork is.

The big one

In January 2023, council approved an $80 million contract with UnitedHealthcare to run the city’s employee health plan/pharmacy benefits. Three amendments later, it was $415 million, and the last $150 million of it passed on consent, which is the council version of clicking “I agree.”

The base agreement and the 2026 amendment are both public. Here’s what we bought:

When a city employee fills a prescription, United pays the pharmacy one price and charges the city another, and “United will retain the difference.”

Three different times, United keeps the difference. They LOVE keeping the difference.

Now, United does guarantee Denver a discount. It’s just averaged over the whole year, every prescription in one big pot. There is no limit on the markup of any single one, though, and United can revoke the guarantee if the city so much as hires someone that points an employee toward a cheaper pharmacy.

So how would the city catch a problem? Audits.

One audit per calendar year. The place, time, and duration must be “agreed to by United.” The sample gets “approved by United.” No December. No January.³

An audit you schedule with the auditee, using a sample the auditee approves, is an actual joke.

My favorite clause, though? Section 4.2 requires the city to notify United before answering an open records request about this contract, and to hold the records back if United objects, until a court sorts it out. Denver agreed to let the people we pay referee your right to read the deal you’re paying for.

Nobody leaked me anything

There’s no whistleblower here, no unmarked envelope, no cool parking garage trenchcoat stuff. Both contracts have been sitting on a World Wide Web website the whole time, linked above, and council approved them anyway: the Veo license in April 2026, the UnitedHealthcare deal four separate times between January 2023 and April 2026.

Somewhere in those votes, someone should have asked why a sidewalk rule doesn’t require the sidewalk feature to be on. Or why the pharmacy audit needs the pharmacy company’s permission.

I’m running for an at-large seat on that council, and most of the job looks exactly like this: committee hearings and briefing books with exhibits that look like someone stapled a Bible to a Pynchon novel. Bring it on. I’ve been reading sources closely since they were news clippings taped to paper.

The next contract is already on its way to a committee agenda.

This time, somebody’s going to scroll to the bottom before clicking.

Jake