No city money for wage thieves.
In 2023 Denver passed one of the strongest wage theft laws in the country. Then the city never finished the thought.
The short version
Steal wages here and the Auditor's office can order them paid back triple, plus fines of $25,000 per worker, and a general contractor can't hide behind a subcontractor who skips town. But nothing in the contracting process asks whether a bidder has a wage theft record. In 2024, 694 of the 753 restitution cases the Auditor closed came from prevailing wage enforcement, which only exists on city-funded projects. Denver Labor recovered $70,010.71 for workers at the Denver Chophouse at the airport, a business operating on a city concession agreement, the kind of contract council votes on. Those workers got paid back because someone caught it. Nothing stops an employer who never pays from bidding on the next contract.
Nobody checks.
I will vote no on any city contract if the contractor has an unpaid wage theft judgment from Denver Labor. Pay your workers back, then bid on public money. And I will sponsor the ordinance that makes that check automatic instead of depending on one council member doing homework.
The details
What Denver has now, and it's good
The Civil Wage Theft Ordinance (Council Bill 22-1614, effective 2023) rewrote DRMC Sections 58-1 through 58-26. It vests enforcement in Denver Labor within the Auditor's Office, authorizes restitution plus treble damages, fines up to $25,000 per worker, and makes beneficiaries of the labor jointly and severally liable up the contracting chain: general contractors, staffing agency clients, labor brokers. The City Attorney's Office also runs a criminal Wage Theft Unit. This pledge takes none of it over. It uses its output.
The receipts
Denver Labor recovered $70,010.71 for workers at the Denver Chophouse at Denver International Airport, a business that operates on city property under a city concession agreement, the same class of contract the charter sends to council for a vote. McCarthy Building Companies, one of the largest construction managers in the country, sits second on the Auditor's most recent top-ten restitution list at $175,800. And the Auditor's prevailing wage docket exists only on city-funded projects, so every case on it is city money and underpaid workers on the same job. In these cases workers got paid back, which is the law working. The Auditor's 2024 report also counts 236 wage theft cases still open. The pledge is aimed at the ones who don't pay: nothing in the contract pipeline checks, and no vote has ever hinged on it.
What we haven't found, said plainly
Public records do not yet name a company holding a city contract while an unpaid wage theft judgment sits against it. The published determinations run to gig staffing apps and strip clubs, not city vendors. Two honest readings: either it hasn't happened, or nobody has looked, because no report cross-references the Auditor's open cases against the city's contract database. A records request answers that in weeks, and the campaign will file it. If the answer is zero, the ordinance keeps it zero, and it costs nothing to keep a door closed.
Where the gap is
Denver already has a debarment mechanism. DRMC Section 20-77 allows the city to debar contractors, and debarred firms can't prequalify for city work. But no provision of Chapter 58 or Chapter 20 links them: a final Denver Labor wage theft determination doesn't trigger, or even feed into, the Section 20-77 process, and nothing in the contract approval pipeline under Charter Section 3.2.6 surfaces a vendor's wage theft record to council before the vote. The enforcement arm and the purchasing arm don't talk to each other.
The personal pledge (day one, no ordinance needed)
Before every contract vote, my office checks the vendor and its principals against Denver Labor's enforcement records. An unpaid final judgment is an automatic no vote, stated on the record with the case number. "Final" means appeals exhausted or waived. "Unpaid" means restitution to workers is outstanding. A company on a current payment plan in good standing is not blocked. The point is making workers whole, not permanent punishment.
The ordinance (sponsor within the term)
- Certification: every contract subject to council approval under Charter Section 3.2.6 includes a signed certification disclosing any wage theft findings against the contractor or its principals in the past three years, under existing false-statement penalties.
- Screen: an unpaid final wage theft judgment from Denver Labor renders a bidder non-responsible until satisfied, enforced at the purchasing stage, not just the council floor.
- Referral: a second final judgment within three years triggers automatic referral to the Section 20-77 debarment process, with the existing hearing protections that section already provides.
Cost
Near zero. Denver Labor already maintains the enforcement records. This is a lookup, not a program.
Why 19 weeks is enough
The no-vote screen starts the first Monday night. The ordinance is short, amends the city's own procurement conditions rather than regulating private conduct, and rides on a law council already passed 12 to 0. The coalition that passed 22-1614 is intact and this is its obvious second chapter.
What this doesn't fix
Most wage theft happens at employers who never touch a city contract, and this pledge doesn't reach them. It also can't undo contracts already signed. It makes one promise: city money stops rewarding the companies the city itself caught stealing.