Mayor Johnston’s work to veto the Municipal Court Fairness bill will harm Denver’s most vulnerable
Re: “Polis threatens to veto bill addressing sentencing disparities between Colorado’s state and municipal courts,” April 9 online news story
This legislative session, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston inserted himself in Capitol politics to the detriment of Denver’s most vulnerable. Johnston’s platform for addressing homelessness includes micro-communities, wraparound services, and ordinance enforcement to channel folks into services. Notably, it does not include year-long jail sentences for poverty offenses, which are costly, harmful, counterproductive and forbidden in state courts. Yet, Johnston fought hard to preserve municipalities’ power to send unhoused people to jail for nearly a year for poverty “offenses” like camping, more than 30 times the jail sentence allowed in state court for similar offenses. Johnston’s team actively and, by many accounts, effectively lobbied Gov. Jared Polis to veto House Bill 1147, Fairness & Transparency in Municipal Court, a bill supported by the majority of the Denver City Council that would have ended these disparate and extreme sentences.
Mayor Johnston could not have misunderstood the harm of the veto he advocated for.
Damning reporting by The Denver Post revealed how disparate municipal court sentencing, too often meted out without access to legal counsel, was creating a two-tiered system of justice at the expense of unhoused people. As Denver Post’s Editorial Board recognized when it urged Polis to sign the bill, HB 1147 is common sense legislation that would have fixed these irrational disparities by guaranteeing the most basic of legal rights to people prosecuted in Colorado’s municipal courts: a lawyer when jail is on the line, a courtroom open to public observation, and a jail sentence that complies with state sentencing laws. When city courts are allowed to use poverty “offenses” to disappear homeless people for nearly a year in jail, our entire community suffers and no one is safer. But that’s exactly the result Johnston fought for.
Rebecca Wallace, Denver
Editor’s note: Wallace is the policy director at Colorado Freedom Fund.
Thankful for the preservation of history at Blair-Caldwell library
Re: ” ‘This has our history’,” May 28 news story
A city like Denver isn’t simply a gathering of thousands of people. In it nestle pockets of local history, neighborhoods that shelter hundreds of ideas for improvement and change, tantalizing glimpses of people who make a difference.
The Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library in Five Points is a prime example. Recently, some displays and items in the library were removed. Perhaps to update the displays? Perhaps to curate the items? Or perhaps someone thought the public was disinterested? The response of the people in the community, including Wellington and Wilma Webb (former mayor and state representative, respectively), soon cleared that issue up. I was relieved and reassured that the library is using the incident to improve its collections and service, not erase them.
It doesn’t take much observation to see in these times especially we must be ever-vigilant not to lose these types of resources, which come close to defining our collective soul. Thanks to those in attendance at a recent community meeting at Blair-Caldwell for being vigilant and dedicated to the preservation of our collective stories.
Bonnie McCune, Denver
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