Council to hear proposal on E-verify law for businesses working with city
July 21, 2:07 PM Denver Top News Examiner Kenneth Green

Taking a state law regarding citizenship checks a bit further, a new proposal headed to the Denver City Council Wednesday will seek to have city contractors do the background checks themselves.

The proposal, co-sponsored by Councilwoman Jeanne Faatz and Councilman Chris Nevitt, will be introduced at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow and is similar to a state law proposal that required that companies doing business with the state use the E-verify system to determine the citizenship of their workers, the Denver Business Journal reported.

The Denver proposal would require that contractors and subcontractors who do work with the city conduct the status check themselves. Faatz said that she helped propose the ordinance after a city audit of a company doing business with the city found that only 13 of their 25 workers on the site had valid Social Security numbers. The rest possessed numbers that didn’t match any number on record.

In the proposal, companies that violate the law could be banned from conducting any work with the city in the future.

Faatz said money, not a crackdown on illegal immigration, is the reason for the proposal.

“We were concerned about the payment of undocumented workers with tax money, especially at a time we’ve been having such budgetary restraints,â€