Denver Mayor Mike Johnston's administration is failing to adequately track millions in spending on homeless encampment cleanups, a new city audit finds.

Why it matters: Without oversight, the city can't account for how taxpayer money is being used — raising questions about how Johnston is managing one of his top priorities.

Driving the news: The audit is a follow-up to a 2023 report that found the city, under former Mayor Michael Hancock, was likely underestimating how much it spends on encampment outreach, cleanup and enforcement.

• It also comes on the heels of a separate audit last fall that found Johnston's team is struggling to keep homeless shelters safe and falling short on tracking costs.

What they found: The city's homeless encampment response still has major accountability gaps:

• No clear system exists to track cleanup costs, monitor contracts or verify services are delivered.
• Property storage — which holds belongings seized from encampments — lacks oversight, including whether it's secure or accessible.
• Daily coordination meetings about encampment actions aren't documented, leaving key decisions without a paper trail.

By the numbers: The city has fully implemented just six of the 36 recommendations from the auditor's 2023 report, despite agreeing to fulfill them all, per the report.

The other side: Johnston's senior homeless adviser Cole Chandler acknowledged there's "room for improvement" but said many issues are already being addressed or have recently improved.

• That includes better tracking of expenses, data monitoring and access to property storage, he said.

The bottom line: Nearly two years into Johnston's tenure, no one — not even his office — has a full picture of what Denver is spending to address homelessness.

What's next

The Denver mayor's office is working with an AI startup to streamline the city's work, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: Government agencies have been increasingly looking to AI to help tackle thorny administrative problems that have saddled the public sector with a reputation as low-tech and sluggish.

Zoom in: Shannon Beckham, a former campaign operative and aide to Colorado Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, is launching Chief AI, which bills itself as a "command center to supercharge a leader's time, relationships, and priorities."

• The mayor's team has been working with the startup to pilot the product since it was first presented at the DenAI Summit last September.
• Denver has signed a one-year, $10,000 contract to test the tool.

What they're saying: "Chief AI helps remove hours of administrative burden in the mayor's office — from scheduling to briefing preparation," Mayor Mike Johnston's spokesperson Jordan Fuja tells us.

The bottom line: "For too long, clunky interfaces and outdated infrastructure have reigned in legacy industries," the website says.

• "The people running our most critical institutions lack the tools and data to be as efficient and strategic as possible. We're changing this[.]"

More than 250 Denver job openings this January required AI skills, a new analysis found.

• That's enough to rank Denver 20th out of the top 75 largest metro areas for available AI jobs, according to estimates from the University of Maryland's UMD-LinkUp AI Maps.

Why it matters: Local leaders want Denver to become a magnet for AI companies. The city hosted the nation's first major city-led AI summit last fall in a push to plant a flag in the new frontier.

The bottom line: Amid lots of consternation about the emerging technology taking people's jobs, a growing number of workers are landing new roles working with it.

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⚖️ A federal judge in Colorado ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement not to deport prominent local immigrant rights activist Jeanette Vizguerra. (Axios Denver)

📣 A rally on Friday at Civic Center Park in Denver featuring U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez drew more than 34,000 people, making it the largest crowd of Sanders' career, he said. (CPR)

🔎 Denver Mayor Mike Johnston faces scrutiny from open records advocates after records show he and his top appointees used an end-to-end encryption app to communicate about the city's migrant crisis. (CBS4)

🍺 Aviation-themed brewery FlyteCo says it will close its original location in north Denver to focus on its newer site at the former Stapleton International Airport control tower. (Denver Post 🔑)

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