Colorado: John Hickenlooper

The former city editor of the Rocky Mountain News will become Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper's communications director.

Eric Brown will take the post April 20, the mayor announced in a press release this morning. Brown, 38, will be paid $99,929 annually.

He will succeed the current communications director, Sue Cobb, who will remain a senior advisor to the mayor. In that role, Cobb will manage special projects including coordination of communications and outreach relating to progress of the city's bond improvement campaign, approved by voters in Nov. 2007.

"Eric is a highly respected journalist with an impressive knowledge of the city and its programs," Hickenlooper said in a statement.

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper's chief operating officer is leaving to take a job overseeing spending of economic stimulus money at the U.S. Department of Interior.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced the hiring of Chris Henderson, 41, in a news release today.

Henderson said he will begin his new job in Washington next week and will be in charge of overseeing the spending of more than $3.5 billion in stimulus dollars the Interior Department will receive, mostly to finance capital improvement projects in national parks and at Indian reservations.

"It's a fairly significant undertaking for the department as a whole, and the secretary felt he needed someone on point making sure everything was getting done as it should be and organizing the effort centrally," Henderson said.

The Denver City Council on Monday worked out a deal to ease ethnic tensions that surfaced over naming rights at the new Justice Center complex.

The council passed two proclamations Monday. One urged naming the jury room at the new courthouse in honor of a prominent Latino, retired District Judge Roger Cisneros. The other urged naming the plaza after former District Attorney Dale Tooley.

Much of the wrangling over how to resolve the issue occurred in a meeting Friday with Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper and the three Latino council members: Judy Montero, Rick Garcia and Paul Lopez.

During that meeting, Hickenlooper said he would support a push to name the jury room in the new courthouse after Cisneros.

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper said today he hopes to add child abuse caseworkers and avoid cuts in childcare programs for working parents by tapping the city's contingency reserves and capturing federal funds.

"At what point are you cutting into muscle that will never come back and affecting the resiliency of the community?" the mayor asked.

The mayor made his comments during his weekly meeting with the City Council. Hickenlooper said he and Councilwoman Carol Boigon are finalizing the details.

Boigon pushed the mayor to use city reserves to shore up childcare programs for the working poor. The mayor countered during the negotiations that he wanted money to hire caseworkers who protect children from abuse.