Robin Kniech

Robin Kniech is an At-large Municipal city councilor for the city of Denver, Colorado.
Kniech, who is gay, in 2011 became the first self-identified member of the LGBT community to be elected to the Denver city council. She was subsequently elected to two additional four-year terms.
In 2019, Kniech introduced a bill to increase the city of Denver’s minimum wage, the first such measure passed by a city in Colorado history. In 2020, Kniech introduced successful ballot measures to increase the Denver sales tax in order to provide additional funding for homelessness programs.
==Early Life and Education==
Robin Kniech was raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She has said that her politics were influenced at an early age by her working class upbringing; both her parents worked blue-collar jobs and were members of local Labor unions in the United States. Kniech earned her undergraduate degree from Drake University and her Juris Doctor at the Northeastern University School of Law.
==Front Range Economic Strategy Center==
After graduating from law school, Kniech moved to Denver to begin a career as a community organizer. She became a research and policy analyst for the Front Range Economic Strategy Center (FRESC), a Colorado-based non-profit organization. She eventually led FRESC as its Program Director.
==Denver City Council==
On May 3, 2011, Kniech was elected as an at-large city councilor for the city of Denver, becoming the first openly LGBT city councilor in the city's history. She was re-elected in 2015 and again in 2019 to a third and final term due to the city’s Term limits in the United States for city councilors.
===Denver International Airport Restaurant Controversy===
In August 2015, Kniech was one of several city councilors who raised objections to a planned lease for a new Chick-Fil-A restaurant in Concourse B at Denver International Airport over concerns about the company’s anti-LGBT stance. Kniech expressed concerns that Chick-Fil-A’s profits from the airport restaurant could be “used to fund and fuel discrimination.” A few weeks later, in September 2015, Kniech voted to approve the lease on the grounds that she was satisfied Denver and Colorado laws and policies would be sufficient to protect employees of the restaurant from discrimination.
===2019 City of Denver Minimum Wage Hike===
On November 25, 2019, Kniech introduced a measure to authorize the three-phase rise in the city’s Minimum wage in the United States from $11.10 per hour to $15.87 per hour by 2022 – the first municipal measure to raise the local minimum wage in Colorado’s history. Kniech, along with the rest of the council, voted to approve it by a 11-0 vote.
===2020 Ballot Initiatives===
In June 2020, Kniech proposed a ballot measure, enacted into law November 2020,
 to give the city council the authority for the first time to initiate spending of new or excess revenue mid-year or transfer an “unencumbered balance”, which had been at the sole discretion of the Mayor’s office.
In August 2020, Kniech introduced and sponsored a ballot measure to increase the Denver sales tax by 2.5 cents for every $10 made on purchases in order to fund initiatives designed to assist the homeless. Kniech’s bill was passed by the City Council and then approved by voters in November 2020.
== Personal Life ==
Kniech is married and has a son.
Category:Denver City Council members
Category:People from Milwaukee, Wisconsin