Representative Beth McCann (Denver)
State Representative Beth McCann (D-Denver)
Rep. Beth McCann is serving her second term as the state representative for District 8 in Denver and has been deeply involved in healthcare reform in Colorado. She sits on the standing Health and Environment Committee and the Health Insurance Exchange Legislative Review Committee, and she sponsored a bill to require insurance companies in the individual market in Colorado to offer at least one child-only health insurance policy without regard to pre-existing conditions. This allows families who do not have health insurance available through work or who cannot afford individual policies, to at least have insurance for their children even if they have serious health needs.
She has sponsored bills to prohibit gender bias in premiums charged for health insurance in the individual market and to require health insurance companies in the individual and small group markets to offer maternity and contraceptive coverage on these policies. She also serves on the Finance Committee.
Before taking office, Rep. McCann was deputy attorney general in charge of civil litigation and employment law in the Colorado Attorney General’s office. A former Denver prosecutor, she was Denver’s first manager of safety in the early 1990s under Mayor Wellington Webb.
Rep. McCann began her legal career as a law clerk for U.S. District Court Judge Sherman G. Finesilver. She then served almost eight years as deputy and then chief deputy district attorney in Denver, prosecuting hundreds of cases, including child abuses and murders. She continued her career in private practice for seven years with the Denver law firm of Cooper & Kelley, earning a partnership in that firm in 1985.
Rep. McCann is a founder and former president of the Colorado Women's Bar Association. She served as first vice-president of the Denver Bar Association and on the board of governors of the Colorado Bar Association. Rep. McCann also served on Gov. John Hickenlooper’s transition team as a member of his public safety committee and on Denver Mayor Michael Hancock's search committee for a new chief of police.
She has been active in community and nonprofit organizations, including serving as chairwoman of the long-range planning committee for the Denver Botanic Gardens. She is a board member of the Tony Grampsas Youth Services Program, which distributes grant money throughout the state to programs that work with youth to help keep them from getting into violence and crime and was a board member of the Denver Legal Aid Foundation.
Rep. McCann was chosen Outstanding Woman of the Year in 2000 by the Women’s Leadership Coalition and was named Outstanding Young Lawyer by the Denver Bar Association in 1985. She was also awarded an East High School Angel award in 2007 for her work as chairwoman of the school’s security and safety committee and for her help in coaching the winning constitutional scholars team.
Rep. McCann earned her law degree at Georgetown University Law School. She graduated magna cum laude from Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio with a B.A. in American Studies. She and her husband, Christopher, have two children -- a son, Chris, 22, who graduated from East High School in 2007, and a daughter, Lizzy, a 2010 East grad who’s a sophomore in college.
