A Republican-inspired, Democrat-authored ban on state employee strikes passed a Senate committee today with bipartisan, but lukewarm, support amid GOP concerns that the measure needs stiffer penalties.

House Bill 1189, sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Dan Gibbs, D-Silverthorne, won a 4-1 vote in the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee--after the committee's Democrat majority killed Republican efforts to make the measure tougher.

Legislative Republicans had called on Democrat Gov. Bill Ritter to endorse a strike ban last fall after the governor issued his controversial executive order giving unions the power to collectively bargain for wages and benefits. Republicans now say the governor delivered on the ban but fell way short of the mark on the ability to enforce it.

"Obviously, this bill wouldn't have been introduced at all if Republicans hadn't urged the governor to do the right thing and assure taxpayers their vital public services wouldn't be jeopardized by the threat of a strike," the GOP's Sen. Bill Cadman, of Colorado Springs, said after the committee vote.

"Unfortunately, what we got from the governor and his allies in the legislature was a bare, minimum kind of guarantee," Cadman said. "This thing is enforced with a wet noodle."