The Senate gave the go-ahead to a first-of-its-kind Republican measure today that will modernize emergency planning in schools, so students, teachers and first-responders can act fast in an emergency.

“We need to build upon some of the lessons we’ve learned here in Colorado related to school safety,” said Castle Rock Republican, Sen. Tom Wiens, the Senate sponsor of the legislation.

"During the school season, almost a fifth of our state's population is in a school everyday, about 800,000 people. School safety is an important issue that needs close attention," Wiens said. “I recently spent a lot of time talking to school officials, both around the state and in my district, about school safety and ways to keep our kids as safe as possible."

A much-debated ban on strikes by state employees passed the Senate today with bipartisan support--but only after Democrats turned back Republican efforts to make the measure tougher.

GOP senators offered a series of amendments imploring their colleagues across the aisle to "put teeth" into what some call "strike-ban lite" by giving the bill a firmer hand and a longer reach. Republicans said vital public services could be jeopardized if state government workers were to strike. Democrats, however, rejected all of the proposed amendments in party-line votes.

The Democrat proposal adopted by the Senate, House Bill 1189, was prompted by Republicans last fall after Democrat Gov. Bill Ritter issued a controversial order granting collective-bargaining power to labor unions. Republicans said the governor's order gave state workers a new incentive to strike--which was already legal--by letting unions for the first time ever haggle over labor contracts at the bargaining table.

In response, Republicans demanded a strike ban, and Ritter and his party's legislative allies relented. Yet, Republicans said the ban that emerged was half-hearted and that its weak penalties will do little to stave off labor unrest.

"We wouldn't be having this debate in the first place if the governor hadn't opened up this can of worms with his executive order," said the GOP's Sen. Shawn Mitchell, of Broomfield. "We need to clean up Bill Ritter's labor mess."

Two awaited Republican measures that aim to break the logjam on Colorado highways made their public debut today--in the continued absence, Republican leaders noted, of any major transportation proposals by ruling Democrats or the governor.

Senate GOP leader Andy McElhany, of Colorado Springs, and House Republican chief Mike May, of Parker, met with the Capitol press corps to disclose details of a highway-funding proposal they first announced last fall as part of the GOP's legislative agenda for 2008, along with another proposal they are sponsoring that just emerged.

A McElhany-May resolution that could be introduced in the Senate as soon as today would ask voters to secure all revenue from auto-related sales and use taxes in the state constitution so it only could be used on transportation.

The two veteran lawmakers also will introduce a bill that will toll motorists along a portion of Interstate 70 west of Denver to pay for widening that stretch of the highway as well as the Eisenhower Tunnel.

"We cannot address all of our state's transportation needs at once, of course, but we can take some meaningful steps," McElhany said. "These two proposals represent a couple of big strides in the right direction."