Republicans on the Senate Business, Labor & Technology Committee fought back an attempt by Senate Democrats to pass another measure pushed by organized labor.

Critics charge House Bill 1170--now turned into a mere call for a study, under a Republican amendment--originally sought to expand the ranks of union electricians by changing the basic rules governing their employment and their qualifications.

The bill would have changed current practices to require apprentice electricians working in Colorado to be registered with U.S. Department of Labor-certified programs; requiring applicants for a master electrician’s license to have a Colorado journeyman’s license for one year, and establishing a continuing education requirement of 24 hours in the prior two years for renewal of a license. The measure also would prevent master electricians from using graduation from a community college as a qualification for their master electrician license.

More controversial, the bill as amended would reduce the number of apprentices an electrician could supervise--from three to two--increasing the need for journeyman electricians on a job site.

“Making wholesale changes to a system that has worked for the past 35 years--without even any input from all the affected stakeholders--just because the union says so doesn’t make sense to me," said Republican Senator Tom Wiens, of Castle Rock, who took the lead in opposing the bill. “The arguments that the IBEW used were non-persuasive."

Ruling Democrats on a Senate committee turned aside a Republican proposal today that would have reached out to high-schoolers who do poorly on the state's standardized testing and helped them improve.

Littleton Republican Sen. Mike Kopp's Senate Bill 199, which died on a party-line vote in the Senate Education Committee, would have been the first statewide effort to address children who fail the Colorado Student Assessment Program test. The CSAP tests have been used for years to benchmark the progress of schools but only recently have been eyed for their potential in helping the students themselves.

"While the CSAP tells us something about the state of our schools, this bill would have made it more meaningful to each student," said a disappointed Kopp after the committee vote. "Whatever assessment measure is used in our schools, we need to actually track and help the individual students."

Kopp said his disappointment was all the greater because Education Commissioner Dwight Jones had expressed support for the effort, and state Education Department staff had assisted Kopp in fine-tuning his bill.

SB 199 was part of the GOP's legislative agenda for education in 2008.