...Gov. Bill Ritter and legislators are quietly working with two major unions on a bill that would, for the first time, give state employees the power to bargain collectively for better wages and benefits. The closed-door efforts were flushed out into the open Tuesday when Ritter's office released more than 1,000 pages of documents in response to an open records request by a Republican consultant.
Included was a June 26 e-mail from a union representative urging one of Ritter's policy analysts to keep the negotiations secret.
"Our thinking at this point is purely political - we believe that the state employee agenda for next session will be a heavy lift, and therefore has the potential to be extremely polarizing if not messaged correctly," Service Employees International Union Legislative Director Scott Wasserman wrote to analyst Christy Murphy...
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