Ignoring pleas to safeguard the public from the next walkout by transit workers or schoolteachers, Democrats on a House committee Thursday voted down a Republican bill that would have barred strikes by all government workers.

House Bill 1187, introduced in the House by Rep. Bob Gardner, R-Colorado Springs, and sponsored in the Senate by assistant Senate GOP leader Nancy Spence, of Centennial, would have established firm penalties for employees or unions that struck or incited strikes. In presenting the bill before the House Business Affairs and Labor Committee, Gardner pointed to numerous strikes around the state by public schoolteachers over the years as well as a strike in 2006 by bus and light-rail drivers that hobbled the Denver area's Regional Transportation District.

"Our bill's defeat sends a troubling message to the public: that the General Assembly isn't willing to protect basic public services from labor unrest," Spence said after the hearing.

She pointed out that formerly non-union private contractors--which make up about half of RTD's drivers and helped keep buses running during the last strike--recently have been unionized as well.

"Now, there will be virtually no one to fill in during the next strike," she said. "That could paralyze a whole lot of commuters throughout the metro area."

While the committee approved another bill barring strikes by state government employees, critics charged it offered only token penalties and would do nothing to prevent the most common kinds of public-employee strikes--those by employees of local agencies like school districts or the RTD.

Both bills had their origins in Gov. Bill Ritter's controversial executive order last fall granting sweeping new powers to unions to collectively bargain for wages and benefits of state employees. Gardner told the committee Thursday that in researching Ritter's executive order, he realized Colorado public employees had a right to strike--in many states, they don't--and that particularly services like public transit and schools were vulnerable.

A succession of union execs testified against both bills but reserved especially harsh criticism for the Gardner-Spence bill because it would not assure them of the right to binding arbitration in exchange for not being able to strike.