A leading Republican senator ran into a wall of union solidarity in a Senate committee today when he tried unsuccessfully to stop the governor's controversial executive order extending the reach of organized labor deep into state government.

The GOP's Sen. Shawn Mitchell, of Broomfield, pleaded with ruling Democrats on the

VIDEO: Pro-union order draws fire

Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee to consider the order's longterm cost to the state's budget and the taxpaying public. He also told committee members that since Gov. Bill Ritter signed the order last fall--granting collective-bargaining power to unions representing state employees--union reps have been aggressively soliciting new members by contacting state employees via mail and even in person at their homes.

Nevertheless, Mitchell's Senate Bill 86, sponsored in the House by Rep. Cory Gardner, of Yuma, was voted down along party lines. The measure would have repealed the executive order.

"This leaves taxpayers holding the bag," Mitchell said.

Mitchell noted that Colorado's state employees long have been allowed to join unions if they felt the need for additional representation and that state workers' pay compares extremely well with that of their peers in other states. Colorado's state employees in fact rank among the top 10 states for pay. 

He also rejected Ritter administration claims that the executive order was intended only to give employees a voice and to hear their suggestions for running government more efficiently.

"It didn't take the protection of labor bosses to (help employees) come forward with cost-saving suggestions," Mitchell said.

Critics have denounced Ritter's executive order as payback to labor unions, an influential interest group in the governor's Democrat Party.

The executive order has raised an outcry from Colorado's business community and earned the editorial wrath of the state's two largest newspapers, The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News.  

GOP critics fear collective bargaining for state government employees will dramatically raise the cost of the state's payroll, creating a new burden for taxpayers. Washington's state government imposed the same policy in 2004 that the Ritter administration has now embraced in Colorado, and that state's payroll spending soared as union ranks swelled.

The move also led to a backlash among hundreds of Washington state employees who were forced under the new labor contract to join the union and pay dues, pay "agency fees" in lieu of dues -- or lose their jobs. Some employees actually were dismissed.