Promising that the fight has just begun, Republican lawmakers today fired off a letter to the governor demanding that he wait 120 days before implementing his controversial executive order granting unions unprecedented power over state personnel. The Republicans also pledged additional steps, to be disclosed soon.
The order, signed by the governor late Friday, grants a form of collective bargaining for the first time ever to Colorado's state government workers. Business leaders reacted with alarm at the development, and the state's two largest newspapers the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post, denounced the executive order--the Post in a rare, front-page Sunday editorial.
Republicans have decried not only the "budget-busting" effect that bargaining by unions will have on state government but also what they say is the back-door way in which the governor cut the legislature out of the debate altogether by issuing an order.
"The governor not only wants to drive up the cost of running our state government as payback to his allies in organized labor, but he also apparently wants to avoid any open debate on it," said Republican Sen. Shawn Mitchell, of Broomfield. "By sidestepping the legislative process, he has done an end-run on the public."
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Read The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News editorials denouncing the governor's deal with organized labor. |
Quipped Senate GOP leader Andy McElhany of Colorado Springs, "You have to wonder if next he is going to issue an executive order calling off the 2008 legislative session because he intends to write all of our laws by himself."
Republicans say it was both the fundamentally flawed procedure and the way in which the governor blindsided the public with his order that led to today's letter calling on the governor to hold off of implementation until the consequences can be evaluated.
Union organizers who were posted outside the State Capitol Friday afternoon handed out fliers proclaiming, "We Did It!" and "We're On Our Way" shortly after the governor signed the order.
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Sen. Shawn Mitchell |
Republican lawmakers for months have been criticizing what they say are "back-room dealings" between the administration of Gov. Bill Ritter and organized labor, which heavily backed the governor and fellow Democrats in the 2006 election. News media reports confirm that the governor's people have been involved in extensive talks with unions as to how best to bring collective bargaining to the state work force.
Colorado state employees already may join unions, but the unions did not represent the employees at the bargaining table. Under the order granted Friday by Ritter, unions now may serve as exclusive negotiating representatives for state employees. That approach, critics say, will drive up payroll costs substantially as it has in other states that have experimented with collective bargainging.
"The whole dynamic is going to change for how we deal with state employees," said Republican Sen. Steve Johnson, of Fort Collins, who represents the Senate GOP on the powerful legislative Joint Budget Committee.
GOP lawmakers also say the governor's action launches the state down a slippery slope that could lead to binding arbitration and even strikes by state employees.
"Right now, they have a right to strike. This executive order gives them the mechanism to strike," Johnson said.
Added Republican Sen. Greg Brophy, of Wray, "Even Democrat Gov Dick Lamm believes that government workers shouldn't have the right to go on strike."