Governor's union deal leaves a cloud over state budget, GOP says

The governor's executive order last Friday pumping up union power in the ranks of state personnel has left state budgeters in a quandary, says the Senate GOP's member on the powerful legislative Joint Budget Committee. The order gives unions a new and highly controversial role representing state employees in bargaining for pay. 

As a result, Sen. Steve Johnson, R-Fort Collins, called today for legislative legal advisers to offer guidance to the committee--which writes the state's budget--on how it is to proceed in calculating the cost of the state's payroll.

"This has left a cloud over the budget process," Johnson said. "The governor never consulted with the budget committee on this. He never even talked to us, and salaries are the biggest part of our budget."

Gov. Bill Ritter's action also has raised an outcry in the business community and drew a sharp editorial rebuke last weekend from Colorado's two largest daily newspapers, The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News. The Post's editorial appeared on the newspaper's front page on Sunday.

"It looks like Bill Ritter's honeymoon with the press is finally over," Johnson said. 

In response, Republicans announced a legislative push this morning to roll back the executive order and to bar public employees from going on strike now that the governor has extended exclusive bargaining authority to organized labor.

Sens. Shawn Mitchell, R-Broomfield, and Josh Penry, R-Fruita, along with Reps. Cory Gardner, R-Yuma, and Rob Witwer, R-Genesee, are sponsoring the measure to repeal the governor's executive order while Rep. Bob Gardner, R-Colorado Springs, and Assistant Senate Republican leader Nancy Spence, of Centennial, are carrying the proposal to prevent public-sector employee strikes.

Bob Gardner pointed out at a GOP news conference at the Capitol that, contrary to conventional wisdom, it is in fact legal for state employees to strike right now. The governor's order allowing unions to function as bargaining representatives for state employees makes matters worse by providing a

mechanism for a strike by state personnel. 

The Ritter administration has been under fire for months after it was forced to disclose its closed-door talks with major labor unions over plans to give unions collective bargaining power, which would lock the state into contractual pay-and-benefit hikes. The governor's order Friday gave the unions most of what they wanted by allowing them to be recognized as exclusive bargaining representatives for state employees. 

As much as the enhanced union role in state government could expose Coloradans to a greater risk of a labor walkout, it is its fiscal implications that could bedevil budgeters.

Other states, like Washington, that have experimented with collective bargaining for government employees have seen payroll costs soar at taxpayers' expense.

Johnson noted that Colorado state employees have been treated well over the long haul by the state's use of annual salary surveys, comparing state jobs to comparable ones elsewhere.  Coloradans are already among the better-paid state employees, ranking among the top 10 states for pay.

Now that the governor will subject that process to bargaining talks with unions, it is unclear which formula will prevail in setting the payroll budget, Johnson said.

"Are we going to go with the salary survey, or do we do away with that system and go to bargaining?" Johson asked.