Colorado Senate gives initial approval to labor law overhaul, begins debate on key gun bill

The Colorado Senate gave initial approval Thursday to a bill that makes it easier for workers to negotiate a key provision of union contracts, but the fate of a major gun control bill — also scheduled for a floor vote — remained unclear.

The Senate was supposed to first debate the gun measure, Senate Bill 3, which promised lengthy opposition from Republicans. But shortly before debate began Thursday morning, chamber leaders bumped the bill — which would ban the sale of many firearms that accept detachable magazines — to second in the queue.

Instead, they started with Senate Bill 5, which would eliminate a provision of the state’s labor law that requires unionized workers to pass another election before they can fully negotiate a key provision of their contracts governing the collection of dues and fees. That provision in Colorado law is unique in the United States and has kept the state suspended between union-restricting states and more pro-labor states.

“The working people of the state of the Colorado, as well as the folks all across this country, are demanding that we do better for them (and) do right by the workers,” said Sen. Jessie Danielson, a Wheat Ridge Democrat who’s co-sponsoring the bill with Sen. Robert Rodriguez. “We all know that when workers are protected by a union contract, it results in better pay, better benefits and safety on the job.”

The chamber’s minority group of Republicans filibustered the bill for nearly five hours before it cleared its first vote Thursday afternoon.

Echoing concerns voiced by the business community and Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, they said Colorado’s labor law had worked to balance power between unionized workers and their employers since its passage more than 81 years ago.

“This bill is a declaration of war upon that Labor Peace Act,” said Sen. Paul Lundeen, the Republican minority leader, referring to the formal name for Colorado’s labor law.

He said the measure was a compromise and separated Colorado from so-called “right-to-work states”: “We found a better way, a midway, a consensus way forward that exists in the law today — (that’s) being sought to be overturned by this particular (bill).”

The bill now needs a second vote in the chamber before it can move to the House. It’s expected to pass there, too.

The bill would then be on a path to Polis’ desk, but the governor has said he intends to veto the bill unless its supporters reach a deal with the business community. No such deal had been reached as of Thursday’s vote.

As for the gun bill, the situation remained fluid even into the afternoon. Debate began late Thursday afternoon with a fiery speech from Sen. Tom Sullivan, the Centennial Democrat co-sponsoring the bill and the father of a 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting victim, Alex Sullivan.

He held up crime scene images of the magazines used by his son’s killer from the Senate floor.

The debate was expected to last well into the evening, and heading into the vote, supporters said they had the needed votes. However, one Democratic lawmaker, embattled Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis, didn’t show on Thursday, delaying the bill’s debate and throwing its future — amid opposition from Polis and a group of Democrats — into doubt.

“Not everybody’s here today, so we’re figuring it out,” Sen. Julie Gonzales, one of the bill’s sponsors, said in the morning. The Denver Democrat reiterated the “figuring it out” position a few hours later.

Jaquez Lewis, a Longmont Democrat, did not return a text seeking comment on her absence Thursday morning. Rodriguez, the Senate’s majority leader, said Jaquez Lewis had a “medical thing.”

Jaquez Lewis is under investigation by a Senate ethics committee for allegedly mistreating her aides. That committee is chaired by Gonzales.

A small group of Democratic senators have said they won’t support the bill, which supporters say is both a method to enforce the state’s decade-old magazine ban and a way to prevent mass shootings. Gonzales was walking the Senate floor counting votes and speaking with Democratic colleagues earlier in the day.

The gun bill, which would effectively ban many of the weapons colloquially considered assault weapons, has lived in a strange state since its introduction last month.

Gun control is a key priority for large chunks of the Democratic base, and the measure has enough Democratic co-sponsors to pass the Senate and the House. But lawmakers delayed a first scheduled floor vote last week to allow for more negotiations with Polis, and Senate President James Coleman told reporters Tuesday that the governor “is not on board” with the bill.

Its sponsors have been negotiating with Polis’ staff for the past week.

In a statement to The Post after the first delay Friday, Polis spokeswoman Shelby Wieman said that while the governor supported gun-violence prevention legislation, he also wanted to ensure “that we are protecting Coloradans’ Second Amendment rights and respecting our state’s long standing traditions of hunting and sport shooting.”

Neither lawmakers nor the governor’s office have been willing to say what Polis wants, though he has sought changes to gun control bills in the past. Either way, supporters say no deal was reached before the Senate began work Thursday.

Staff writer Nick Coltrain contributed to this story.

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