Democratic lawmakers and supporters Thursday unveiled a suite of legislation aimed at closing the gender gap in salaries in Colorado on the seventh anniversary of the federal Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

Speakers pitched the bills as long overdue, saying the state had been trapped in a discriminatory past that was hobbling the economy and holding back women and ethnic minorities eager for advancement.

“Equal pay for equal work means breaking down barriers to economic parity and financial security,” said Rep. Jessie Danielson, D-Wheat Ridge, sponsor of two of the new bills. One would require state contractors to pay employees doing the same work equal wages, and another would bring greater transparency to workplace pay.

Danielson said the issue of equal pay was more than a matter of fairness.

“This is how we grow the middle class,” she said. “This is an economic barrier that’s hurting the middle class in Colorado.”

Rep. Brittany Pettersen, D-Westminster, is sponsoring bills that would prevent employers from asking job applicants for previous salary information and that would grant awards for businesses that commit to equal pay and to providing access to advancement for female and minority employees.

This isn’t about businesses acting badly, she told The Colorado Statesman. It’s about a culture and a system that fosters inequality and that needs to be changed.

“What we’re saying is that we need more transparency in the workplace so people know what their colleagues are making so that inequality can be addressed and so you’re not being asked in a job interview what your previous salary was,” she said. “Women get paid less than men to start off and, if your starting salary is the measure, then it starts a pattern.”

In the past, opponents of similar proposals in Colorado have suggested that government meddling in the marketplace is not the answer to unequal pay. They say new laws will end in a rash of lawsuits that will bankrupt employers and kill businesses. Indeed, even as the press conference at the Capitol was underway, Twitter lit up with that kind of opposition to the bills.

“We don’t intend these things to be solved through lawsuits,” said Petterson. “This is about setting a standard and bringing awareness to the issue — to the fact that, unfortunately, women today make only 89 percent of what men make.

“We don’t want to put a burden on our small businesses, on workplaces that don’t have lawyers in house,” she said. “That’s why in the legislation we’re introducing we’re looking at making sure there’s a pathway, so that businesses would have a counselor appointed to defend them if they had an equal-pay policy in place.”

Petterson said she has been working on her bills with the business community and that an equal-pay bill in Massachusetts included a provision that would provide for legal defense in good faith cases. She said that provision convinced the Chamber of Commerce in Massachusetts to support the bill.

But there were no Republican lawmakers in attendance at the press conference at the Capitol on Thursday. And Republicans told The Statesman they saw the bills as unnecessary and intrusive.

Rep. Polly Lawrence, R-Roxborough Park, said the bills would be onerous and unnecessary, given the numerous laws on the books that address equal pay.

“We already have good laws on the books to prevent discrimination in the workplace,” she said, “We strongly support fair pay for fair work, but I don’t want to see the government imposing onerous regulations on businesses where they’re actually going into their personnel records and interfering with business operations.”

Some suggested the bills were more about election-year messaging than problem-solving.

Rep. Faith Winter, D-Westminster, dismissed those kinds of assertions.

“Election year or not, we hear from our constituents that this is something they care about and something they want to see solutions on. We brought it up last year and we brought it up again this year because it’s about being responsive, not about politics,” she said.

Rep. Joe Salazar, D-Thornton, co-sponsor of the pay transparency bill, said talk about politics and lawsuits were diversionary tactics.

“They try to scare everybody by talking about lawsuits. But you try to get them to show you that frivolous lawsuits have been filed at such a great amount and they can never demonstrate that. It’s just Kool-Aid drinking,” Salazar said. “If an employer is discriminating against a woman based off of equal-pay issues, then court is a proper recourse.”

Petterson conceded that getting the bills through the Republican-controlled state Senate would be a challenge.

“It’s a conversation,” she said. “We’re working with businesses to help make the economic case. Equal pay is good for business,” she said.

– ramsey@coloradostatesman.com