The threat of hundreds of amendments from Senate Republicans compelled the chamber to work out a compromise on legislation to allow county workers to collectively bargain with employers – something that has eluded the bill’s opponents and backers for more than a year.

As a result, Friday night’s debate on Senate Bill 230  turned out much differently and much shorter than predicted – thanks to an all-day discussion between Senate Democrats and Republicans.

Senators then gave the measure a preliminary approval. It still needs the full Senate’s full vote. 

SB 230 co-sponsor Senate President Steve Fenberg said he sat down with Senate Minority Leader Chris Holbert and Sens. Paul Lundeen, R-Monument, and Barbara Kirkmeyer, R-Brighton, in the hours before the debate to work out amendments that would forestall Republican efforts to delay, perhaps even stop, the bill from moving forward. Some of the planned 271 amendments would have attempted to remove most of Colorado’s 64 counties from the bill, one county at a time, Holbert told Colorado Politics Thursday.

The bill has been in the works for the last two sessions, starting out as a plan a year ago to allow all public sector employees to engage in collective bargaining. That would have included those who work for municipalities, counties, special districts, K-12 schools and public colleges and universities. As the bill got closer to introduction this year and the opposition grew, including from some quarters in organized labor, the bill was narrowed down first to just counties and higher education, and then to its final version, which only applies to counties and their roughly 38,000 employees.

During a committee hearing on Wednesday, dozens of county commissioners lined to up to testify against the bill, criticizing its unfunded mandate that would require either tax hikes to pay for the costs of implementing the labor contracts, or result in layoffs and loss of services to county residents. Backers counter it’s necessary to enshrine workers’ right to collective bargain in the statutes. 

Bill sponsors admitted they negotiated primarily with a coalition of mostly-Democratic county commissioners, known as Counties and County Commissioners Acting Together (CCAT), but not with Colorado Counties Inc, which represents 62 out of the state’s 64 counties, because the latter opposed the bill. CCAT, however, also wasn’t completely sold on the proposal and was in an “amend” position on Wednesday.

Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chris Holbert of Douglas County announced his caucus would not bring forward amendments, which grew by another 40 in the last 24 hours before the debate,

“We are  not here to drag this out for 12, 20, 36 or 48 hours,” Holbert said, adding the debate could have gone on until Sunday night or even into Monday. 

He said the plan changed after co-sponsor Senate Majority Leader Dominick Moreno of Commerce City sought a truce to discuss the concerns raised by the bill’s opponents. That led to a 10-hour discussion on Friday between the caucus leaders.

Those discussions also were based on lessons learned from the 2019 session, when Senate Republicans sued Senate Democrats over the unintelligible reading of a 2,023-page bill by a bank of computers. The Senate Republicans won that lawsuit that went all the way to the state Supreme Court in 2021.

“One of the lessons both sides learned is that when we get to an impasse, the most effective thing to ask is, ‘What do you want?'” Holbert said.

Republicans identified four key areas that they wanted to see in amendments to the bill, and he said he believed the majority would satisfy those concerns with those amendments.

Chief among them is whether county commissioners ultimately have the power to say “no” to a union contract, which Holbert said was not clear in the bill.

First among the 20 amendments that came up in Friday’s debate was an amendment to address county rights. The Fenberg amendment would expand the rights of a county when it’s discussing a collective bargaining agreement with workers. He said the amendment “puts more guardrails” on what can and cannot be bargained in the bill’s section that lays out basic rights and responsibilities for county commissioners. Those rights, under the legislation, cannot be infringed on by a collective bargaining agreement.

The amendment said neither the law nor the agreement could restrict the authority granted to county commissioners under either the state Constitution, a home rule county charter or other state law. While most of Colorado’s municipalities operate under home rule, which allows the local governments to set their own laws, only one county in the state, Weld, has a home rule charter.

Kirkmeyer, a former Weld County commissioner, urged support for the amendment, which the Senate adopted.

Next to be adopted was an amendment that allows county management, including human resources, to respond to employee questions regarding employment so long as it is neutral on the issue of participating in a union. Larimer County Commissioner Christine Kuehnast raised that issue during Wednesday’s hearing. Another amendment made it clear those discussions also could include coaching sessions or other informal conversations between employees and management.

The most significant amendment deals with the definition, including size, of a bargaining unit. That’s been one of the biggest contentions for counties – how many employees should be in a bargaining unit.

The bill, as introduced, said a unit could be a minimum of 50 employees, but that still raised concerns for small counties that did not want to have to negotiate with multiple units. As amended, the size of the bargaining unit would be negotiated between the parties, with an appeal to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment if no agreement on that issue is reached.

Another amendment, from Sen. Kerry Donovan, D-Vail, allows for consolidation of bargaining units at the request of the county. Previously, that had to be agreed upon by both parties. Counties also requested that amendment, she said.

Donovan’s second amendment said contracts could be approved only by county commissioners, not county administrators. 

Another amendment from Sen. Chris Kolker, D-Centennial tackled the issue of “card check” – raised by CCAT commissioners – by eliminating it.  

Card check applies to requiring a majority of employees to sign a “card” – an authorization form – to say they want to be represented by a union. CCAT commissioners said that could lead to undue pressure to sign those cards. The card check was eliminated in favor of a secret ballot.

While they pledged not to run through the 271 amendments that were awaiting the bill Friday, Republicans did offer, and lose, on a number of issues.

That included a prohibition on putting union dues into political action committees, which Lundeen said would limit “dark money” in political campaigns and could result in unions putting money into the political campaigns of commissioner candidates, which he called a conflict. Another Lundeen amendment, which also failed, would have allowed an employee to rescind payroll deductions to a union at any time in the year. Moreno argued that employees are making a year-long commitment.

Transparency on union contracts, an amendment from Sen. Bob Gardner, R-Colorado Springs, also failed to gain traction. It would would have made those contracts subject to the state’s Open Records law. A second Gardner amendment attempted to address the issue of strikes. Fenberg insisted the bill does not allow county workers to strike, but county commissioners testified the language is unclear. It did not change on Friday.

The bill won passage on a preliminary voice vote just after 10 p.m. and with less than two hours of debate.

SB 230 is up for a final Senate vote on Monday and then heads to the House.