The bill that became the centerpiece for lengthy delays in the final weeks of the 2022 legislative session won final approval from the House on the session’s final day.

Senate Bill 230 was amended prior to that final vote, the result of negotiations between House Republicans and Democrats that resolved the gridlock in the House. That led to an all night session on Monday that ended at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday with the first signs of the agreement that narrowed the bill even further.

The House adopted the bill on a strict party line, 41-24 vote. 

As amended, Senate Bill 230 largely made it optional for county commissioners to agree to collective bargaining contracts with their employees. 

The bill has been in the works for two years. It started out as an attempt to unionize all public sector workers, including in municipalities, K-12 education and higher education. The bill was narrowed to higher education and counties earlier this year and down to just counties upon its introduction in April.

Colorado Counties, Inc., which represents 62 of the state’s 64 counties, and a majority of county commissioners, opposed the bill. A small coalition of mostly Democratic commissioners, known as Commissioners and Counties Acting Together, supported it and were part of the bill’s early negotiations. Not one county employee who wasn’t already in a union testified during two committee hearings that they wanted a union in either the House or Senate. The sheriff of Arapahoe County, an elected official, testified that his employees wanted a union but none of them testified. 

The Senate watered down the bill to drop requirements that counties had to negotiate and come to agreement with bargaining units, making that optional. It also exempts home rule counties, which primarily applied to Weld County, the only home rule county that does not already have a collective bargaining agreement with its employees. Denver and Broomfield are also exempted since they are both cities and counties. An amendment adopted on Wednesday exempted the 22 counties of up to 7,500 in population.

Lawmakers made no changes to language on whether employees could strike, which most county commissioners said is vague. The bill bans an “exclusive representative” from calling for a strike, sickout or other work stoppage. Commissioners said that could keep a union leader from calling for a strike, but left county workers to their own devices on whether to do so. Sponsors, including Majority Leader Daneya Esgar, D-Pueblo, said, however, that an “exclusive representative” is actually the entire bargaining unit.

Esgar said that a state law is necessary to affirm the right of county employees to form unions, although there are already five counties that have those agreements: Adams, Pitkin, Pueblo, Las Animas and Summit, where the agreement is only with transit workers.

SB 230 now goes back to the Senate for review of amendments, and it must win final passage no later than midnight Wednesday, the mandated adjournment for the session.