State legislators spend hours on negotiations for collective bargaining

The 2022 General Assembly adjourns for the year on Wednesday, May 11, having worked on 655 bills, including 100 introduced in the session’s final month.

Among the actions in the last full week, the House reviewed Senate Bill 230, a bill that would affirm in state law the right of county workers to engage in collective bargaining.

House Republicans were prepared to offer more than 500 amendments to the bill for the May 6 debate, including exempting most of Colorado’s counties, one at a time, or exempting other county elected offices, such as coroners, sheriffs or clerks, also one at a time.

However, hours of negotiations on the bill on May 6 appeared to produce an agreement on a couple of amendments.

The House made major changes to SB 230, including exempting counties with 5,000 or less in population. That includes six counties on the Eastern Plains, including Phillips, Sedgwick and Washington counties in northeastern Colorado. An amendment that would have raised that exemption to 7,500, which would have exempted most Eastern Plains counties and offered by Rep. Rod Pelton, R-Cheyenne Wells, failed.

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