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The people of Colorado have a commonsense view that their government should focus on essential services.
Amendment 49 on our ballot promotes that point of view. Our state and local governments should be focused on the jobs we pay them to do, whether it’s keeping our neighborhoods safe, educating our children, or fixing our roads. We shouldn’t expect our governments to provide banking services for unions or any other membership organization or political group.
Besides being a non-essential service, the practice carries serious ethical problems. Currently, unions and other political groups collect contributions from government employees right through our taxpayer-funded payroll systems. Many of these groups use the money to lobby, and even give campaign contributions to, the same politicians who signed their bundled payroll checks.
Amendment 49 puts a stop to the free-flowing transfer of funds between government systems, lobbying groups, and politicians. The Daily Sentinel supports 49 because it agrees that “government shouldn’t be bookkeeper, accountant and collection agency” for political lobbying groups. State and local governments should use our limited taxpayer resources to provide crucial public services, not to funnel cash.
This amendment recognizes that it’s perfectly fine if government workers want to belong to a union, a fraternal association, or a political club. It allows employees to set up convenient arrangements with their bank to do automatic withholding. In fact, for years the Colorado Association of Public Employees advertised the private credit card dues option for members.
Amendment 49 levels the political playing field.
This payroll reform is already working. Some county governments in Colorado, along with a handful of municipalities, have implemented this idea. But with an ethical loophole this large, our state can’t wait for all 3,000 governments to step up and follow suit.
Amendment 49 makes one ethical standard for all of Colorado.
BILL OWENS
Former Colorado Governor
Denver
2 Responses to “Amendment 49 levels the political playing field”
Posted October 14th, 2008 at 7:09 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
The former governor is at it again. He claims that public employees ‘time’ should not be spent ‘funneling’ or ‘managing’ contributions or deductions. Actually, if the ex-governor were better informed, he might by this time have come to the realization that ‘public employees’ do not spend that much time doing so, unless of course they are doing it with pen and pencil.
The gentleman is not at all concerned with the time of public service employees, he is engaged in nothing less than “union busting”, much as is that other proposed amendment on this year’s ballot, Amendment 47.
The people of Colorado would best be served if they revoked the tax exempt status of some of these ‘Conservative’ think tanks, who are not at all involved in ‘thinking’ but lobbying and promoting their ideologies. Or, as some of us like to put it. “There is very little actual “thinking” and a great deal of “intellectual tanking.”
Posted October 14th, 2008 at 8:32 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
The former governor should be better informed?
Does this mean that you consider yourself to be ‘better informed’ than the Gentleman in question?
Pray tell RL, what makes you believe that he is less informed on the subject than yourself?
Oh perhaps, you would like to provide evidence that you hold superior knowledge on the subject?
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