05/01/2008
CONTACT: Tony Gagliardi, 303-831-6099 or Tony Malandra, 415-664-9685
State's leading small business group now a part of Coloradans for Responsible Reform
DENVER, Colo. -- The National Federation of Independent Business/Colorado, the state's leading small business association, is joining Coloradans for Responsible Reform in an effort to combat the impending flood of ballot initiatives, it was announced today.
"Because all efforts have failed to convince competing interests to withdraw their respective initiatives, it is in the best interest of our 7,500 small business members that NFIB/Colorado steps forward to vigorously oppose these ill-advised labor initiatives," said Tony Gagliardi, NFIB/Colorado state director. "These initiatives will be harmful to the entire Colorado business community, even those with current collective bargaining agreements."
The successful placement of a Right to Work initiative on the November ballot has sparked a spate of counter initiatives from labor organizations. Right now, these efforts are in the early approval stage, but if many of them qualify, Colorado voters would be faced with a ballot mess never before seen.
According to Gagliardi, some of the more poisonous propositions include ones that would set Colorado employment law back to the dark ages, implement a pay-or-play mandatory healthcare regulation (opposed by 87 percent of NFIB membership), and guarantee pay raises regardless of the financial health of the business.
"It is unfortunate that business and labor will be expending large amounts of money towards these initiatives, which could have instead been used to help elect candidates sympathetic to the constituencies of both side," said Gagliardi, who added that Colorado is already hamstrung enough in trying to comply with current and conflicting ballot initiatives, such as the 25-year-old Gallagher Amendment, the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR), Referendum C and Amendment 23.
"The entire point and the whole purpose of having an elected body of legislators to make the laws we live under is being killed by the thousand cuts from ballot initiatives," said Gagliardi. "I am hoping at some point we as a people return to a time when the initiative process was reserved solely to address political sclerosis. We cannot to continue to govern ourselves in two separate ways without creating societal immobility that will harm us all."
