Owens criticizes Ritter

David Milstead, Rocky Mountain News

Published November 6, 2007 at midnight

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Former Gov. Bill Owens stepped into the debate over new union powers for state workers by criticizing, for the first time, his Democratic successor.

Owens, in an appearance on the Mike Rosen show on radio station KOA, told guest host Jon Caldara he objected to Gov. Bill Ritter's use of an executive order to give state workers the right to collective bargaining. Ritter released the order Friday afternoon, a time critics suggest was planned to minimize attention to the changes.

"I do object to using an executive order in this case," Owens said. "I think this is something that should have gone through the legislature. Legislators should be put on record. In a representative democracy, it's something that ought to be debated, and in fact, introduced, amended, and voted upon, and Gov. Ritter has avoided all of that."

Owens said in the last nine months, he's not publicly critiqued or second-guessed Ritter because "I don't think it's the role of ex-governors to continually be in the background, sniping at their successor."

But Owens said he's speaking out because Ritter has cited problems with computer systems in the Owens administration as a reason to give employees a voice in a labor-management "partnership."

"He needs to stand up and say why he thinks it's right to unionize the state workforce," Owens said. "He doesn't need to be blaming me for something that he feels we left him that he needs to fix. I fixed lots of things Gov. Romer left for me and I'm expecting Bill Ritter to in fact improve in some areas on what I did. But if he wants to have collective bargaining, he needs to go ahead and do it and not blame me for it. And I'll have this debate with him if that's what he wants to do."

Owens had a labor-union executive order of his own, stopping the direct deduction of union dues from state employees' paychecks. He said he was "very proud" of it.

"I wanted the union to have to go sell itself every year when it asked for that $300 or $400 dues check," Owens said. "I didn't think it an appropriate function pf the state to step in and be an intermediary between organized labor and the workforce ... We shouldn't be subsidizing the union's attempts to organize the state's workforce."

Finance Editor David Milstead can be reached at milstead@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2648.

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