December 2011

Check out the guest opinion column from Colorado WINS’ President Paul Boni and Executive Director Scott Wasserman about how personnel reform can, and should, benefit taxpayers and state workers – nurses, public safety officers, health care staff – alike.

As Westerners, we believe government should
be accountable, clean and effective. Cronyism and politics should not
decide who gets a job with the state. Over the past century, Colorado
voters have been careful to preserve the idea that the best candidate
should get the job, and that a commitment to public service deserves
fair compensation.

See the entire column, which includes three key principles to improving the state personnel system here.

Sign onto the Colorado WINS personnel reform principles, which state
that reform should be a win-win (for taxpayers and state workers), keep
politics out of the delivery of essential services and result in
attracting the best and brightest to serve Colorado.

It’s easy – sign the petition today!

To keep up to date on this issue sign up for text alerts from Colorado WIINS here.

As if paying for college isn’t hard enough already, some more tough news for Colorado State University students and their families: the Governor has proposed cutting work study.

Read coverage of the issue here.

See the New York Time’s article about how more and more public sector workers are retiring as salaries and retirement continue to erode.

“There’s always been this promise that if you came to work and did your
job…The
idea was you could retire with respect and dignity. But that whole idea
has been slashed now…”- Bob McLinn, Wisconsin. To see the complete article, click here.

Go online here, to use The New York Times’ multimedia tool to see which states changed already set contributions and benefits for workers, cutting benefits and increasing worker pension contributions (Colorado has done both).

Governor Hickenlooper intends to make some big changes to Colorado’s personnel system – which would affect about 30,000 ‘classified’ state workers.

See Tim Hoover’s coverage of the issue here in the Denver Post.

The Governor hasn’t made any specific proposals yet, but we expect him to put forth specifics during the 2012 legislature.

“We take these proposals extremely
seriously,” said Scott Wasserman, executive director of Colorado WINS, a
union with several thousand dues-paying state workers who, however,
don’t have collective-bargaining rights. “Our goal is to work in
partnership with the governor to improve state services, while also
maintaining” the current system’s integrity.

To read the complete article, click here.