You should be forced to give money to organizations you don’t support. Colorado AG Phil Weiser on Trump vs. Red Flag Law
"Coloradans don’t want to be forced to give money to organizations they don’t support."
Hear hear.
To help payback their union paymasters, Colorado Democrats are running a bill which would grease the skids for unions in this state, overturning about 8 decades of settled union law in Colorado.
This bill is linked first below if you'd like to give it a look.
The bill's future is uncertain, but in response to it, Jon Caldara of the Independence Institute is running a ballot initiative to make it illegal for any union to force someone to join a union, leave a union, and/or pay any dues to a union as part of getting or keeping a job.
Complete Colorado (also of Independence Institute) wrote an article on the initiative and I linked to the initial text of it second and third respectively.
The issue here is the lack of choice. If you are working somewhere your fellow workers could unionize. If you don't want to join the union, if you don't want to pay dues so that the union can spend it in ways with which you disagree, tough. You have the choice of finding a new job or paying.
With the way the law sits now, unionizing only takes a bare majority (50%), and a vote that makes it so that everyone has to pay dues takes 75%. That's a tough hurdle to clear, as it should be if you're going to force people to support things.
Thus the quote at the top of this post. It comes from Mr. Caldara in the article.
Fair is fair. Want to be in a union? Want to pay dues? Support the things your union is spending on? Okay, not my choice but okay.
Want to not be in a union? Want to not support them because you don't like what they're spending money on? That would be my choice and it's also okay.
Still early in the lifecycle of the union bill, and still early in the lifecycle of initiatives. Too early to make any sort of prediction.
I'll keep my eye on this initiative, offering updates as I see them.
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb25-005
https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2025/01/14/bill-unwinding-labor-compromise-prompts-right-to-work-measure/
https://leg.colorado.gov/content/labor-organization-affiliation-and-dues-0
Colorado AG Phil Weiser on Trump vs. Red Flag Law
I saw a recent CPR article about the conflict between Trump's directives on immigration and Colorado's sanctuary state laws (see the first link below).
In that article, the reporter put up a statement by our own Colorado Attorney General (and gubernatorial candidate) Phil Weiser. That statement is in the screenshot labeled "2025".
I thought it would make an interesting contrast to compare what AG Weiser said re. Trump policy vs. Colorado sanctuary law to what AG Weiser said not too long after passage of Colorado's Red Flag Law.
I found a couple of CPR articles with quotes from AG Weiser. Both date to 2019, the year of passage for the first iteration of the Red Flag Law. The second link below is to an April 1, 2019 article and the third is to an October 16, 2019 article.
AG Weiser's statements regarding the sheriffs and/or counties who were signaling that they wouldn't enforce the state's red flag law are attached as the screenshots labeled "2019 1" and "2019 2". They correspond to the articles below in that order (i.e. 2019 1 is from the first 2019 article).
Oh what a difference a few years (along with the fact that it's policy Weiser doesn't support from Trump but does support from his fellow Colorado Democrats) make for our AG.
The state will "protect its sovereignty" against Federal intrusion, but any local sheriff that tries to protect his county's sovereignty "should resign".
Federal law preempts state law. State law preempts local law. That is the nature of our system. As someone who lives in the beyond-conservative northeastern corner of Colorado, I can't tell you the number of times I have bemoaned the fact that our county cannot exempt itself from the policy of the beyond-leftist Front Range. Unfortunately, that's not an option.
The same should be said for our State vs. Federal laws.
If AG Weiser is to back up with actions his oft-repeated refrain about the importance of the rule of law, he should revisit his stance on local vs. state law in light of his stance on state vs. federal.
As things stand now, it appears that the two are not in synch. It appears he is being a hypocrite with a pronounced double standard.**
In an effort to see if perhaps AG Weiser's mind had changed on preemption since 2019, or to see if perhaps he wanted to flesh out his perspective on how the two situations (immigration and red flag) are different, I emailed his spokesman Lawrence Pacheco.
I also emailed the CPR reporter (she wrote two of the three CPR articles linked below--both the 2025 article and the October 2019 article) to see if she asked AG Weiser about this apparent dichotomy for her 2025 article.
As of this writing, I have yet to hear from either. If that changes, I will update.
**Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if many other Colorado Democrats had similar mismatches in their statements.
https://www.cpr.org/2025/01/22/trump-federal-immigration-directives-colorado-laws/
The hypocrisy reminds me of succession movements.
Remember when a handful of Eastern Colorado counties tossed the idea of leaving Colorado and joining Wyoming? That was the predecessor to Civil War 2.0.
But when some in California suggested California leave and become its own country to rid itself of Trump? Stunning and brave.
Caldara should also float a ballot issue retracting current and proposed future unionization of state government offices.