Wall Street Journal Takes Note of Bill Ritter’s Business-Labor Brouhaha

Today’s Wall Street Journal takes notice of Colorado’s brewing battle between Big Labor and the state’s economic well-being:

A labor-union campaign in Colorado to tighten restrictions on layoffs and crack down on corporate fraud could put Democrats in an awkward position as they gather here in August for their presidential convention.

Unions are pushing to get a total of six measures on the fall ballot, all of them opposed by small-business owners and corporate interests.

“If they pass, it would be like putting a big ‘Do Not Locate Your Business Here’ sign on Colorado,” said John Brackney, president of the South Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce.

Don’t believe the unions’ initiatives would harm the economy? How about this opinion from a normally reliable pro-union academic:

But others said they would impose an unprecedented burden on businesses of all sizes. “I think they would turn the lights out in the state,” said Ray Hogler, a professor of labor law at Colorado State University.

The major point overlooked by the Journal? That though Democrat Gov. Bill Ritter has sought to get business and labor interests to avoid the “mutually assured destruction” of a costly ballot battle this fall, it is Ritter who owns the responsibility for setting this fight in motion.

If Democrats in general will be in an “awkward position” with this political fight going on in their national convention’s backyard, then no one will be in a more “awkward position” than the state’s chief executive: Bill Ritter.