magine if your employer dictated that you and your immediate family members were forbidden from making contributions to political causes and candidates.
There’s no way you would stand for that. It’s probably unconstitutional. It’s certainly un-American.
This ban is exactly what a group of narrow special interests are trying to impose on Colorado workers through Amendment 54 — people like teachers, nurses, police officers and firefighters. These hard-working professionals who serve our communities every day are being singled out and prohibited from participating in the political process simply because of the careers they have chosen.
Amendment 54 is part of a package of three deceptively written amendments that will silence Colorado’s workers while allowing the special interests’ influence on politics to go unchecked. Amendment 54 will chip away at the rights of Colorado’s firefighters, nurses, police officers and teachers, making it more difficult for them to advocate for the tools and resources they need to effectively serve and protect our communities.
Amendment 54 would effectively bar these workers and their families from having a voice in the political process in the same way their neighbors and friends do. Because people like firefighters and teachers work for a labor organization that gets treated by this amendment as if it were a special interest holding a contract with a governmental entity — like a fire district or school district — these professionals and their families would be officially silenced on the issues that affect their jobs every day.
So in a school board election, the teachers who live in your neighborhood and work for your school district can’t give a dime to the candidate they think will bring the best qualifications, experience and ideas for education to your local schools. Your child’s elementary school principal might have the best ideas on how to improve education or how to best allocate the budget, but he wouldn’t be able to financially support a bond issue campaign that affects his school.
The restrictions apply in the exact same way to the spouses, parents, stepparents, stepchildren, aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews of our teachers, firefighters and other workers limited by Amendment 54. And they last for two years after the contract with state or local government ends, meaning that your local teacher still can’t give to candidates, parties, or other political causes even after they leave their job.
At the same time, the special interests backing Amendment 54 will continue to spend millions on powerful lobbyists and their favored political candidates, parties and organizations. This amendment would effectively silence the political voice of the individual while leaving big loopholes for large multinational corporations such as defense contractors and energy or drug companies.
So long as they don’t hold a sole-source contract with local or state government, the power of special interests will go unchecked, even as the people who serve our communities are silenced. It isn’t fair and it isn’t right.
The special interests backing Amendment 54 are going to spend the next six weeks trying to mislead you about what it will do. I urge you to listen to the firefighters, teachers, nurses and police officers who will be impacted by the measure. Join them in voting “no” on Amendment 54.
Jess Knox is executive director for Protect Colorado’s Future.
