Last month, The Denver Post editorialized in favor of Gov. John Hickenlooper’s proposed changes to the state’s classified personnel system — the constitutional framework that governs the employment of 32,000 public employees who work for our state.
Colorado WINS is the organization that works every day to represent the 32,000 Coloradans who ensure our quality of life in communities large and small across Colorado. Our membership includes snowplow drivers, mental health care workers, care takers at state veterans’ centers, corrections officers, and state wildlife employees. We believe that any discussion about the state personnel system should be approached carefully, and with a strong recognition of the time tested principles that have guided our state personnel system over the last 100 years. We also believe that the eroded economic and working conditions of employees must be a central priority within this reform package.
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.
We have developed three principles we think are a fair and straightforward framework when it comes to improving our personnel system:
Win-win reform. If the stated goal of the reform process is to attract and retain the best and the brightest, then we need to focus on both sides of the equation. Just as management may be frustrated with elements of the system, state employees have wrestled with their own systemic problems. For example, a broken pay-for-performance system has left 60 percent of the workforce at the bottom of the pay scale, and there is widespread concern that when our economy recovers, Coloradans who are committed to public service will be left behind.
Keep the politics out. By staying true to Colorado’s constitutional values of merit, objectivity and competition, we can protect taxpayer dollars. Accountability and enforcement matter. The state’s classified system is not just another employer — it employs 32,000 Coloradans in communities across our state. The standards we set have a direct impact on local job markets and the public interest.
Attract the best by being the best. As the governor’s own survey found, while employees feel their work is important and worthwhile, they also need to feel valued. Even in this contracted economic period, many departments are quietly reporting turnover rates as high as 12 percent. We need to attract the best workers and retain them. Every time the state loses an employee, it has to retrain new one at an avoidable extra cost to the state. This is in large part due to the state’s inability to compete on bread-and-butter compensation elements that matter when you’re trying to attract the best candidates in Colorado.
Our personnel system was put in place not just to protect workers but also to protect taxpayers from the changing winds of politics and ensure fair compensation for those who commit themselves to public service. The system has served us well, and it is in this spirit that Colorado WINS plans to work toward a win-win solution for state employees and the taxpayers they serve.
Scott Wasserman is executive director of Colorado WINS. Paul Boni is president of Colorado WINS and a lab technician at the University of Colorado Boulder.
