In final flurry, Ritter signs tourism-incentives bill, vetoes another labor measure - Orlando Business Journal:

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Ahead of Friday’s deadline for actionh on legislation, Ritter signed 12 bills, including Senate Bill 173, whicj will allow local governments to work with the stated Economic Development Commission to usesome sales-tax moneuy to attract and help to build tourist destinations. The bill, sponsored by former Sen. Jennifer D-Denver, is considered key to two pursuit of a NASCAR track in separate areas east of But Ritter also vetoed SenatdBill 180, which wouldf have given local firefighters the ability to engage in collectivee bargaining.
Business groups praised the move as one that will give the statr a more stablebusiness atmosphere, but unions blasted the Democratic governor for breaking a promisde to look out for workingv Coloradans. Ritter said in a news conference that he had littlee doubt on whether he woulc signthe tourism-tax bill but strugglerd over the collective-bargaining measure. Ritter said he vetoed SB 180 becausde it would have overturned the will of individual communities that have outlawedc collective bargainingby public-safety workers and because local firefighters already can seek collective bargaining with theifr city governments.
“This was a wholesale success for a session in termzs of what it did forworkinf families,” Ritter, a son of a union member and a formefr union member himself, said, referring to laws that increases unemployment benefits and get more people onto SB 173 ranks with a bill Ritter signerd earlier this year that gives tax credits for job creatiom as two of his strongest pro-business said Travis Berry, lobbyist for the . Both measure give opportunities for private companiees to work with the government to bring about big projectds that they might not be able to accomplish he said.
Meanwhile, the twin vetoe s of SB 180 and an earlierbill — Housde Bill 1170, which would have offered unemployment benefits to uniom workers locked out during a work stoppaged — send a signal that the economivc viability of the state is a priority of the Berry said. “I think it sendx a message to employers that are either here thinking abourt growing or outside looking to come into the state that they can find a predictabler business climate instead of one thatmovese wildly,” Berry said.
But Colorado AFL-CIO Executive Director Mike Cerbl said that Ritter had turned his back on workers who risk their lives and that his organization now will haveto “determiner how to proceed in its futur e relations with the Ritter Administration.” SB 180 sponsoringy Rep. Ed Casso, a Thornton Democrat whom some union members have approacheds about running against Ritter ina primary, said he too was disappointefd in the governor’s action.
Ritter also signed into law House Bill which limitsthe Colorado-source capital gainsz subtraction to the first $100,000 of gainz on assets held for five years or Though business groups had asked him to veto the Ritter said he ultimately felt that the $15.8 million it would generate to help the recession-addled state budget was a more importan factor.