Democrats fight 'anti-business' label.

• Author: Schwab, Robert
• Position: On Colorado - Morgan Carroll

STATE REP. MORGAN CARROLL, A DEMOCRAT FROM Aurora, says her party's caucus must have a conversation before the 2006 session of the General Assembly about how to keep lobbyists from labeling anything Democratic as "anti-business."

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Carroll, as a freshman legislator, was a member of the House Committee on Business Affairs and Labor, and she became a victim of her own party's lack of political sophistication when a fellow Democrat pushed the wrong button and killed a bill she had proposed that would have changed the state's workers' compensation system.

Chuck Berry, president of the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry, in a column in this magazine's April issue, identified Carroll's bill as the session's "most dangerous" threat to 1991 reforms of workers' comp procedures in Colorado.

The measure would have forced companies to offer injured workers a choice among three doctors recommended to treat them for injuries sustained at work. Current law, which remains in place as a result of the failure of Carroll's bill, allows an employer to name the doctor the employee must use for treatment.

Carroll, a lawyer, said 40 percent of workers' comp lawsuits arise "out of shoddy care" provided the injured worker, and that most states that have introduced an element of choice for workers seeking doctors have reduced the number of lawsuits filed to challenge outcomes of their workers' comp cases.

She also said she worked with no group, labor union or lobbyist to come up with the bill, although "120 lobbyists worked against it" once it was filed.

It was chief among the batch of bills that were labeled "anti-business" by Republicans smarting from having lost majorities in both houses of the General Assembly this year.

Carroll said the failure of her bill was "unfortunate," but she realized even as it went down that her chances of getting it passed in the Senate and signed by the governor were far slighter than they were in the House.

She said her own party leadership was "uncomfortable" with the bill, and as the session unfolded, that leadership, Sen. Joan Fitz-Gerald and House Speaker Andrew Romanoff...