The clumsy attempt by Governor Polis’s office to censor a conservative news service resulted in a much-deserved spanking from the state and national press.
Now we’re seeing some in the Denver media taking a closer look at the underlying issues in the contentious stories the governor’s office tried to squelch and some interesting reporting.
The Office of Future Work, it turns out, may be doing more harm than good as it looks to meddle in the gig industry, Denver7 reports.
Those newly minted bureaucrats are giddy with the prospect of regulating side gigs such as Uber, Lyft, Task Rabbit and others based on the app economy.
Polis thinks we need more laws to make sure those gigs have pensions and other full-time benefits.
Other states are also looking at the gig economy, notably California, which recently passed a law that makes it harder for companies to classify workers as independent contractors instead of employees, who would be entitled to certain benefits, including health care and overtime pay.
Just what we don’t need, more California laws.
Interestingly, Denver7 reports the gig workers don’t want a bunch of regulations and like the freedom these jobs give them. Read their report, linked here.
Meanwhile, it turns out Polis simply copied an existing organization when he created yet another Orwellian office called the Office of Saving People Money.
The Center for Improving Value in Health Care (CIVHC) was established by Gov. Bill Ritter in 2008 with the same goals and actually has numerous accomplishments, KUNC reports.
It was part of the state government until 2011, when Gov. John Hickenlooper declared it was ready to stand on its own as a private non-profit.
Polis’s creation was neither innovative, nor has it directly saved people money.
It’s redundant government paying the lieutenant governor $75,000 a year so that when reelection rolls around the agency can kick out talking points for Polis.