Like a zombie that keeps coming back from the grave, a draft proposal to impose budge-busting collective bargaining on local government keeps resurfacing at the Capitol. What’s even more troubling is that Gov. Jared Polis, who wisely shot down previous versions of this bad idea earlier this legislative session, remains in negotiations with the sponsors.

Let’s hope it’s just a courtesy he is showing his fellow Democrats who control the House and Senate. Maybe he’s just stringing them along until he runs out the clock on the session. If so, good. But just in case he is seriously entertaining the latest pitch from lawmakers on the matter, let’s make this crystal clear: Governor, bury this monster once and for all.

It’s bad enough when local governments, acting on their own as some have, permit collective bargaining for their employees. That cedes power over the public purse to organized labor, strapping taxpayers over a barrel forever more.

But it’s far worse when state government traipses onto local turf. It flouts the historic right of Colorado’s cities, counties, school districts and other local entities to set their own policies. And it undermines those local governments’ commitment to answer to their own taxpayers.

It is little comfort that the latest proposal for a collective-bargaining mandate, according to reports by our news affiliate Colorado Politics, would be imposed on fewer local entities than was the case in earlier drafts. That newest draft, circulating in recent weeks and reportedly the subject of current talks with the Governor’s Office, “only” would require the state’s colleges and universities — as well as all 64 counties — to engage in collective bargaining. That would mean recognizing unions representing those agencies’ employees and negotiating pay and other issues with them. It still would be an eventual budget buster for those entities.

Collective bargaining requires an employer to negotiate things like pay and benefits with a union under threat of a settlement being imposed by an arbitrater if negotiations stalemate. That simply doesn’t belong in the public sector. Unlike a private company, which answers only to its shareholders, a county or a public college is owned by the taxpaying public. Taxpayers have a right to expect those institutions to operate with their means.

Local governments must have the flexibility to reconfigure staff or postpone raises in an economic downturn, when tax revenue slumps. That flexibility is gone when a union steps in. Under collective bargaining, the government would in all likelihood have to make good on negotiated pay and benefit hikes by slashing other basic services.

It was a blow to the state budget when Polis signed collective bargaining into law for state employees in 2020. It is guaranteed to hobble state budget writers in the legislature and, ultimately, all the state’s taxpayers for years to come. From now on, the officially sanctioned state employees’ union will be able to bareknuckle its way to a hefty pay-and-benefits package at the bargaining table with state — and the taxpaying public will have to pay up.

But the state legislature has no business whatsoever forcing this unwise policy on those local governments without even giving them or their taxpayers a say.

The purpose of government — state, local or federal for that matter — isn’t to create high-paying jobs. It is to provide essential services to the taxpayers who foot the bill. Let’s not make it impossible for government to fulfill that basic responsibility.