Battle with business heats up over Colorado Democrats' family-leave proposal

[TexasTowelie]

Democrats who want paid maternity and medical leave for all Colorado workers have met behind the scenes for months with the state’s top business leaders in an attempt to temper opposition.

It doesn’t appear to have worked.

The legislation that would require all workers and employers to contribute to a family-leave fund cleared its first hearing Wednesday in the Senate by a 3-2, party-line vote. And while some small business owners planned to rally for support with the governor and Illegal Pete’s restaurant chain founder Pete Turner in the Capitol foyer, Colorado’s top business associations are fiercely opposed. (The rally was canceled Wednesday morning because of bad weather.)

Both the Colorado Chamber of Commerce, representing hundreds of businesses and chambers across the state, and the National Federation of Independent Businesses chapter in Colorado, with 7,000 members, are against the proposal.

“We are just not going to be able to get together on this,” said Tony Gagliardi, the Colorado director of NFIB.

Read more: https://coloradosun.com/2019/03/13/paid-family-leave-bill-colorado-2019/

[PatrickforO]

1. As a Coloradan, I have to say sometimes our state legislature doesn't

think before proposing stuff.

There is a background to this. Consider the following:

1. Colorado has both TABOR and Gallagher Amendments to its constitution. TABOR is the so-called taxpayer bill of rights, which says that the state legislature cannot raise taxes without a popular vote. Gallagher was passed back during the 'taxpayer revolt' in the 1980s. Basically its effect has been to keep residential property taxes down around 7.96% of assessed property value, while businesses pay a much higher rate (29%). This means, of course, that every time we boost the mill levy for schools or special districts, businesses experience disproportionate increases in their property taxes.

2. Many businesses in Colorado are small businesses. Colorado has, in fact, over 572,500 small businesses that employ around a million people, which is around 31% of Colorado's total labor force of 3,119,080.

3. I have owned three successful small businesses in my lifetime and I'll tell you that I tried to treat my people well, but if I was forced to provide paid leave for someone on FMLA it literally would have broken me. I literally could not have afforded that.

It is good intentioned, I'm sure, but a dumb policy move because it punishes already strapped small businesses that depend on their full time employees to compete.

Paid leave is a great thing. It really is. But if we really wanted to make that work in Colorado, we'd have to call a state constitutional convention and write out both TABOR and Gallagher, and instead raise taxes very substantially in order to pay for this. Not to mention higher ed, K-12, any early childhood initiatives, our share of Medicaid...etc.

So, sorry, but I've got to be a bit more conservative than I usually am on this one.