Colorado employees won’t get a break on how much they must pay into the state’s new family leave program because Gov. Polis and state Senate Democrats pulled the plug on more than $57 million in fee relief.
Under a plan making its way through the state Senate, at Polis’s behest, employees would have gotten a break on paying the fee when the program kicks into gear next year.
But Democrats mysteriously killed the funding.
From the Colorado Sun:
State Rep. Yadira Caraveo, a Democrat and prime sponsor of the bill in the House, said her understanding was that senators and the Polis administration came to “some sort of agreement … to kill it.”
“I wasn’t part of the conversations,” she said.
Caraveo declined to say if she was disappointed by the bill’s fate. “I don’t know what the conversations were there, so I really don’t know,” she said.
Employees earning about $4,000 a month will face fees of more than $400 a year beginning in January.
The $57 million will instead be used for other purposes than the family leave program, but Democrats didn’t say what the other purpose will be.
In what is probably not a coincidence, the Colorado Supreme Court heard arguments the same day the funding bill was killed as to whether these new fees that workers have to pay are even legal under TABOR.