{"id":40724,"date":"2022-05-08T21:52:42","date_gmt":"2022-05-09T03:52:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-lawmakers-abandon-plan-to-offer-58-million-in-paid-family-and-parental-leave-fee-relief\/"},"modified":"2022-05-09T03:52:42","modified_gmt":"2022-05-09T03:52:42","slug":"colorado-lawmakers-abandon-plan-to-offer-58-million-in-paid-family-and-parental-leave-fee-relief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-lawmakers-abandon-plan-to-offer-58-million-in-paid-family-and-parental-leave-fee-relief\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado lawmakers abandon plan to offer $58 million in paid family and parental leave fee relief"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A
A proponent of Colorado's paid family and parental leave ballot measure hoists a box full of signatures onto a cart in Denver on Friday, July 31, 2020. (Jesse Paul\/The Colorado Sun)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

A Colorado Senate committee Monday night killed a measure that would have provided $57.5 million in fee relief related to the state\u2019s new paid family and parental leave program in a surprising reversal of a benefit touted by Gov. Jared Polis.<\/p>\n

The Senate Finance Committee unanimously rejected House Bill 1305 after the legislation\u2019s sponsor, Sen. Faith Winter, D-Westminster, requested its demise without explanation.<\/p>\n

Democratic leadership in the legislature says the bill was rejected so lawmakers can use the $57.5 million set aside for the measure for other purposes. The money, which comes from hundreds of millions of dollars in one-time funding the legislature is distributing this year, won\u2019t go toward one other specific program or initiative, according to Senate Majority Leader Dominick Moreno, D-Commerce City.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously there are a number of one-time (funding) requests from the governor\u2019s office and I think the feeling was we were a bit out of balance with requests that were initiated by the governor\u2019s office compared to one-time funding priorities from the General Assembly,\u201d Moreno said.<\/p>\n

In other words: The governor wanted the money spent on paid family and parental leave fee relief but the legislature disagreed.<\/p>\n

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 \u201csome sort of agreement \u2026 to kill it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t part of the conversations,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Caraveo declined to say if she was disappointed by the bill\u2019s fate. \u201cI don\u2019t know what the conversations were there, so I really don\u2019t know,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

House Bill 1305 would have, for six months, reduced the fee split between employers and employees that the state will charge starting next year as part of Colorado\u2019s new, voter-approved paid family and parental leave program.<\/p>\n

The reduction would have dropped the fee rate to 0.81% of an employees\u2019 wages from 0.9%, a decrease of 0.09 percentage points. For a worker making $4,000 a month, that would have dropped the fee to $32.40 from $36 a month.<\/p>\n

Employers pay half the fee; employees pay the other half.<\/p>\n

The $57.5 million would have gone toward backfilling the revenue lost because of the rate cut.<\/p>\n

Business groups complained that the relief was a \u201cpittance\u201d and that if lawmakers really wanted to help businesses contend with rising costs they would have delayed implementation of the program.<\/p>\n

Polis made paid family and parental leave fee relief a key part of his fiscal year 2022-23 budget, even discussing the proposal during a November news conference last year ahead of the 2022 legislative session.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe governor and the legislature are making even more progress on saving people money, including a $400 per person tax rebate and major property tax relief announced yesterday,\u201d Conor Cahill, a spokesman for the governor, said in a written statement. \u201cWe are not surprised to see this bill set aside to support even bigger accomplishments to save people money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Polis and Democrats, who are facing election-year pressure from Republicans over the rising cost of living, set aside more than $300 million in the fiscal year 2022-23 budget, which begins July 1, for government fee and tax relief. Of that, $44 million will go toward delaying for nine months the start of a new 2-cent-per-gallon gas fee enacted through a bill pushed last year by Democrats.<\/p>\n

Read more at The Colorado Sun<\/div>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to covering Colorado issues. To learn more, go to coloradosun.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democratic leadership in the legislature says the bill was rejected so lawmakers can use the money set aside for the measure for other purposes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[431,394,233,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-40724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-business-general","tag-colorado-legislature","tag-coloradosun-com","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40724"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=40724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}