Dr. Sonal Patel would like to grow her small business, but she’s not sure she can afford to.

“I’m getting busier. I’d love to hire someone to help me out,” said Patel, the sole proprietor of an in-home health care company for new moms and babies.

One question nagging at her: What if the person she hires needs to take time off for family or medical reasons?

Colorado will, for the sixth and perhaps final time, consider a bill in 2020 to approve a statewide paid family leave program. Patel strongly supports this effort, but worries about possible damage it could do to small businesses like hers.

“How’s it going to affect me? What about the monetary aspect?” she wondered. “Could I hire someone temporary to replace the person on leave, and would I be mandated to do something for them, as well?

“There’s a lot of concerns.”

On this topic, that is an understatement.

There is no standard requirement for paid family leave for Colorado workers, and there’s broad consensus across the political spectrum about the need for change. But what that change should look like, and whether it is possible to find a compromise that benefits workers and employers alike, has been hotly debated.

Democrats say they’re intent on passing a paid family leave bill next year, but as the session’s January opening approaches, there remain countless blanks yet to be filled.

To name a few: Will small business — or any, for that matter — be eligible for exemptions? Should a family leave program be run through the state or a third-party, market partner? What requirements should be set for businesses that already offer leave policies above and beyond what the state might implement? How broad should the bill’s definition of “family” be? And should the program go big all at once, or start small and ratchet up?

“I have gotten commitments to get this done” in 2020, said state Sen. Faith Winter, who has for all these years helped lead the fight at the Capitol for paid family leave. “I’ve gotten that from my caucus members, the governor and from the House.”

But Winter, a Westminster Democrat, is keenly aware of the many concerns that have long dogged this policy fight. And, in response, she said she’s prepared to be flexible in writing next year’s bill

“I don’t have a preference,” she said, when asked whether a paid family leave program should be state-run — a concept the governor has resisted.

“Nobody in the coalition, certainly not myself, are interested in providing a benefit in name only,” said Steve Fenberg, the Democratic Senate majority leader. “But we’re flexible about how we deliver that, as long as the results actually come.”

Interviews with about 15 lawmakers, lobbyists and advocates indicate they’ll probably have to be flexible in order to pass a bill next year, which could require difficult concessions.

Effort stalls in state Senate

Winter and other Democrats campaigned on a comprehensive family leave policy in 2018, after four failed attempts in previous legislative sessions.

They went into the 2019 session fully expecting to finally succeed. It was a bumpier process than most expected, as proponents struggled to balance their wishes with those of the state’s largest business groups, which vigorously opposed much of what was being pitched.

Sponsors agreed to dozens of amendments to their bill, which initially called for a state-run program in which all full- and part-time workers in Colorado would have to participate.

That program would have seen employers and employees pay equally into a fund administered the state Department of Labor and Employment, and it would have provided for at least 12 weeks of paid leave to allow workers to care for infants, recover from pregnancy, receive treatment for illness, leave abusive relationships or care for sick loved ones.

But as the bill progressed and lobbyists went all-out to reshape it, Winter had to face the reality that she did not have support from a majority of the 35-member state Senate. All Republicans in that chamber were opposed and at least four Democrats were on the fence. The governor, too, had concerns.

And so it was with tears in her eyes that Winter stood on the Senate floor in late April as she abandoned the effort to pass a paid family leave program in 2019. Lawmakers instead passed a bill that called for a potential program to be studied by a task force through the summer and fall, and for a nonpartisan actuary to study what it would take for the program to be solvent.

That day, organizer Ashley Panelli with 9 to 5 Colorado, the advocacy group that’s worked with Winter for years on this, said she felt Democrats hadn’t shown enough backbone: “The definition of a problem or a burden is relative. And I think that legislators do compare these things where it’s like, well, is this corporation going to have to pay a little more money or is this mom going to die? These are not the same things.”

Business groups reject that framing. They insist that on the moral front, the two sides generally agree, but that a mandatory program could limit entrepreneurship and hurt existing businesses.

“Eighty-four percent of my membership, in a survey last year, opposed this idea,” said Tony Gagliardi, who represents some 7,000 businesses as Colorado director for the small business association NFIB. “Nobody’s against paid family leave. Many of our members already provide the benefit, but for government to think that they can come in with a one-size-fits-all solution is a pipe dream.”

“The politics was taken for granted”

The problem with straying too far from a one-size-fits-all bill in 2020, some advocates feel, is that this could be a slippery slope toward some workers getting family leave benefits and others missing out.

“We don’t believe any workers should be carved out,” said 9 to 5’s Judith Márquez. “You shouldn’t have to hit the employer lottery, to be working at the right company at the right time, to get paid family leave.”

Business groups want to see some companies that already provide paid leave exempted from any state program, and they don’t think that part-time or new employees should necessarily be eligible in every case.

A ski resort that employs workers for four months at a time can’t hold a job open for someone who takes three months of leave, they argue, and a business with three employees may not be able to afford to operate with just two people while still paying for the third one. Opponents of last year’s bill raised these concerns in public and in private discussions with on-the-fence lawmakers.

Loren Furman, who handles government affairs for the Colorado Chamber of Commerce, said of those talks: “Unfortunately the sponsors and advocates didn’t come to any kind of compromise with us.”

Winter disputes the idea that she didn’t compromise but, looking ahead, she knows she’ll have to do even more of that. This could mean that the 2020 family leave bill makes a smaller impact at first than the 2019 bill proposed to, but that it gets going faster.

Under last year’s plan, Colorado workers may not have seen family leave benefits until 2023.

“My hope is that this program will be in effect by January 2021, with the intent to responsibly expand the program over time,” wrote Gov. Jared Polis in a September letter to the family leave task force. This approach could include, he added, increased flexibility regarding “the duration of paid leave and … the size of employers subject to the requirements.”

Winter is open to that, and those who so persistently fought her last year are cautiously optimistic that all sides can agree in 2020. There’s been no shortage of dialogue since last year’s bill fell apart; the task force has been meeting regularly and collected more than 1,000 public comments.

“I’m more confident this year because I think there’s commitments on process,” Winter said. “There’s no predetermined outcome or final product, but commitment to actually do the process.”

Added Broomfield state Rep. Matt Gray, who will carry the 2020 bill in the House: “We are full steam ahead.”