Colorado legislative leaders and top business owners mingled on St. Patrick’s Day with about 100 attendees at Small Business Day events at the Capitol sponsored by the state chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business.

Group members and guests spoke with enthusiasm about benefits the small business community brings to the state economy and with frustration about what many of them see as unnecessary bureaucratic challenges the community faces in making their ventures successful.

Indeed, event attendees seemed to be bucking each other up in the face of the growing discontent among the general public that has fueled a renewed national movement demanding businesses do more for workers and generated a rash of legislative proposals in Colorado that would boost wages, benefits and protections for employees.

House Minority Leader Brian DelGrosso, R-Loveland, the owner with his wife of three Domino’s Pizza outlets on the northern Front Range, told the crowd that the Capitol was filled with good intentions, but that many of the proposals lawmakers bring to improve the lives of workers “don’t make sense on the ground.”

It was a theme hit on repeatedly by lawmakers speaking to the NFIB guests. In a morning session held in the old Supreme Court chambers, DelGrosso was joined by Reps. Paul Lundeen, R-Monument, a serial entrepreneur, and Dan Thurlow, R-Grand Junction, also a small business owner, in lamenting that many of their colleagues in the Legislature lack real-world business experience.

DelGrosso mentioned a proposal to “ban the box” on job forms that asks applicants if they have criminal records. The idea behind the proposal is to eliminate that question in the first-round application process to give reformed criminals a better shot at entering the work force and putting their criminal past behind them. Del Grosso said he was sympathetic to the move, but that in practice it wouldn’t be fair to employers or to job applicants.

“I can’t legally hire people with certain criminal convictions,” he said. “So you end up just wasting the applicant’s time… It’s important to bring reality to the Capitol.”

Nick Hoover, lobbyist for the Colorado Restaurant Association, said he works the Capitol “religiously” to monitor legislation on liquor licensing, food codes and labor issues. He spoke about his efforts to tamp down momentum to raise the minimum wage in the state.

This year, Sen. Mike Merrified, R-Colorado Springs, sponsored SB 54, a local minimum-wage hike bill that the Republican majority on the State Affairs committee killed before it could gain traction.

Hoover said he expected similar proposals to return next year.

“This is about more than the minimum wage,” he said. “This is very dangerous. Our members are not opposed to paying people more. It’s just that we want our employees to move up. Only 5 percent of restaurant employees take home minimum wage. Of those, the vast majority only stay on the minimum wage for six months.”

Hoover said raising the minimum wage causes a ripple effect.

“Soon, all the employees want more, managers want more,” he said, adding that restaurants can’t easily increase revenue to keep pace with rising salary demands.

“You can’t lower the cost of the food you’re buying. You can’t lower the cost of the rent you’re paying. So, if you have to pay employees more, you have to increase the amount of work everyone does.” Hoover said restaurants would respond by simply hiring fewer people.

“Look, raising the minimum wage will never get people out of poverty,” Tony Gagliardi, NFIB state director, told The Colorado Statesman. “You have to get people into the workforce and then have them continue in the workforce. Raising the minimum wage raises all wages and eliminates entry-level positions. Wages are negotiated between employers and employees. There’s no one-size fits all.”

Other bills the group is opposing this year include HB 1166, sponsored by Rep. Brittany Pettersen, D-Lakewood, which would prohibit employers from asking job applicants their salary history, a practice Petterson says contributes to gender pay gaps; SB 96, sponsored by Sen. Rollie Heath, D-Boulder, which would re-establish the state’s pay equity commission; SB 114, sponsored by Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, which would require employers to provide paid sick leave.

In addition to DelGrosso, Lundeen and Thurlow, lawmakers who spoke to at NFIB legislative events included Sens. Randy Baumgardner, R-Hot Sulphur Springs, Jack Tate, R-Centennial, Laura Woods, R-Arvada, and Rep. Polly Lawrence, R-Roxborough Park.

The absence of Democratic lawmakers at the NFIB events was as glaring as it was unsurprising.

“The fact is, we support anyone who supports our members,” Gagliardi said. “It doesn’t matter to us whether they have a ‘D’ or an ‘R’ next to their names. It just happens that Republicans are more aligned with our positions.”

Gagliardi has been NFIB state director since 2005. He said that politics at the Capitol have “changed tremendously” in the time he has spent there. “It’s just so much more polarized,” he said.

“There are issues you have to work out by just sitting around a table. Well, you can’t do that anymore — you can’t even get anybody to the table,” he said. “We just don’t get to have those full in-depth conversations, and I guess I would say that has really happened in the last five years. Maybe it’s term limits. Maybe it’s the national party platforms, which are more extreme. But the result is you see a lot more single-issue candidates.”

The problem of political polarization is likely to only grow more serious for NFIB.

“Why do Democrats have to push this?” asked a frustrated meeting attendee about raising the minimum wage, as if she knew no Democrats she might ask. She said that the minimum wage was never supposed to be a living wage, that it’s paid to teenagers and college kids who are just starting out in the workforce. All of the people in the room grumbled in agreement, and Gagliardi took up the question sympathetically.

But any of the Democrats working at the Capitol would have answered her question with the same arguments they make routinely in committee rooms and on the chamber floors. They would have talked about how the economy and the workforce have changed over the last four decades, how manufacturing jobs that used to support families have been replaced by service jobs that can’t support families, and how many adults now work minimum- or low-wage jobs, and often more than one of those jobs.

Gagliardi didn’t address those arguments, nor did anyone else. But Gagliardi knows as well as anyone that Republicans haven’t controlled the policymaking levers in Colorado for years, that Democrats now hold the governor’s office and the House and that, given the tumult on the right this election year, many Capitol watchers believe this November Republicans may lose control of the Senate too, where they hold a one-seat majority.

“It has been tough down here this year,” Gagliardi said, shaking his head as he addressed the NFIB group. “The Senate is killing bills. The House is killing bills. The governor is asleep. And we’re just running back and forth.”

— john@coloradostatesman.com