Democratic presidential candidate and billionaire Tom Steyer announced Friday he backs a state-run paid family and medical leave program, a position that could endear him to party progressives.

But that position is at odds with the mandatory but market-run option favored by the state’s top Democrat, millionaire Gov. Jared Polis.

And Steyer’s stated preference for six months of paid leave goes far beyond even what the most progressive Democratic lawmakers have sought in the past or are likely to push for in the 2020 session.

“Providing parents with crucial time to nurture their newborn children is just common sense,” Steyer said in a statement Friday. “Children do better when they have their parents around during the first few months. As President, I will provide six months of paid family leave at the federal level, but any state or private entity that chooses to improve upon that can and should. The people of Colorado have my absolute support in working to achieve a state paid family leave program.”

In the 2019 session, Democratic lawmakers proposed a 12-week state-run program that drew strong opposition from chambers of commerce and associations representing builders, hospitals, retailers, ski resorts, agriculture, county governments and special districts. Even Polis was less than 100% supportive of the proposal. 

Senate Bill 19-188 was cosponsored by 30 House Democrats and 14 Senate Democrats. But as introduced, some prominent leadership names weren’t on the bill: Speaker of the House KC Becker of Boulder, House Majority leader Alec Garnett of Denver and Senate President Leroy Garcia of Pueblo. And while lots of major bills on the Democrats’ 2019 agenda won bipartisan support, such as for vaccinations, greenhouse gas reductions and ballot measures for sports betting and to de-Bruce the state, the paid leave bill and all its versions failed to gain a single Republican vote.

The program’s cost became an issue, too. The cost to the state in the original fiscal note was estimated at $368 million in 2021-22 and $860.5 million the following year, with first payments scheduled for Jan. 1, 2022. Those costs would be covered, the analysis said, by premiums paid by employers and employees at all but a small portion of the state’s businesses.

Federal employers and employees would be exempted, and businesses defined as “sole proprietorships” could opt in. 

Eventually, the bill’s prime sponsors, Sens. Faith Winter of Westminster and Angela Williams of Denver, and Reps. Monica Duran of Wheat Ridge and Matt Gray of Broomfield, agreed to a watered-down version that put the issue into the hands of a 14-member task force. The group was charged with forming recommendations by the time the 2020 session started. The task force included progressive groups that backed the original proposal as well as representatives of those who opposed the bill. 

The Jan. 7 report showed the two sides are still far apart, with both majority and minority recommendations. They couldn’t agree on the length of leave, ranging from six to 14 weeks, or what kinds of businesses could be exempted from participating. They did, however, reach agreement that businesses that already offer robust leave programs that match or exceed the state program could continue to do so, with state certification.

What the 2020 proposal will look like is still unknown; the bill hasn’t yet been introduced more than a month into the 2020 session. It should be noted, however, that the 2019 bill didn’t show up until March 7.

Last September, Polis sent a letter to the task force outlining his position on whether the program should be state-run or handled by a third-party vendor, similar to how worker’s compensation insurance is currently run.

Polis offered a third option: “Requiring employers above a certain size to provide a defined minimum paid-leave benefit to employees, which an employer could choose to administer either by itself or through insurance provided through the private market.”

Pinnacol Assurance, which provides worker’s compensation insurance to 56,000 Colorado businesses, stepped up to the plate in December with an analysis of what that would look like.

Whether Steyer’s support for a state-run option and six months of paid time off will win him any friends on the first floor of the state Capitol remains to be seen. Polis was a super-delegate in 2016, and backed eventual Democratic nominee and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, despite Boulder Democrats’ preference for Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Polis has yet to indicate a presidential preference for the 2020 contest, and numerous Democratic sources are starting to speculate that Polis may be a one-termer and would run for president in 2024 should President Trump win a second term.

Ballots for the March 3 presidential primary hit mailboxes this past week.