What good is a pandemic if you can’t leverage it for political gain? The gain of further endearment from your supporters by the easiest of methods: Virtue signaling.

Nowhere is that on better display than over the issue of paid leave. Colorado lawmakers returned for business on Tuesday and wasted no time in raising from the dead the spirit of Senate Bill 188. Introduced March 7, 2019, it was supposed to have been the paid leave law for all time.

In the end, it was signed into law, but not before being reduced to a shell of its former self. It would mandate nothing about paid leave, only study the issue further. What led to SB 188’s gutting was not only the worry over its cost, but also, and equally important, whether it was necessary at all.

The good news about paid leave, according to research from NFIB, is that 73% of small businesses – Colorado’s and the nation’s largest employer group – already offer paid time off. And they offer it for any reason the employee chooses: sickness, care for a family member, parental duties, domestic violence, etc. This allows the employee and employer to tailor the time off to the employee’s needs instead of forcing them to wriggle around in a state-imposed straitjacket.

As an added layer of security, the federal Family and Medical Leave Act “provides certain employees with up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave per year. It also requires that their group health benefits be maintained during the leave.”

But defeats die hard in the State Capitol, and after it became clear SB 188 would not be the El Dorado paid-leave proponents had hoped for, “To the ballot box” became the rallying cry. Then – the coronavirus struck.

As one of the many ways Congress showed a restive nation it was coping with the crisis, it passed the Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act, offering two weeks of an employee’s regular pay for COVID-19-related illnesses.

But the Act expires Jan. 1. 2021. What will take its place? Funny you should ask.

Not ones to waste what they see as an opportune moment, the Colorado legislature’s leading paid-leave proponents have introduced the wonderful-sounding “Healthy Families and Workplaces Act,” or Senate Bill 205.  

Senate Bill 205 would require all Colorado employers to provide a paid sick leave program. The measure is sponsored by both the Senate majority leader and the speaker of the House of Representatives. No backbenchers they.

Now, some may say a bill offering a maximum of 48 hours (six days) should be easy to handle for employers. Maybe, if they:

• Weren’t coming off a 12-week, government-ordered shutdown due to the COVID-19 virus;

• Weren’t staring down the barrel of potentially massive increases in their unemployment insurance taxes to save the UI trust fund;

• Weren’t wondering about a tsunami of lawsuits from customers and employees who want to claim they contracted COVID-19 in their places of businesses, even though there is no way to prove that; 

• Weren’t facing spikes in their workers’ compensation premiums that the coronavirus will unavoidably trigger.

Small-business owners are just now making plans to reopen their businesses, and there will be scores of them no longer able to keep going due to the exhaustion of capital. 

To force a paid leave program on them, now, is both irresponsible and selfish. Every ounce of energy should be directed to making it as easy as possible to re-open and keep businesses open. No one can collect a salary or benefits from a job that isn’t there. 

Paid leave was being handled by employer and employee to the mutual benefit of both. Having a state law mandating it is an idea whose time has still not come.

Tony Gagliardi is Colorado state director for the National Federation of Independent Business