The draft rule from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) to force businesses on penalty of daily fine to micromanage their employees’ commute, and reduce substantially the number of their employees who dare drive their own cars to work, has not engendered a great deal of comment so far. That is probably because a) the CDPHE isn’t exactly shouting this proposal from the rooftops, but also likely because b) when it IS delineated, most people, almost reflexively, write it off as simply an example of reductio ad absurdum. Sadly, there is little left in society that is so absurd that the government could not conceivably codify it in statute or rule.

Most people, in my judgment, would still like to take it for granted that we live in a society in which a state regulatory body doesn’t have the authority to tell us how to get to and from work. Or to fine our employer if we decide that that determination is ours alone to make.

Most people, the state government is telling us, would be wrong. A draft rule is now quietly making the rounds through online listening sessions, discovery of the existence of which involves a great deal of luck, which would impose the scenario described above. They have dubbed it the Mandatory Employee Trip Reduction Plan, ETRP, and even in its formative stages it reads like the imagined end of an especially preposterous slippery-slope argument. The plan calls for 1) businesses over a certain size (that particular goalpost is elastic – the initial threshold of 250 employees is now undergoing negotiations down to 100 employees) to register with the state – there is a daily financial penalty for failing to do so — and then 2) to create the new position of “Company Transportation Coordinator” – company “Car Czar” as one someone adroitly, but accurately, put it – who will then 3) implement a company-wide plan to keep as many employees as possible from driving to their jobs. Oh, and there is a daily fine, similar to the failure-to-register-with-the-state penalty, if this plan is deemed insufficient by the CDPHE.

I weep for writers of dystopian political fiction, a genre now rendered obsolete.

Let’s unpack this a bit. Beyond the sheer injury done to the entire concept of individual liberty, the economic consequences are considerable. First off, consider that threshold for being labeled a “large business,” whether it is 250 employees, 100 employees, or some other number. Let’s say they land on 150 for argument’s sake. That is an immense incentive for a company with, say, 200 employees to discover workplace efficiencies that allow them to operate with 149 employees. Presto, another 51 people added to the states gestating unemployment figures.

Next, we can look at how they propose these businesses manage to make the mandated reductions in vehicle commute trips. The predominant push is to, er, “encourage” tele-commuting. Well, okay, a lot of us figured out how to do that over the last year, with decidedly mixed results. That works reasonably well for certain white-collar jobs, even for columnists; it is a rather less efficient proposition for businesses engaged in the manufacturing of things, building things, or the selling of things in the retail market. No one, least of all the CDPHE, has figured out a way to assemble satellite components from 150 different living rooms.

By now, you may have asked yourself some questions about this plan, and I would venture that one of the more polite ones involves something along the lines of, “What about when I need to pick up the dry-cleaning on the way home from work?” Or groceries? Or the kids? Well fear not! the state tells us… they have worked into the draft plan “hardship exemptions,” approved or denied on a case-by-case basis. So now you essentially have the unique opportunity to beg a state regulatory agency for permission to go to work and pick up your kids after. It is unclear if stopping to meet friends, or take in a show on the way home, would count as an approved hardship.

Welcome to the realities of post-HB19-1261, the greenhouse gas bill from a couple years ago which gave the regulatory agencies carte blanche to enact any rule they felt they needed to cut emissions, without the pesky step of going through the legislative process. That invites a zealotry that acknowledges few restraints. The climate zealots have talked of pointing the state in a new direction; so they have, and that way madness lies.