It was quipped, on election night in 2018, that that evening Jared Polis became the most conservative statewide elected official in Colorado. That was meant to be rather tongue-in-cheek, but every now and then the governor’s more temperate proclivities are granted a day pass, lending the remark a bit of prophetic substance.

Those proclivities flared again last week as Gov. Polis sharpened his veto pen and wielded it as a knight slaying dragons, skewering a handful of bills that simultaneously represented progressive dreams and economic nightmares.

Here’s what Gov. Polis euthanized:

HB-1008: This was a bill that ostensibly went after wage theft — which is, by definition, a breach of contract — by infringing on the concept of freedom of contract. Targeted solely on the construction industry — for now — the bill would make both the general contractor and the chain of subcontractors jointly and severally liable for debts owed based on a wage claim. Meaning the general contractor would now be responsible for contractual relationships with parties with whom he or she maintains no direct association with. The obvious corollary is it would absolve the sub (or sub-sub) contractor from that responsibility, essentially letting any cretinous subcontractor who chose not to pay his or her workers off the hook. Oh, and it exempted union shops from its provisions, inasmuch as wage theft is evidently a-OK as long the wronged workers are in a union.

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HB-1260: Cursory examinations of this bill could induce polemical whiplash. An initial reading of the short title would rightly induce a horrified reaction — “Prohibitions Against Employee Discipline.” A couple sentences into the summary, or a brief explanation, would assure you that no, it was just saying an employer can’t force an employee to attend a political or religious meeting. Well, okay, blood pressure goes down. Until you dig a little deeper yet and the horror returns as the implications of the wording set in. The best argument made in explaining these implications, especially for businesses that operate overseas, came from the sagacious Rep. Rick Taggert, who knows a thing or two about operating businesses overseas. He pointed out the depth and breadth of the definitions of “political” and “religious” in the bill would prohibit, for instance, requiring employees to attend briefings informing them of cultural expectations when going into another country. You know, things that might keep them from being imprisoned or flogged.

SB-150: This one was a little more bizarre, and took several detours before being put out of its misery. Essentially, the bill sought to prohibit the recycling of waste — plastic especially — via something called pyrolysis, basically the burning of organic substances without the presence of oxygen, exposing them to temperatures high enough to reduce them to their base molecules. Pretty neat, huh? Well, the bill would have prohibited that in the state, until it was modified by the Senate into something a little more reasonable, so reasonable that the House had to revert it, and eventually pound it into something that begrudgingly allowed it, but prohibited any state economic incentives (tax credits, that sort of thing) from being used in conjunction.

Well, this ran headlong into another state priority, that being economic development and the market incentivization of clean technology. It especially ran afoul of one of the governor’s priorities, the incentivization of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), which come to find out is largely produced by — wait for it — pyrolysis of organic substances like waste plastic. Exit bill three.

Now, say what you want about the government’s use of tax incentives — as a purely philosophical matter I do not believe the state ought to be using the tax code to influence behavior — but we are well down that road, and this is the economic world we live in. Businesses make decisions based on the laws in place and more often than not pulling the rug out from under them is more harmful and distorting to the market than tinkering with the tax code in the first place.

But there is another issue here and it is this: a problem is identified, (plastic pollution and airplanes burning fossil fuels, for example) and American entrepreneurial ingenuity comes up with an answer, (like, say, pyrolysis and SAF) and it is summarily dismissed by the progressive left who caterwauled the loudest about the problem in the first place. Too many on the left are wedded more to the problem than a solution, unable or unwilling to accept any remedy short of repeal of the industrial revolution.  

And this does not only afflict environmental problems either. Affordable housing is the cry of the day. The problem is well established — nobody is building starter housing like condos in the state because of the excessive cost of insurance needed to protect against dubious construction defect claims. So, a solution was crafted, and SB 106 was ran by the estimable Sens. Rachel Zenzinger and James Coleman, and Rep. Shannon Bird that would have substantially solved the problem — and was rejected out of hand.

If progressives were serious about solving the problems they speak so passionately about, they would be inquisitive enough to explore solutions that fall outside their tightly defined ideological box. No one will confuse Jared Polis as a conservative, but nor can they question his inquisitiveness; nor his willingness, at times, to apply a moderating hand on the brake, just in time to avert disaster. Usually.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.