Of all the election night tallies ominously gnawing at small-business owners, the eventual, 57% to 43% passage of Proposition 118 was arguably the most worrisome. Although this will cause Main Street enterprises considerable disruption and headaches, the people have spoken.

If only that were the end of it, however.

Money to fund the new family and medical leave law starts being collected from employees and employers in 2023 with drawing on the fund to commence in 2024. So, what happens in 2021 and 2022? Can the Colorado General Assembly leave well enough alone and allow small-business owners a two-year preparation for the new cost shock, or will it come up with a stopgap measure for next year and 2022?

Astute State Capitol observers will be watching the moves Sen. Stephen Fenberg and Sen. Jeff Bridges, prime sponsors of SB 20-205, make from now to the opening of the next session convening on Jan. 13.

Colorado already has a sick leave law on the books after Gov. Jared Polis signed Senate Bill 205, which Fenberg was a prime sponsor of, into law in July. According to the language in the bill, “Starting January 1, 2021, for employers with 16 or more employees, and starting January 1, 2022, for all employers, the act requires employers to provide paid sick leave to their employees, accrued at one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked, up to a maximum of 48 hours per year.”

Prop. 118 goes much further and is a Lamborghini of a law compared to the Fiat that is SB 205, “authorizing paid family and medical leave for a covered employee who has a serious health condition, is caring for a new child or for a family member with a serious health condition, or has a need for leave related to a family member’s military deployment or for safe leave; establishing a maximum of 12 weeks of family and medical leave, with an additional 4 weeks for pregnancy or childbirth complications … requiring job protection for and prohibiting retaliation against an employee who takes paid family and medical leave.”

The big question now is: Will the Legislature soup up SB 205 in the interim before Prop. 118 takes over the driver’s seat? Colorado small-business owners implore them to resist. It might be the final action too much to bear.

The business environment is grim:

In the latest survey of its small-business-owning membership, NFIB found that 90% of them have spent all their Paycheck Protection Program loans and 52% say they’ll need another loan over the next 12 months. Congress has failed to act on a second round of funding.

Colorado is one of 20 states that have asked for a federal loan to meet its unemployment obligations, according to Pew Research. This means it’s a certainty small-business owners will be hit with increased unemployment insurance taxes.

And while other neighboring states rallied to give their small businesses legal protection against COVID-19 lawsuits, our legislature did nothing and Congress likely will avoid the issue as well.

One could go on and on with other examples why Colorado is not a welcoming place for small-business creation and solvency, the compliance headache from its crazy quilt of sales tax jurisdictions to name one, so why burden Main Street shops with one thing more, which another paid-leave law would do?

Colorado does nothing for its small businesses and everything to them, and at every chance. Harmonize its online sales tax collections with other states? No way. Consolidate its more than 700 taxing jurisdictions to reduce paperwork compliance? Not a chance. And now, with its $1.3 billion-and-counting price tag, the Paid Family and Medical Leave Program.

Adding salt to the soon-to-be financial wound of small-business owners is the fact that 73% of them already offered paid time off to their employees — and 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 better accommodate the employee’s needs.

The best course of action the next session of the Colorado legislature could take is to leave the paid-leave issue alone and let small businesses rebuild, rehire, and regenerate the state’s economy.

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