There's no such thing as free lunch, as the old saying goes. Paid family leave; expanded unemployment insurance; energy-efficient buildings and more mass transit may look good on the menu, but they come at a price. Especially, when it all adds up.

As it turns out, Coloradans may want to go on a crash diet when they get the tab for the feast of state regulations that have been force-fed to the private sector over the past few years.

The total? Try $2 billion a year — and that's just a hint of what's to come.

It's among the findings of a study released Tuesday by Colorado's Common Sense Institute.

The think tank tallied the toll of regulations mandated on the state's business economy — our job creators — and the upshot is sobering. It's off-putting, too, for would-be Colorado employees who won't be coming to our state after all. Far fewer of them have been arriving in the past two years, the study found. That could be due to soaring housing costs as well as to the rising cost of doing business, potentially dampening job growth in the Centennial State.

The study was authored by Lang Sias, an attorney and Republican former state lawmaker who was a noted policy maven during his time in Colorado's legislature.

"This is a cautionary tale," Sias said in a press statement issued by the institute. "As Colorado becomes more expensive and net migration slows, Colorado becomes less competitive."

The study looks at 22 labor and employment regulations as well as environmental and energy regulations that were enacted recently. Even so soon after their implementation, seven of the new policies already pose a calculable cost to the state; Sias and the institute did the math.

Among the seven costing Colorado's economy some $2 billion are the state's paid family and medical leave program, imposed by voters via the 2020 ballot; an expansion of the number of employees eligible for unemployment insurance, approved by the legislature that same year; a host of new restrictions on oil and gas exploration and production enacted by state lawmakers in 2019, and the new energy standards they mandated in 2021 for the state's larger buildings.

Meanwhile, the study also found Colorado's net in-migration shrank 80% over the past two years, meaning 76,700 fewer people moved to our state compared with a five-year average up through 2019. The study estimates the 2021 and 2022 reduction in migration to Colorado has reduced employment by 14,000 jobs.

"If the change in net migration is due to a permanent increase in the cost of doing business in Colorado, the impacts are likely to persist or even grow over time," the study notes. "A 1% increase in the cost of business would lead to a reduction in the labor force of 53,000 after two years and 123,000 after 10. The employment impacts are larger—130,000 after two years and 126,000 after ten."

While that troubling prospect may delight those who want to shut down our state's economy and growth, most Coloradans know their children's future — and their own — hinges on a productive, prosperous private sector. It creates most of our jobs and capital.

While our state's economy remains vibrant in some key respects, the findings by Sias and Common Sense are worrisome signs about what lies ahead. Colorado cannot continue to impose ever more demands on the private sector without accounting for the cost.

REPRINTED FROM THE COLORADO SPRINGS GAZETTE

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