I voted yes on Senate Bill 121, the “Overtime Threshold for Agricultural Employees” bill. I want to explain why — not just defend it.
Let me start with something most people at the Capitol don’t have to reckon with: I represent Aurora. Our city has spent over $120 million in recent years purchasing small farms and retiring their water rights. An $80 million farm in Otero County. A $43 million set of deals on the South Platte. You don’t need me to explain what buy-and-dry means. You’ve watched it happen. The fruit orchards, the cantaloupe fields, the small operations that defined southeastern Colorado for generations — gone, or going. Aurora is part of that story. I know it. I own it.
HD36 is not a farm district, my constituents are Aurora city residents. I chose to think beyond my zip code on this vote — because what happens to those farms eventually comes back to us, and because I could not in good conscience ignore what my own city has been doing to rural Colorado for decades.
So when I was asked to vote on farm worker overtime, I could not separate that vote from that reality.
The debate over SB 121 has been framed as a choice between protecting workers and protecting farmers. I reject that framing. The question I kept coming back to was simpler: what actually keeps farm workers employed? The answer is farms. Specifically, small farms — the kind already under enormous pressure from historic low commodity prices, rising input costs from tariffs, and cities like Aurora buying up their water.
The current 48-hour overtime threshold, despite its good intentions, was accelerating that pressure. Employers were cutting worker hours to avoid overtime costs. They were shifting to less labor-intensive crops. They were consolidating or selling out entirely. Workers testified to this themselves. The policy designed to protect them was, in practice, pushing the operations they depended on closer to the exit.
I spoke directly with the bill’s sponsors. I also took note of who voted to advance SB 121 out of the House Agriculture Committee: Rep. Karen McCormick — the same Karen McCormick who was one of the original House sponsors of the 2021 law that first established overtime protections for farm workers. When one of the architects of the original law concludes it needs to change, that carries real weight.
SB 121 sets a uniform 56-hour threshold and adds some of the strongest wage theft enforcement Colorado has ever put into law — up to $40,000 per violation for repeat offenders, and enhanced penalties for employers who misclassify workers to avoid their obligations. That is a real, enforceable win for workers. It is not a retreat from the 2021 gains. It is a course correction grounded in what has actually happened since that law took effect.
I want to speak directly to my union brothers and sisters who are angry about this vote. I hear you. I understand.
I have stood beside you my entire career. Behind you when you needed cover. In front of you when you needed a shield. My stature may be short. My shoulders are broad. That has not changed.
But I have to be honest. I cannot vote to preserve a policy that was helping push small farms out of existence while my own city was already doing enough of that. That is not solidarity. That is complicity dressed up as principle.
Protecting workers means protecting the places they work. Without the farms, there are no farm workers left to fight for.
I’m not mad if you’re mad. This was a hard vote. I made it with open eyes, after talking directly to the people closest to the issue, and after sitting with the uncomfortable truth of what Aurora’s water strategy has done to rural Colorado.
I voted for the farms. I voted for the workers on them. And I would do it again.
Democratic State Rep. Michael Carter represents House District 36 in Aurora.
Rep. Michael Carter has it right. Way back when I was in high school I had a co-worker at the factory I worked in after school who left every summer to work on a farm. He only got overtime at our factory, but he made more money in his three months working that farm than he did for the nine months he worked in our factory. Many farm workers want to work as many hours as they can even without overtime and “bank” their extra hours of pay working from dawn to dusk. Aurorans benefit from those farms and farm workers when we buy our groceries from local farms (without tariffs). But we cannot apply traditional factory based overtime pay rules on farm workers and not harm the ability of our farm workers to load up on their hours and pay without the overtime restrictions during the active growing and harvesting periods. Farm work is long, hard work that most of us would never do. Often legislation has unforeseen negative effects. We should appreciate that for once the negative impact of prior legislation is corrected, Far too often bad law just stays on the books despite the negative effects it causes.