At a recent gathering of the Greater Baltimore Committee, Republican state Sen. J.B. Jennings urged business leaders to help him fight legislation pending in Annapolis that would require businesses with 10 employees or more to offer paid sick leave. At least one GBC member stood up to reinforce the senator's message, warning that such a mandate would further damage Maryland's reputation as a state that is unfriendly to business.

By all accounts, there was no equally passionate advocate for paid sick leave in the audience. Perhaps what this particular gathering needed was a representative of Chipotle, the Denver-based Mexican fast-food chain with more than 2,000 locations that has in recent months suffered disastrous outbreaks of tainted food. At least 500 people in 13 states have gotten ill from dining at a Chipotle, and the uproar has dramatically depressed the once-high-flying company's value on Wall Street.

The company has since been working hard to restore public confidence in the health and safety of its food. Among its first actions was to address its own sick leave policies. A new policy, discussed at a company-wide meeting just this week, requires workers to stay away from restaurants at least five days after certain symptoms appear — and all those days will be paid.

By fast-food industry standards, that's a generous policy, but not a surprising one. At least two of last year's outbreaks involving Chipotle outlets were traced not to problems with the food supply but to employees with norovirus. Employees who are feeling unwell have a powerful incentive (money to pay the rent, for example) to show up at work despite their condition unless paid sick leave is made available to them.

Admittedly, paid sick leave is a difficult issue, but the proposal pending before the General Assembly needs to be considered in a broader context than whether it fits a business friendly or unfriendly paradigm. If not providing food service workers with sick leave means hundreds of food poisoning cases that might otherwise have been avoided — incidents that endanger public health and hurt the restaurant industry — then opposing it isn't necessarily business “friendly” at all.

Generally, businesses should be allowed to set their own policies regarding benefits as they do compensation. But just as the century-old minimum wage laws in the U.S. protect workers and the public from abuse, so might minimum sick leave policies protect the public from food-borne illnesses and other negative effects of forcing sick people to show up on the job. How many sick children in working class households are left unsupervised because a single parent living paycheck to paycheck can't afford to take the day off?

Some balance obviously has to be struck, and finding it will require a robust debate. But we do know that government mandates should not be dismissed out of hand with the argument that they interfere with free enterprise. Social Security, for example, is government-mandated insurance program that benefits retirees and the disabled. Medicare is a mandated health insurance program primarily for seniors. Both are as essential to the U.S. economy and well-being as credit cards and paved streets.

One might argue that Chipotle has demonstrated that companies can fix such a problem on their own. But will other fast-food restaurants raise their standards or plow the savings into beefier bottom lines? And more important, how is a consumer to know which restaurants have taken steps like Chipotle to protect their customers' health and which are taking their chances that workers aren't showing up with a pathogen? It's not a detail that generally shows up in Yelp restaurant reviews. Must we rely on the kindness of faceless corporate owners?

Clearly, what the General Assembly and Gov. Larry Hogan need to do is engage in a healthy dialogue with workers, employers, public health experts and others and explore the possibilities of paid sick leave before staking out the usual business friendly or unfriendly ground. At least four states already mandate it, as do a growing number of cities. Maryland's own Montgomery County joined the ranks last fall, which means that one-fifth of all the jobs in this state are already covered. Paid sick leave may not represent Bernie Sanders-style socialism as much as a practical step to protect public safety and food industry jobs.