Colorado should lend a helping hand with retirement savings.

Colorado should venture into uncharted territory and try to solve the looming retirement crisis by looking seriously at a state-run 401(k)-like retirement plan that offers low-fee investments available to those without a work sponsored plan.

Yes, in an ideal world everyone would save $1,000 and open an IRA account with a reputable mega-personal-investment firm and begin saving 10 percent of their income a year. But investing is scary and the barrier to entry has clearly proven too difficult for the roughly quarter of workingage American households that have less than $1,000 in retirement savings and the half that have less than $25,000, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

When the free market of personal responsibility fails, sometimes government can lend a helping hand, and occasionally it doesn’t mess it up.

State Reps. Brittany Pettersen and Janet Buckner and Sens. Nancy Todd and Kerry Donovan want to create the Colorado Secure Savings Plan, a state-founded 401(k)-like retirement plan. Employees would automatically have a portion of their salary deducted and invested in a plan run by a third-party financial services company. We would prefer the new state-run program to be an opt-in instead of the bill’s current opt-out. But Pettersen argues the real benefit of House Bill 1290 comes with the lower rates that can be negotiated with mass participation.

The difference between paying a half-percentage point on retirement savings versus paying an expenses ratio of closer to 2 percent is huge. If you have $1,000 invested in a low-cost fund, you pay $5 a year to the management company, compared to paying $20. In years of poor performance, in- vestment gains can get gobbled up by high fees, along with the potential compounding interest.

We would think that given the size of this new investment portfolio being accumulated, the state could score an even lower rate, particularly for index funds.

HB 1290 is likely to die in the Republican-led Senate State Affairs Committee on Wednesday. We understand concerns Republicans have with creating a new government bureaucracy and a new mandate for small business, some of which have only a handful of employees and would be forced to navigate a complex payroll deduction system.

But the state could surely implement a system to make the roll-out as slow and painless as possible, without any punitive fees as businesses come into compliance, and giving the smallest businesses more time.

Interestingly, it’s not just Republicans at the state level who oppose this idea. Among the Obamaera rules getting the ax through the Congressional Review Act was one that exempted states and cities from providing investor protections under Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).

Already lawmakers in California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Oregon and Washington have taken steps to launch staterun retirement plans. Some offer traditional IRAs and Roth IRAs, and California is starting with low-risk treasury investments. Pettersen said those states will be able to continue even without an ERISA exemption and Colorado could, too.

HB 1290 would set up a board to spend a year investigating options and report back to lawmakers who would have final say whether to move forward. We hope Republicans in the Senate see the wisdom of this idea.