Tag Archives: minimum wage

Adam Pagnucco, Minimum Wage

Fight for 15 Unveils Poll Results in Key Senate Districts

By Adam Pagnucco.

The Maryland Fight for 15 Campaign has published poll results showing the popularity of a $15 minimum wage in three key Senate districts.  The polling comes as Annapolis heads to Sine Die on Monday.

The $15 minimum wage bill, lead-sponsored by Senator Rich Madaleno (D-18) and Delegate Shelly Hettleman (D-11), has not received a committee vote in either the House or the Senate.  That is despite the fact that it has 21 Senate sponsors (close to the 24 votes needed for passage) and 74 House sponsors (a majority of that chamber).  From a purely political perspective, we can’t understand why General Assembly Democrats have not sent that bill to Hogan’s desk.  Polling shows that the issue is enormously popular and having Hogan veto it – as he did with sick leave – would enable the Democratic gubernatorial nominee to draw a huge contrast with the Governor.  A veto override would also have been a big progressive victory for Democratic rank and file lawmakers.

Fight for 15 has released poll results showing net support for a $15 minimum wage in three Senate districts: 8, 28 and 38.  There’s a reason why they picked those three districts.  District 28 is represented by Senator Mac Middleton, who chairs the Finance Committee which has jurisdiction over the bill.  District 8 Senator Kathy Klausmeier and District 38 Senator Jim Mathias are also on the Finance Committee and are facing strong Republican challengers.  Both have taken money within the last year from the NRA.  Each of them could use a boost from voting for the minimum wage bill to motivate Democrats to turn out on their behalf.  And the poll results show that minimum wage has a net favorability of 17 points in Mathias’s district and 32 points in Klausmeier’s district.

Will the Democrats take this opportunity to draw a contrast with the GOP and energize progressives?  Or will minimum wage wait for next year?

We reprint Fight for 15’s press release and polling memo below.

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Minimum Wage, Montgomery County

Implications of the Minimum Wage Outcome

Bethesda Beat has the story:

The County Council on Tuesday voted unanimously to a compromise that will phase in the $15-per-hour wage over four years based on businesses’ size.

Under the compromise:

  • large businesses with more than 50 employees will be required to pay the minimum wage in 2021
  • businesses with 11 to 50 employees will have to pay the wage in 2023
  • small businesses with fewer than 11 employees will need to pay the wage in 2024.

The council also approved a measure to tie the wage to the inflation rate in 2022 to prevent the need to vote to increase the wage in the future.

Indexing’s Long-Term Impact

This last bit may be the most important. Indexing to inflation assures that Montgomery’s minimum will continue to rise. As a result, the gap between the minimum wage in Montgomery and elsewhere will continue to grow.

If demand for labor keeps the going rate below Montgomery’s minimum, especially as indexing drives it up, it will make the county less competitive in businesses that don’t need to be located here, though have less impact on many services that are hard to move. However, even these businesses, like restaurants, can choose where to open and we would likely see the result.

The impact on the County budget over the short term is unclear. Over the long term, it may force the County to ratchet up wages and cut other services more in lean budget times, since the County will no longer be able to limit COLAs for workers at the bottom and will have to fight wage compression.

Any future economic and budgetary pressures will be made more acute, as the popularity of indexing wages makes it politically perilous to remove. These potentially negative impacts, however, will occur enough in the future that the current crop of officials will not have to address any consequences of their actions.

Political Impact

The short-term politics are more interesting. It gives Marc Elrich a major victory to tout and undermines critiques of him as ineffective in marshaling his colleagues behind him. At the same time, the unanimous adoption of a compromise takes a lot of the juice out of the political issue as it was adopted unanimously.

Candidates can’t differentiate themselves when there is no difference on an issue. Incumbent Sidney Katz’s opponent, Ben Shnider,  regards this as a victory since he pressured Katz on the issue. But the Council’s action makes it very hard to campaign against Katz on this basis – a win for Katz.

The decline of the issue’s salience also benefits outsider candidates worried about the financial impact, as they are on the less popular side of the question. It may give an opening to County Executive Candidates Bill Frick and Rose Krasnow with the business community, which won’t like the outcome.

Roger Berliner will be grateful this issue is off the agenda and will tell business leaders that he did the best he did to mitigate its impact. Ultimately, however, he still voted for a policy they think is harmful, while Frick was willing to say publicly that minimum wage policy should be left to the state.

Frick will argue to business that his actions show that he is willing to take on tougher causes and they should get behind him. Krasnow is not yet formally in the race, which limits any lumps she can take but also prevents her from earning points on this issue. As the Maryland Lottery has spent much money to explain, “you have to play to win.”

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2018 Montgomery County Executive Race, Minimum Wage

Raise the Minimum Wage? Roger Berliner Answers

Seventh State is pleased to present Roger Berliner’s response to our question on the minimum wage.

Do you favor an increase in the Montgomery County minimum wage and, if so, by how much and on what timeline? Would you have any exemptions and, if so, for whom?  

I do favor increasing our county’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. I support the County Executive’s timeline, which would increase wages each year and reach $15 an hour by 2022 for larger businesses and 2024 for small businesses. I believe the County Executive’s time line best harmonizes the conflicting truths that are present in this debate: (1) too many people are working too hard for too little; and (2) if we raise wages too quickly, we will harm small businesses in our county, particularly minority-owned businesses, and this in turn will produce results that are exactly the opposite of what we want.

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2018 Montgomery County Executive Race, Minimum Wage

Raise the Minimum Wage? Marc Elrich Answers

Seventh State is pleased to present Marc Elrich’s response to our question on the minimum wage.

Do you favor an increase in the Montgomery County minimum wage and, if so, by how much and on what timeline? Would you have any exemptions and, if so, for whom?

Yes, I support making the Montgomery County minimum wage into a living wage of $15 an hour.  I led the fight to secure the county’s last minimum wage increase, which is why our minimum wage is now $11.50 an hour, and believe strongly that jobs should pay people enough to provide for their families.

An extensive body of evidence shows that minimum wage increases have had their intended effect of lifting wages for low-wage workers with little to no effect on employment.  Montgomery County is one of the wealthiest counties in the United States and has a very high cost of living, so we are even more well-positioned than many other jurisdictions to take the step of going to $15.

The most prudent course of action would be to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2020 for all workers in the county with no exemptions, indexing the minimum wage to rise with inflation or average wages after 2020.  Over 100,000 Montgomery County residents would benefit from such an increase.

Opponents of this idea today made the same arguments and dire predictions four years ago.  They were wrong then and they’re wrong now.

The $15 minimum wage bill I recently reintroduced, like the one that took effect in 2013, contains several compromises to assuage the concerns of some of my colleagues and some small businesses.  It delays the phase-in to 2022 for businesses with 25 or fewer employees, for example, and it continues to allow the exemptions for some workers that exist under federal law.  These compromises will result in less help for people in need than my ideal proposal would achieve, but the bill we ultimately enshrine into law will still have a huge, positive impact.

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2018 Montgomery County Executive Race

Raise the Minimum Wage? George Leventhal Answers

Seventh State is pleased to present George Leventhal’s response to our question on the minimum wage.

Do you favor an increase in the Montgomery County minimum wage and, if so, by how much and on what timeline? Would you have any exemptions and, if so, for whom?   

I support raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2020, as our neighbor, the District of Columbia, has already done. I am amenable to a slower rate of increase for businesses with 25 or fewer employees and for non-profit organizations.

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2018 Montgomery County Executive Race, Minimum Wage

Raise the Minimum Wage? Bill Frick Answers

As the County Council is getting ready to vote on raising the minimum wage, Seventh State continues its series of candidate responses to questions with this issue.

Do you favor an increase in the Montgomery County minimum wage and, if so, by how much and on what timeline? Would you have any exemptions and, if so, for whom?  

I have co-sponsored and voted for bills to raise the minimum wage statewide in Annapolis. A thoughtful minimum wage policy, properly enforced, can be an important tool in reducing income inequality. That is why I helped enact a minimum wage increase as a legislator in Annapolis.  Minimum wage policy, however, is more effective as a state policy than as a local one.  Maryland has a Department of Labor, with the statutory power and duty to enforce minimum wage and other employment laws.  Montgomery County does not.  Just as zoning and land use decisions belong at the County level instead of the state, I believe employment regulation is better in the hands of the state, where those regulations can be effectively enforced and implemented.

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Adam Pagnucco, Ike Leggett, Minimum Wage

Will There Be a Deal on MoCo’s Minimum Wage?

By Adam Pagnucco.

The question of whether Montgomery County will have a $15 minimum wage has simmered for months.  After County Executive Ike Leggett vetoed Council Member Marc Elrich’s bill last January, the county commissioned an ill-fated study on the effects of a wage hike that has been discredited.  But Elrich, not waiting for any study, introduced a new bill that was little different from his previous one.  The Executive has now announced his terms for signing it.  We reprint his letter to the council below.

We summarize the differences between the bill and the Executive’s terms below.

Advocates for the bill reacted harshly to the Executive’s letter.  They sent out the following press release today.

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Economists, Community and Labor Groups Slam Executive Leggett Memo Say: “No More Delay Tactics, Working Families Need a Strong $15 Minimum Wage Now”

After Failed Study, Leggett Makes 2nd Attempt to Deny Low-Wage Workers a Living Wage

Rockville, MD- A coalition of economists, community and labor groups today condemned Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett over his memo requiring County Council members to follow a set of criteria that would dramatically weaken Council’s $15 minimum wage legislation. The group also demanded that Leggett suspend his attempts to amend an irredeemable study and sign a strong bill before the end of session. Leggett’s minimum wage “study,” was widely criticized and eventually halted by the Executive himself.

The statement below is attributable to Maryland Working Families, the National Employment Law Project (NELP), 32BJ SEIU, Jews United for Justice, Progressive Maryland and CASA.

“In one of the nation’s wealthiest counties, County Executive Leggett is making a second attempt to avoid raising the wage like so many other economically prosperous cities have done successfully. His youth exemption would keep thousands of working men and women under the age of 20 in poverty, leaving them to continue struggling to support themselves and their families. County residents are counting on the Council and the Executive to resist corporate lobbyists whose self-interests are out-of-sync with the needs of working families. It’s time to stop looking for excuses and raise the minimum wage by passing and signing a clean bill, without delayed implementation or exemptions.”

Research has shown that overwhelmingly, cities that have raised the wage have not experienced job loss and the local economy continues to prosper. Moreover, a wage increase can reduce reliance on public assistance from a safety net that faces extreme cuts from the Trump administration, placing a heavier burden on local taxpayers.

With more than 163,000 members in 11 states, including 18,000 in the D.C. Metropolitan Area, 32BJ SEIU is the largest property service workers union in the country.

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So will there be a deal?  Under normal circumstances, the answer is yes.  The Executive is recommending a combination of delays and relatively modest adjustments for some categories of workers.  He is not proposing a fundamental overhaul of the bill.  A properly functioning legislative process would smooth out these details, probably by splitting the differences, and result in a 9-0 vote and a signed bill.  That’s how Rockville works most of the time.

But the circumstances are anything but normal.  Three Council Members are running for Executive and five more are running for reelection next year.  The two Council Members who are Executive candidates and are sponsoring the bill must decide if they prefer a signed bill or a campaign issue.  The bill advocates must decide whether they want another upheld veto which would cause further delay and take their chances with a new Executive and council.  These decisions, which are ultimately political in nature, will determine whether there is a deal on minimum wage.

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Adam Pagnucco, Minimum Wage

Leggett Backs Away from Junk Science Study

By Adam Pagnucco.

County Executive Ike Leggett, who commissioned a county-financed study on the impact of a minimum wage increase blasted by the Economic Policy Institute as “absurd junk science,” is backing away from its results.  Leggett asked in a letter to the study’s authors that they review the methodology and findings in their report.  He also revealed that his administration had “received word from your firm that there might be a problem with the methodology and calculation of fiscal impact and resulting job impacts.  You have indicated that the job losses might be less than what is expressed in the report.”

Let’s recall that this very same firm prepared a study recommending retention of MoCo’s liquor monopoly – a study that did not include review of your author’s proposal to replace its revenue.  If the minimum wage study is so flawed that the Executive is retreating from it, what does that say about this same company’s work on the liquor monopoly?

It’s worth noting that the Executive’s letter to the study’s authors comes at the exact same time that the County Council is sending him an exhaustive list of questions about the study’s methodology.  The council is set to review the study in public next month.  One line of questioning examines the minimum wage bill’s impact on county labor costs, which could range into the tens of millions of dollars.  That issue is sure to become more prominent in time.

We reproduce the Executive’s letter below.

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Adam Pagnucco, Minimum Wage

Conservatives Spread MoCo Junk Science Far and Wide

By Adam Pagnucco.

Discussion of Montgomery County’s minimum wage study, branded “absurd junk science” by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), is spreading like wildfire through online conservative outlets.  It is now fortifying right-wing arguments against minimum wage hikes all over the United States.

The study, exposed by EPI, Seventh State and economists interviewed by Bethesda Magazine as possessing numerous crippling methodological problems, has nevertheless been embraced by right-wing online media.  That includes articles by Fox News, Breitbart, Townhall.com, Young Conservatives, the New Right News, the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal, Glenn Beck’s The Blaze, Ben Shapiro’s The Daily Wire, L. Brent Bozell’s CNSNews, the Job Creators Network’s Information Station, the Washington Free Beacon, a Washington Examiner columnist, a Forbes Magazine columnist, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Economic Collapse News. Because the conservative echo chamber cross-pollinates its content, it’s probably just a matter of time before the study makes its way to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and other big-time right-wing hosts.

It’s worth noting what a few of these outlets are saying.

Forbes Magazine columnist Tim Worstall:

The study’s findings are pretty bleak:

The county’s current minimum wage is $11.50. The study concluded that an $11 hourly wage was the local market rate needed to attract and retain employees. It found that increasing the wage would cost the county an additional $10 million per year to increase county employee wages.

The report found there are about 88,000 “low-wage jobs” in the county, in which employees make $1,250 or less per month that could be affected by the minimum-wage increase.

Economic Collapse News:

Study after study, report after report, common sense continually highlight a crucial fact: a $15 minimum wage results in lost jobs, lower pay, less work for workers and jobs that are not being created.

The Daily Wire:

In all, raising the minimum wage to $15 would result in the loss of $396.5 million of income in the county by 2022.  And even Democrats — or smart ones — know what a $15 minimum wage would do to low-income workers.

Washington Examiner Columnist Ron Meyer:

A county considering raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour commissioned a study on the impacts of the hike, and the results are staggering. It should serve as a wake-up call to other localities considering large increases…

For those who care about empowering low-income Americans and lifting workers out of poverty, the mounting evidence and data show raising the minimum wage to $15 isn’t compassionate, just, or charitable. It kills opportunity and creates more poverty, especially for young Americans trying to build their skill sets and make ends meet.

Those still doing #FightFor15 have important questions to answer: Why are you ignoring evidence that hurts low-wage workers? If you don’t care that it hurts low-wage workers, what are your real motives? Aren’t there other anti-poverty policy measures you can fight for that would be more productive?

None of these right-wing publications question the study’s methodology.  They embrace it uncritically because it agrees with their worldview.  And as other governments consider their minimum wage policies, the study will be used to discourage increases.  State Senator Rich Madaleno (D-18), lead sponsor of a $15 state minimum wage bill last year, debunked the study on WBAL radio but it will surely come up again.

We do not criticize County Executive Ike Leggett for being concerned about the employment effects of the minimum wage bill.  At some point, an excessively high minimum wage will lead to employment losses and business shutdowns that outweigh the positive benefits for workers who keep their jobs.  At present, no one knows what level of minimum wage that is.  But the MoCo junk science study, which cost the county $149,600, does not help us determine that wage level one bit.  What it does is give aid and comfort to right-wing ideologues who are willing to use any “information,” however flawed, to push their agenda.

Is that a worthy purpose for your tax dollars?

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Adam Pagnucco, Minimum Wage

MoCo’s Dubious Minimum Wage Survey

By Adam Pagnucco.

The Executive Branch has released its long-awaited study of the impact of MoCo’s $15 minimum wage bill and it is taking fire.  The primary objection from bill supporters is that much of the study, including the assumptions for its economic modeling, is based on an unscientific, self-selected sample of business owners who were asked to predict what they would do if the minimum wage were raised.  A senior economic analyst with the Economic Policy Institute labeled it “absurd junk science” and wrote:

The closest analogy I can think of would be if the FDA was considering approval of a new drug and instead of reviewing any studies or trials, they instead simply asked the drug company “what percentage of patients do you think this drug will harm versus help?”

Your author agrees with these criticisms.  Want to know why?  Because your author was asked to fill out the minimum wage survey!

On May 12, the county sent me the email below asking for participation in the minimum wage survey.  Note that the email says, “All responses will be anonymous, and the project team will be unable to link responses to specific businesses. Your responses will be used to inform our analysis around wage compression, job loss, and other relevant issues.”

Now, I am self-employed, but I do not own an incorporated business or employ other people.  Just out of curiosity, I clicked on the Survey Monkey link right after receiving the email.  Yes, the link worked and the survey was ready to accept responses.  If I had filled it out (and I didn’t!), by its own admission above, the survey administrator would have had no way to filter out my responses or flag them as fraudulent.

Lord knows who else got the email and exactly who filled out the survey!

Your author does not express an opinion on the policy merits of the $15 minimum wage bill.  That’s a topic for a future post.  But the minimum wage business survey is a different matter.  It was obviously subject to self-selection bias and even potential manipulation.  The fact that it was administered in flagrant violation of all known scientific surveying techniques disqualifies it from being used as a tool to evaluate public policy.

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