Legislative Commentary

Ninth District, Senate Republican Leader

The second week of our eight-week legislative session wrapped up last week. The Senate’s 12 policy committees are going at full speed, considering they’re already halfway through the time allowed for taking action on Senate legislation. The two budget committees, which have until Feb. 11 to move Senate bills forward, will shift into high gear next week.

I wouldn’t have guessed that the minimum wage in our state would be a hot-button issue in this year’s legislative session, but the governor and Democrat members of the House of Representatives have put it on the front burner.

That’s fine, because it gives our Senate Majority Coalition Caucus more opportunity to ask this question: Is it better to have employers hiring, even if all they can afford to pay is Washington’s $9.32 per hour minimum wage, or for those employers to lay off a quarter of their workers because they can’t afford to pay a new minimum wage that is 26 percent higher?

This week also brought a lot of familiar faces: Members of the wheat growers’ association and the cattlemen’s association were in town, as were the folks from Greater Spokane Incorporated and the many Tri-Cities advocates for people with developmental disabilities. Representatives of the library districts in Whitman County and Spokane came by, as did several Pasco-area residents.

It’s always a plus when people from our district take time to travel to the Capitol and let me know what they’d like to see from their lawmakers.

A $12 per hour state minimum wage won’t put people back to work

Apparently there are many people at the Capitol who think it’s not enough for Washington to already have the highest minimum wage in the nation, at $9.32 per hour.

On Jan. 23 the Democrats who continue to control the House sided with Inslee by proposing legislation to raise the state’s minimum wage for adults to $12 per hour.

It’s no consolation that the increase required by the Democrats’ House Bill 2672 isn’t up there with the $15 hourly minimum wage that was narrowly approved by voters in SeaTac and could be coming to Seattle if that city’s new Socialist council member prevails.

It also doesn’t matter that the climb to $12 would happen in phases. Under Washington’s law it took 12 years for the minimum wage to grow 26 percent to the $9.32 it became Jan. 1; the House Democrats now want to compress that same 26 percent jump into just three years.

Our Senate majority has a better approach. Two-thirds of adults living below the poverty line do not work and wouldn’t be helped by any change in the minimum wage. Why not focus on increasing the number of jobs available, by giving Main Street a reason to create jobs, rather than force Main Street to raise the pay of those already working? We can do that by making it less costly to do business in Washington, and a simple way to do that is through reforms to the government programs that reach into private-sector pockets. This next week our coalition plans to take action on some pro-job reforms.

After HB 2672 was unveiled on Jan. 23 in an email went around our side of the aisle that simply repeated the slogan of Goodwill Industries, the well-known non-profit organization: “Because jobs change lives.” Increasing the state minimum wage won’t create jobs: it will cost jobs. That would also change lives, but not for the better.

Background: Why is the state minimum wage $9.32 per hour?

Let’s put the position taken by Governor Inslee and House Democrats into perspective. A 1998 law passed by the voters increased Washington’s minimum wage by one-third, to $6.50 per hour, by 2000. The law then required yearly adjustments of the minimum wage based on the federal Consumer Price Index. As a result, Washington’s minimum wage has increased at the start of each year since 2000, with one exception.

Today the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour; Washington passed that mark in 2005. As my previous report noted, another minimum-wage increase would be bad news for Spokane, Whitman, Asotin and the state’s other border counties because merchants and other job creators would be at even more of a disadvantage compared to Oregon, where the hourly minimum wage is $9.10, and Idaho, where it’s far less at $7.25 per hour.

Here are a few more facts that shed light on the issue:

Most minimum-wage earners are young, are usually enrolled in school, and work part-time.

Very few minimum-wage earners are the sole providers for a family; just eight percent of minimum-wage earners are single parents with children.

The average family income of a minimum-wage earner in Washington is $47,540; nearly 60 percent of minimum-wage earners in Washington live with a family member or have a spouse who also works.

Fewer than four percent of minimum-wage earners have a college degree, which again highlights the importance of making college affordable, and the value of the tuition freeze our Senate coalition made possible for 2013-14.

Windows on the Budget –

how to provide for the most vulnerable

The chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, Sen. Andy Hill of Redmond, has proposed a way to do more for the most vulnerable members of our communities – something that’s always both a priority and a challenge for budget writers.

Newsworthy legislation on the table next week

Some of the Senate bills that may be making headlines soon include:

More money for transportation without raising taxes: One of the common-sense reforms our coalition proposed for Washington’s transportation system will receive a public hearing Monday afternoon. Senate Bill 6102 is to come before the Senate Ways and Means Committee, on which I serve; this is the legislation that would redirect sales- and use-tax revenue from the purchase of road-construction material into the transportation fund. The bill is in our committee, not the transportation committee, because that revenue now goes into the state general fund – which is a Ways and Means committee responsibility.

“Silver Alert”: Monday the Senate Health Care Committee had a public hearing on Senate Bill 5602. This is the same idea as Amber Alert, but for people 65 and older who have a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, or other mental disability.

Gun-rights initiatives: The Senate Law and Justice will have a public hearing on the two gun-rights initiatives sent to the Legislature this year. One is Initiative 591; the other is Initiative 594. It’s not common for citizen initiatives to be sent to the Legislature; usually they go straight to the ballot instead. It’s even more unusual for two initiatives, on opposite sides of an issue, to come before the Legislature at the same time. The Legislature is likely to send these two measures to the ballot, which is one of the options our state constitution allows. As the committee chairman explains here, having public hearings on I-591 and I-594 will allow legislators to ask questions, and that’ll help inform voters later this year.

Debt-free college degrees: Last year Sen. Michael Baumgartner, the Spokane Republican who serves the 6th Legislative District, introduced a new approach for supporting higher education in our state; it led to the budget changes that in turn allowed our state-run colleges and universities to freeze tuition. He’s back with the “Debt-free Degree Act,” to reestablish a cap on tuition. The bill will have a public hearing Thursday before the Senate Higher Education Committee.

Any of these public hearings may be viewed online at the state’s non-profit public-access network, TVW.