Editorial, 02/03/2006 - Raise state wage to $7

Editorial, 02/03/2006 - Raise state wage to $7.50 an hour

By THE NEW MEXICAN
February 3, 2006

Once again, someone's using The New Mexican as a reason why the minimum wage shouldn't be raised -- repeating reports that we're moving outside the city limits to avoid paying the city's "living wage."

That is horse puckey. It's being ladled out at the Roundhouse as the minimum-wage debate rambles on.

We were paying more than $8.50 an hour before it became the first of a three-stage increase enacted in 2004. We pay at least the $9.50-an-hour now in effect.

Our new printing-and-distribution plant, out where Cerrillos Road reaches Interstate 25, was built there to give us the truck access we so sorely lacked here at Marcy and Otero streets. We trust that our neighbors enjoy the absence of 18-wheelers backing-and-forwarding their way around the Otero Street corners and clogging traffic -- even though we miss the roar of the presses that gave our newsroom an old-fashioned, Front Page sense of excitement.

But our business license is with the city of Santa Fe; all our employees, within and beyond the city limits, are paid the "living wage."

And we're staying in the city: While our Marcy Street offices are being renovated, we'll be in temporary quarters not far from downtown. When the job is done, the newsroom and more than half our staff will be back here.

We supported the City Council's bold move to an $8.50-an-hour minimum wage for businesses of 25 or more employees. We were more hesitant about the move to $9.50 that took place the first of this year, and would rather have seen it held until city leaders get the definitive report from The University of New Mexico's Bureau of Business and Economic research.

Preliminary pieces of that report say employment has increased since wages went up. But some small businesses say they're being strangled by the $9.50 rate, unable to raise prices enough for breathing room without losing business.

The effects of the $9.50 wage, the nation's highest, need an especially careful look before the "living wage" goes up to $10.50, as it's scheduled to do just a couple of years down the road.

What we don't need, however, is the New Mexico Legislature telling us what Santa Fe's minimum wage should be. Sen. Mary Papen, D-Las Cruces, seeks to cap our wage at $9.50 as part of her bill establishing a $6.15-an-hour statewide minimum wage.

Don't mess with Santa Fe, warns Gov. Bill Richardson, who says he'll veto any state attempt to interfere with our community's wage ordinance. He noted earlier this week that the state Court of Appeals upheld the Santa Fe wage, and that business interests in opposition have declined to take the issue to the state Supreme Court.

The mood of the Legislature seems to favor $7.50 an hour for the rest of the state, effective at the start of next year. The governor would rather see that amount phased in, beginning with $6.50, over the next two years.

We favor jumping today's minimum wage -- the $5.15 federal figure -- to the $7.50 minimum advocated by House Speaker Ben Luján.

We don't minimize the difficulties that come with a higher salary -- but we don't think it's fair to keep working people in abject poverty.

Congress has failed to recognize the grim realities of minimum-wage earners, especially after doing all it could to push people off welfare and into the entry-level job market. The city of Santa Fe has faced up to it. The New Mexico Legislature must do the same.