Support for min. wage hike has Goode attention

Spurred by “overwhelming” voter support for a ballot question enabling City Council to require contractors doing business with the city to “provide employees a minimum level of pay and benefits,” Councilman Wilson Goode introduced a bill to expand it to “city financial-aid recipients.”

It focuses on any person or entity receiving more than $100,000 in “grants, loans or loan guarantees, tax incentives [or] in-kind services” from the city, as well as those who lease City property or equipment. They’d have to pay employees $10.88 an hour (150 percent the federal minimum wage) or risk their ability to do business with the city. More than 72 percent voted in favor of the ballot question that the Committee of Seventy opposed.

“The use of city funds to provide better wage jobs will decrease poverty, increase consumer income, invigorate neighborhood businesses and reduce the need for taxpayer-funded social-service programs,” said Goode.

He plans to hold a Commerce and Economic Development Committee hearing on the bill next month.