Living wage bill dies
An effort to raise the state's minimum wage seemed to have more lives than any respectable cat might want Wednesday. But despite second chances galore, Rep. Alma Adams' bill couldn't clear a final legislative roadblock.
(Update: Here's the story from today's Greensboro edition of the paper. If you got the Rockingham version of the paper, this story wasn't there. If you got the High Point edition, you got an interim version of the story while the wage bill was still in the throws of living and dying.)
The bill would have raised the state minimum wage to $6.15 an hour, a $1 higher than the current rate. (North Carolina's minimum wage is pegged to the federal minimum, $5.15 an hour.)
The bill survived an unfavorable vote by the House Commerce Committee and some cleaver parliamentary maneuvers on the House floor, either of which would have avoided a recorded vote by the House's members.
"They didn't want a vote, they didn't want it to be on the record," Adams said after the House's marathon session ended after midnight. "The people who voted against this ought to be ashamed."
From Guilford County, Reps. Earl Jones, Pricey Harrison and Maggie Jeffus, all Democrats, voted along with Adams to support the bill. Reps. John Blust and Laura Wiley, both Republicans, voted against the measure.
But the floor voted wasn't completely party-line. Nelson Cole, a Rockingham County Democrat, voted against the bill.
The final tally was 52-66.
Adams and Jones predicted that the vote against the minimum wage hike could come back to haunt some members.
"It's going to be a political liability for people who vote against it," Jones said before the bill went before the House. (It'll be interesting to see if anyone running against incumbents next year does use this vote as a campaign issue.)
With the bill defeated Wednesday night, Adams and other minimum wage supporters will have to wait until 2007 to bring back the measure.
The debate on the bill was pretty vigorous. Listen for yourself: