In 1972, my first job out of college, paid $6 an hour. I could have gone to work at a newspaper for $5 an hour, but I went to the higher paying job in surveying. It is nice that 32 years later, the great state of wisconsin thinks $6 an hour might be a fair minimum wage. GET A LIFE!
Madison - The Assembly's leader said Friday that he would be willing to raise the statewide minimum wage to $6 per hour - a sign that Republican lawmakers are increasingly nervous about the possibility of Milwaukee becoming the second city to set its own wage.
The Push for a Wage Increase
"I don't believe we should have all these communities doing all these different things," Assembly Speaker John Gard (R-Peshtigo) said, explaining why he could support a compromise that would lift the minimum wage from the current $5.15 per hour.
Gard offered no details of how or over what period the current wage should be boosted.
But Democratic Gov Jim. Doyle immediately said a $6-per-hour minimum wage would be too low. He would not agree to a scale of less than $6.50 an hour, saying that figure had been recommended by a bipartisan group of business and labor leaders.
The exchange came the day after Milwaukee leaders followed Madison's lead, and said they were looking into raising the minimum wage in Wisconsin's largest city. Madison increased its minimum wage to $5.50 on Jan. 1, and it is scheduled to rise to $7.75 per hour in January 2008.
Madison is being sued by business groups over the city's wage increase.
Last year, a committee Doyle appointed recommended a two-step increase to $6.50 an hour - a process the Legislature should seriously consider, another Republican leader, Sen. Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau), said Friday.
A co-chairman of the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee, Fitzgerald said he had talked to Senate Majority Leader Dale Schultz (R-Richland Center) about a possible increase in the minimum wage, but Fitzgerald did not offer his own plan.
Wisconsin's minimum wage "should be closer" to the recommended two-stage boost of $6.50, Fitzgerald said. Republicans in the Legislature this week delayed until the end of 2006 a state agency's rule that would have implemented that boost, however.
Doyle has said he wants the state to have a uniform minimum wage, but he understands why frustrated municipalities might take action on their own.
"Like I've always said, I'm in favor of a statewide minimum wage, and we would make sure then that it's uniform across the state," Doyle said Friday.
"We have a process in Wisconsin that was established decades ago that. . . is intended to keep legislators from playing these kinds of political games."
State Sen. Bob Jauch (D-Poplar) offered his own compromise Friday. It would raise the minimum wage to $6.50 per hour and forbid any city from enacting any higher wage.
Also Friday, Gard said the Legislature should act quickly next week to refinance long-term state debt to save $11 million. But he said that $7.5 million of that should go to pay for a 2005 state income tax credit for Health Savings Accounts, or HSAs.
HSAs offer federal - but not state - tax deductions for setting aside money to pay future health-care bills. Gard said the state tax code should mirror the federal rules.
Gard said the Assembly could pass the debt-refinancing, which the governor wants, and add the HSA tax breaks as early as Tuesday.
But Doyle said: "Not much chance I'm going to agree to that. Here's $11 million of taxpayers' money. Let's not spend it before we even have the money."
Lawmakers bent on spending the $11 million should "restrain themselves," Doyle said. "It's simply a matter of making this (refinancing) so that we can save taxpayers the money and resist the temptation to go out and spend it as quickly as they can."
Senate leader Schultz said Friday that the $11 million should be set aside as a down payment on a deficit of more than $220 million in state health-care costs.
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