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Maryland Living Wage Done Deal: Now What?

May 12th, 2007 Posted by Mark

When the governor of Maryland, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., vetoed the living wage bill last year, the Democratic leadership in the state legislature had decided not to try to override the veto, unlike the Democratic leadership currently in the House and the Senate in Washington DC, who just tried last week to override President Bush’s veto of their supplemental spending bill, a package bill that included among other things the federal minimum wage bill.

The Maryland Democrats on the state level, on the other hand, had instead moved on to try to get the state a new Maryland minimum wage increase. Their thoughts, according to my sources, was that a minimum wage bill in the state of Maryland would have a greater initial impact than a living wage bill. The governor of the state at the time, still Gov. Ehrlich Jr., tried to veto the Maryland minimum wage bill—which raised the state minimum wage to $6.15 per hour—but this time the legislature had enough votes to override the veto and get the state minimum wage bill passed.

Then a new governor was elected this year in the state mansion, a man by the name of O’Malley. During his State of the State speech, the governor announced that he openly supported a living wage bill. That gave new impetus to the bill, though it took all legislative session pretty much for the bill to make it to the governor’s desk. At one point, according to one expert, the living wage bill almost died in a committee in the House.

It was eventually the governor who put together a compromise—the reason that there is a two tiered system in the living wage bill—that allowed the bill to be passed. Now for employer in Maryland who work on state contracts, the obvious impact is an automatic raise to their employees. And like I said, I will dig deeper to see if a living wage poster is on the way too.