Commissioners vote 4-3 against a plan to raise to $9.97 per hour the minimum wage for all county employees and some contract workers.
By SAUNDRA AMRHEIN
Published June 17, 2004
[Times photos: Chris Zuppa]
Lewis O'Neal of Tampa vacuums on the sixth floor of the Hillsborough County Courhouse in Tampa on Wednesday. O'Neal, who works for a contractor, makes $6.50 an hour. A proposal to raise the minimum wage for county employees and others was voted down Wednesday. "I figured they wouldn't do it," O'Neal said. "It sounded too good to be true."
Diana Washington of Tampa reacts to a comment made by Hillsborough County Commissioner Ronda Storms. "If you can't afford four children, birth control has been around since the 1960s," Storms said. "There's a little thing called the pill."
TAMPA - The battle for a "living wage" went down to a 4-3 defeat Wednesday before the Hillsborough County Commission, following a testy exchange over which commissioner had personally suffered the most in life.
Commission Chairman Thomas Scott made the motion for a $9.97 minimum wage for all county employees, as well as workers for certain private companies holding contracts with the county or receiving tax abatements and subsidies.
Supporters say that's the rate needed for a family of four to survive, higher than the federal hourly minimum wage of $5.15.
For contractors who don't provide health benefits, the ordinance would have required an hourly minimum rate of $11.97.
The increase would have been a boost from the current $6.97 bottom wage for county employees and the expected hike to $7.45 in October.
Scott said he saw it as a chance to leave a lasting mark after nearly eight years in office.
"My time is winding down and all of us desire to accomplish something on this board," Scott said. "I want to be remembered for doing what is right."
Scott said he understood poverty, because he's been there. Parents are working two jobs just to afford a house and provide for their children, he said. "(Poor people) want the same opportunity as everyone else."
But four commissioners blocked the proposal, including Ronda Storms, who said education, not "artificially inflated" wages, was the answer.
Storms said she has worked $2.01-an-hour jobs in her life, spent nights at Salvation Army and lived in her car. But she worked and put herself through school, she said, "crawled across glass on my elbows.
"If you can't afford four children, birth control has been around since the 1960s," she said. "There is a little thing called the pill."
Commissioners Ken Hagan, Jan Platt and Jim Norman joined her in opposing the increase.
Norman said it would create unemployment, kicking lower wage workers out of jobs to be replaced by high-skilled employees. The cost to the county would outweigh the benefit, he said. County Administrator Pat Bean estimated that lifting the wages for the lowest paid 124 employees plus lifting the pay of another 700 employees just above that would cost about $10-million. That does not include higher pay for contract workers.
Platt said if the county wanted to tackle poverty, the living wage was not the best way to do it.
Commissioner Kathy Castor said it was a good place to start.
Commissioner Pat Frank agreed. She said she wasn't buying warnings of job losses and wrecked local markets, because other Florida counties have already passed similar wage hikes. "I haven't seen the sky falling," she said.
Pinellas County does not have a pay scale on the living wage level, but it has a salary structure that allows some part-time and seasonal employees to be paid no less than $7.56 an hour, said Peggy Rowe, the county's assistant director for personnel.
The county generally starts all full-time, year-round employees at a minimum hourly wage of $9.40 an hour, Rowe said.
The lowest-paying county jobs in Pasco County start at $6.82 an hour, but they are mostly part-time positions, such as summer recreation coordinators and drivers delivering meals to elderly shut-ins.
Members of Hillsborough Organization for Progress and Equality, or HOPE, had been anxiously awaiting the vote. They left shaking their heads.
Many HOPE members left before a second, 5-2, vote (Frank and Norman voting no) by the board to ask Congress to raise the federal minimum wage.
HOPE's statisticians estimated the cost to the county of a living wage to be between $3-million and $4-million.
HOPE's leader, the Rev. W. L. Lee, said he was appalled by Storms' comments.
It doesn't matter how much education you have if you can't find a good job that pays well, he said. The commission, he said, was out of tune "with humanity."
But the battle is not over for Lee and HOPE. Next stop: the city of Tampa.
- Times staff writers Bridget Hall Grumet and Michael Sandler contributed.
