As strange as it sounds, a Republican legislator is proposing to resurrect a state agency.
The goal: enacting an increase in the state’s minimum wage that’s more tolerable for Republicans and businesses.
State Sen. Abel Maldonado, R-Santa Maria, is carrying SB 1167, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposal to raise the minimum wage to $7.75 an hour from $6.75 an hour.
The bill died in the Senate Labor and Industrial Relations Committee because the majority Democrats back their own minimum wage bill, SB 1162 by Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles.
The Democratic proposal would index the minimum wage to annual inflation, a deal breaker for the governor.
So, late last month, Maldonado wrote a letter to Schwarzenegger suggesting that the governor reinstitute the state Industrial Welfare Commission, which was stripped of funding by Democrats in 2004.
Ironically, at the time, Democrats complained the commission was blocking attempts to raise the minimum wage.
Under the state constitution, the commission on its own could enact the Schwarzenegger minimum wage hike, without having to go through the Legislature.
In a press release accompanying Maldonado’s letter, he said: “I am asking Gov. Schwarzenegger to take immediate action and help California’s hardest workers. The Democrats have decided to play politics with workers’ lives rather than doing what is right. By the governor taking immediate action, the state’s 1.5 million minimum wage earners will see relief from rising healthcare, energy and gas costs.”
Besides taking the sails out of the Cedillo proposal, the move could quash an attempt by labor to get voters to pass a minimum wage hike with annual indexing to inflation. An initiative now is in circulation for the November ballot. The deadline to gather 325,000 signatures is May 25.
Taxing Multinationals
Gov. Schwarzenegger has indicated he will sign a bill passed by the state Senate last month that will change the way multinational corporations pay taxes in California. The change will generate an extra $50 million a year for the state.
The bill, SB 663 by Sen. Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, would tax companies that do business in California and are headquartered in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. Current law only taxes multinational corporations that are incorporated in the U.S.
Democrats long have sought to make this change. But Republican legislators and governors and their business allies have repeatedly blocked these attempts, until now. Schwarzenegger has steered to the left this election year after his failure in last year’s special election.
Fine is a staff writer with the Los Angeles Business Journal.
