04/18/2005
CONTACT: Ellen Valentino, (410) 267-0335 or Jim Jennings, (240) 645-4099
NFIB: Governor Should Veto
by Ellen Valentino, NFIB/Maryland State Director
The Maryland General Assembly passed legislation that will mandate a higher minimum wage. This new mandate will increase the operating costs for Maryland's small-business community, thus hampering the ability of small businesses to maintain and grow its workforce. Before the bill was sent to the governor's desk, the Assembly rejected efforts to impose the higher wage mandate on state and local governments, to exempt small-business owners with less than 15 employees from the mandate and to provide a credit to small-business owners who provide other benefits such as health-care coverage.
Under HB 391, the state's minimum wage would be increased by $1 and for the first time would decouple Maryland's minimum wage from the Federal minimum wage. This establishes a dangerous precedent for Maryland's small-business owners. By going above the federal standard, businesses now fear the Maryland legislature will continue to increase the minimum wage in years to come. The bill removes from the hands of small-business owners the ability to control the direction of their business. Jobs that may have been created could now be put on hold or worse, eliminated as a result of higher overhead costs.
The bill does not take into account important economic factors that small-business owners often experience and are often beyond their control. Two examples that come readily to mind are the spike in fuel costs and natural disasters. The question needs to be asked: What if the small-business owner is experiencing hard economic times? Should that small country store, service station, continue to have the flexibility to operate by reducing payroll costs without having to cut back employee work hours, or even terminate the employees? The NFIB believes they should be able to continue to operate and ride out hard economic times anyway possible and should not be bound to a higher wage mandate. For this reason we will request that the governor stand with the small-business community and veto this bill.
