Minimum Wage Cuts
In 2006 Colorado passed a controversial ballot measure that tied minimum wage to the state's Consumer Price Index. At the time, I was in the Colorado State House of Representatives as the Speaker ProTem and I opposed putting this initiative into the Constitution. I had many conversations with people asking them not to legislate through the Constitution — had we not yet learned our lesson about yet passing policy through Constitutional amendments? I expressed my concerns about potential harm to the working families they were trying to help. If something happens, and we know it will, there will be nothing that can be done about it because it will be written into the Constitution. I also tried to talk the proponents into making it a statutory measure so that they could still put it to a vote on the ballot, and it would have gone into our statutes where it could be tweaked if necessary.
Now the amendment has backfired and the minimum wage in Colorado will be lowered. As a small business owner, I have never paid my employees the minimum wage because it is just too insultingly low. I know many small business owners who also believe it to be too low and pay their employees at a higher wage, but we now have people in the workforce who will see their wages dropping. While I am proud of my position on the ballot initiative (and take the same stand on ANY ballot initiative that is making policy through the Constitution), I deeply regret that we weren’t able to more effectively help hard working Colorado families.
The Constitution was not the place to put the Minimum Wage Law that's based on an inflexible formula tied to an economic index. Have we learned nothing from the mess we’ve created in our state Constitution?
This is great!
— Liz Sanchez · Oct 17, 08:22 PM · #